Requiem for Tower Records

Many years ago, I lived near a Tower Records with an amazing selection. This was after I stopped getting my music for free from air promotions for being a radio DJ and before I started getting my music for free from publicists for being a journalist. It was also after I was broke and living in a punk rock group house and before I stopped giving a fuck about most of it.

I knew these two guys who went by the telling monikers of Psycho and Xylo. Psycho had a job as a clerk at Tower. One of his responsibilities was to check people’s bags while they were browsing. Now Psycho’s dad was some ridiculously high-ranking mucky-muck in the military, so Psycho could come off as sort of responsible. Xylo was less convincing, but he knew me. I had striped hair and liked to wear my underwear in public, but I came across as much more innocent and respectable. Probably because I was. But I was broke, coveted music, and was sweet on Xylo, so it didn’t take much to get me in on their heist.

The basic plan was actually kind of brilliant in its elegant simplicity. Psycho stockpiled a ton of CDs behind the counter where he worked. Xylo supplied me with a duffle bag, which I checked upon entering the store. I looked like someone who would shop at Tower, but I didn’t look like someone who would be part of a heist, because I normally wouldn’t have been. The idea was that I would check “my” bag, browse around the store while Psycho filled the duffle bag with CDs, and then pick up “my” duffle bag and leave. Now the plan got a little bit more complicated when everyone in my group house heard about it and also wanted in. But the basics were the same and I was still the wholesome-looking mule for the big haul. Only the security guard started following me around and chatting me up because he thought I was hot. Which made things a little easier for my degenerate housemates and assorted unsavory pals, but I was stuck feigning interest in some band called Forced Entry which the security guard was telling me about.

So, when I say that file-sharing is killing stores like Tower, I mean it, but I’m not saying that I don’t understand what it is like to be young and budget-challenged and want music so passionately, it seems more necessary than food.

Great American Group is the company which won the bidding for most of Tower’s assets, now that the company is in bankruptcy. Great American has helped a large number of retailers liquidate their assets. When I say a large number, I mean to the tune of more than thirty billion dollars worth, GAG has fluidized merchandise from not only Tower Records, but Aron’s Records, Musicland, and Wherehouse Music, among many other bankrupt giants. If Tower were the only music chain going under, one could think it was just mismanagement on the part of Tower higher-ups, but Tower is not alone in the pain there.

Some people claim that Tower’s troubles are due to them being late to embrace new technology. These are the same morons who will tell you a Mac is better than a PC without having one single solitary shred of rationale for that opinion, much less proof. Tower in fact built one of the first online music retailers, in partnership with AOL in 1995. Their own online store hit the web shortly thereafter. They did podcasting partnered with Outhink and super indie artist distro partnered with CD Baby.

In many respects, MTS, Inc., Tower’s corporate parent, is an American counterculture success story. Chairman Russell Solomon dropped out of high school to do what financial reporters euphemistically refer to as “fulfill hippie dreams” i.e. presumably to get laid, smoke pot, and most importantly rock and roll. The Tower corporate website itself refers to the company as the result of “a vicious hangover and a greasy breakfast.” Solomon built Tower up to be one of the top music chains in the States with more than two hundred stores, including approximately ninety company-owned stores and franchises in approximately seventeen countries.

Back when we were doing Blue Blood in print, Tower Records used to have nearly 100% sell-through for us, the foreign franchises usually being the stumbling block to perfection. Tower made a ton of money from the zine revolution because they were very forward-thinking on it. Tower locations tended to be huge shopping center anchors or stand-alone locations, so they were never answerable to any repressive mall landlords. They had this buyer Doug Something whose voicemail pushed garlic and red wine, but who was so bitchy he actually made me cry once . . . while doubling his order for Blue Blood. No mean feat. I outsourced our distro after that.

