I don't know if this has been posted here but I was turned on to it today
A great documentary about Tower Records - All things must pass
Thank you for posting. There used to be a great Tower Records store in the heart of downtown Memphis some years ago. We would always spend hours there during the Memphis in May Festival weekends. Tower would always have bands from the festival do shows in its stores. What great thing they had going IMO.
I really want to check this out so thanks for mentioning!
I actually owe Tower a debt of gratitude. Went on a school trip to England in 1986 and my good friend, who was black and my first real exposure to black culture, wanted to go to what I think was the original location in London. He was hoping to score hip-hop tapes like Slick Rick, EU, etc. that he couldn't find where we lived in the U.S.
I of course had never heard of any of that, thought hip-hop was a lower form of music that would never catch on, and remember actually telling him, "hey pretty sure they don't have that kind of music there..."
Well, sure enough they did and he was happy as a lark the rest of the trip.
Thank you, Tower Records, for taking a young, narrow minded, culturally biased person's view on the world and blowing it into a million pieces for me to reconstruct.
Great documentary that I have watched multiple times. Very sad to see the founder discuss how the company died a slow death.
I was drooling seeing the old footage of the stacks of LP's on sale for $3 back in the day.
The only remaining brick and mortar stores are in Japan, 80+ stores, are an independent company and still thriving.
My wife and I just recently drove by the location where the Sunset Boulevard store was and suffice to say, it was somewhat depressing. We were reminded of fun times we had there in our lives along with it being the center of new releases, new bands, upcoming tours etc. Such is life these days...
Maybe I'm preaching to the choir but if you're middle aged like me, just play your music one way or the other. Eventually, a day will come when we can't.
I use to go to a huge Tower in Los Altos Ca on weekend nights and spend hours between the books and records.