At any rate, let me give you all a quick explanation of what it means that Blue Blood had nearly 100% sell-through via Tower Records. Sell-through percentage is the amount of copies of a magazine which are actually reported as sold versus the number which are reported as destroyed or returned to the publisher or distributor. 30% is considered very successful. One issue of Blue Blood, it was Japan which kept us from flawless sell-through. The prior issue Tower had had no problems with and they upped their Japanese distro for us, but it just so happened that we’d had an issue where everyone naked was completely shaved and the following issue contained pubic hair, which Japan was having none of. Japanese law was apparently written by people too prudish to even mention genitalia, so the lawmakers just sort of wrote around it. Hence, it is not difficult to distribute explicit media in Japan, but it can’t show any muff.

At any rate, Doug Whatever wasn’t always easy to deal with, but what he did was really special, so special that the Wall Street Journal profiled the man (which he was sure to mention during pretty much every single conversation he ever had.) He bought publications of a sort which once could never have received wide distribution. Desktop publishing technology made zines possible, but companies like Tower Records brought them to the people. The zines on Tower’s shelves featured the whole gamut of of opinions the mainstream press did not carry – punk rock, queer-friendly, pervy, fucking nutjob, they were all there. I remember Forrest Black and yours truly buying more than a hundred dollars worth of copies of Skin Two for the first time at that Tower Records. I was gainfully employed by this time and Tower would carry back issues of international publications. It was a wonderful notion that there was a party like that somewhere beyond Virginia, where everyone could dress up in wild costumes and be themselves. I’m more cynical and maybe more in-the-know now than I was then, but that stuff was all so exciting then and Tower brought windows to another world to my neighborhood.

As a publisher, I know that Tower was one of the few distribution points which was truly a friend to independent publishers. Their buyer might have felt he deserved a blowjob and a cookie for giving indie folks the hook-up, but maybe he really did deserve a blowjob and a cookie for the good he did. Or some garlic and red wine. Whatever. All the crusty zinesters reading this know what I’m talking about. Tower would pay as agreed. Tower never lied about their sell-through percentages. Tower never ordered copies and then turned them down after they were printed. The most input Tower ever had on editorial content was to suggest more music coverage. Instead of claiming to destroy supposedly unsold copies, Tower would mail whole copies back to publishers if asked. Blue Blood could always do brisk business in back issues sales, so that would have made a huge difference if everyone had been as kind as Tower in that way.

According to Home Media Retailing, Trans World Entertainment was narrowly beaten out by the GAG liquidation company which picked up most of Tower’s assets. Trans World and Walgreens are now the two big bidders hoping to pick up leases on many Tower locations. Trans World appears to be a holding company for more than eight hundred media stores, mostly of the mall variety and including Sam Goody, Planet Music, Coconuts, Spec’s, Wherehouse, Suncoast, and their flagship FYE or For Your Entertainment. They appear decently poised to remain commercially viable in the new millenium, partly because they are on top of newer tech products like ringtones and partly because they are picking up all the chains with products at all similar to theirs. (Want to sell your site? Send me a Personal Message on the Blue Blood boards or contact us via our MySpace Profile.)

Companies like Trans World and Virgin (who bought out Tower’s UK interests some time ago) operate too many mall stores to ever be bastions of free speech, independent music, or indie anything else. A significant number of non-mall Virgin Megastores have closed their doors. Wal-Mart and Best Buy, who are by most accounts the two largest American music retailers today, are definitely not going to be launchpads for new music or new ideas. And the little independent music stores got fucked first by the current market climate. Most of them went under a few years ago, around the same time the Kemp Mill chain was going under. People always say they care about gourmet cheddar, but most will buy Cheez Whiz if it is competitively priced. It was not greed which set Tower prices higher than Wal-Mart’s. It was the simple economics of cost of goods sold and the economies of scale. Eight hundred pound gorillas like Wal-Mart can tell their suppliers what to charge. Additionally, chains like Best Buy or CostCo, which make most of their revenue from the sales of electronics or bulk items, will often sell things like music or books as what is known as loss leaders. A loss leader is an item sold at or below the store’s cost in order to attract customers. Of course, internet file-sharing also offers the music product for free. This means that stores like Tower and small indies get squeezed from both sides.

My college friend George heard about the exploit with Xylo and Psycho and the duffle bag and asked me how I reconciled participating, when I didn’t come up with the kinds of excuses some of my unsavory friends did. I told him that I thought it was important to keep my morals straight, to remember that stealing was stealing, so that, when I could afford it, I would not steal out of habit because I would still be able to tell right from wrong. If you are fourteen and limited by parental tastes and you snarf music online, I understand. If you are nineteen and in college and you snarf music online or patronize lame stores for the discounts, I understand. If you are twenty-two and in transition and you snarf music online or patronize lame stores for the discounts, I understand. If you are over twenty-five and gainfully employed and you do those things, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. If you are over twenty-five and not gainfully employed enough to afford one CD and engage in the self-discipline not to require two when you can only afford one, then also fuck you. Grow up and take some responsibility.

I have never stolen a song online because online file-sharing came along after I really was not in a place in my life where that was necessary. I accept that kids will sometimes steal music, but call the thing by its proper name. If you are stealing, fucking know you are stealing. And know that, if you make a habit of it, you have an impact. Don’t tell me you are just one little person and you couldn’t make a difference. I am so sick of hearing how every vote makes a difference from the same people who tell me their thefts impact no one. Almost all of the cool music stores are dead now. Some of the responsibility goes to the giants like Wal-Mart who can manipulate the marketplace, but you get some responsibility too, if you shop there. I have never set foot in a Wal-Mart. Most people can’t have everything they want, but that doesn’t make it okay to steal as a way of life.

Back to the Tower Records caper of yesteryear. When last we left our heroes, I was being pursued romantically (and ironically) by the security guard. The long-haired metal guy security guard chatted me up for quite some time and eventually got me to both give him my phone number and buy the Forced Entry CD. My companion in crime Xylo thought Forced Entry had to be a stupid metal band and was totally furious that I gave the security guard my number. Whether this was out of jealousy or fear of being caught, I do not know. I thought I did a good job protecting everyone. Xylo and Psycho were both later busted by Tower, trying to repeat the heist without my participation. I vaguely think Xylo was working there then and it was Psycho who got busted going through the security gate with still-magnetized product, but whatever. I suppose the specifics don’t matter that much. I could never decide whether the security guard wanted me to buy the Forced Entry CD because he was in the band, because a friend of his was in the band, because he really loved the CD, because he suspected what we were up to and thought it was funny, because he thought his musical taste would impress me, or because he was some kind of sex creep who liked the idea of, you know, Forced Entry.

I kept that Forced Entry CD for many years and only recently sold it to the Amoeba Records in Hollywood, California, where I now make my home. Some pundits are going on about how Amoeba is going to replace Tower Records culturally. Amoeba manages to have big stores which still feel like music stores and they do try to get involved in their local communities, including giving gigs to local bands, and all that is cool. However, they only have three outlets and they are all in California. Hipster pundits in New York are saying the same things about Other Music. Here is the thing though: Between the two of them, those stores have four outlets all together and they have two of the least-visited websites on the internet. The world just got a lot more limited for people outside of New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and other major metropolitan areas.

I mourn Tower’s passing. Tower founder Russ Solomon had some pleasantly upbeat things to say to the Sacramento Bee a while back, when it first became apparent that Tower might be going into a second bankruptcy. He said, “The truth is, I’ve had a great ride. We played too hard, we drank too hard, but we had a lot of fun. It’s been tough for everyone, these last few years, but what’s happened has happened.” On the even brighter side, I believe Tower Japan is a separately incorporated company with multiple robust websites, holdings in modern tech products, and fifty stores of its own, including the largest music store in the world with eight stories of CDs and related goodies. So maybe we can all move to Japan. Except that, due to Japanese laws, they will censor everything with any pubic hair in it. Then again, shaved pussy and offbeat music go together nicely.

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Posted by Amelia G on November 22, 2006. Filed under Blue Blood. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry