Posted on 10/07/2006 1:08:21 AM PDT by Proud_USA_Republican
WILMINGTON, Del. — After a lengthy auction stretching over two days, a federal bankruptcy judge on Friday approved the sale of California-based Tower Records to Great American Group, which plans to liquidate the music retailer.
After almost 30 hours of what attorneys described as "robust" and "vigorous" bidding, Great American won with an offer of $134.3 million, beating Trans World Entertainment, which had hoped to continue operating at least some Tower stores.
Peter Gurfein, an attorney representing Tower Records, said the company will be sold for an aggregate of $150 million, including the sale of various leases and properties.
Gurfein said Great American plans to begin the liquidation process and going out of business sales today, which eventually will result in the elimination of the jobs of some 3,000 Tower employees.
(Excerpt) Read more at seattletimes.nwsource.com ...
Buh-bye Tower Records. Times they are a changing......
Time marches on ...
Who wants to go to Tower Records to have your musical sense insulted by a the clerk, who is invariably a surly teen, emo kid, or a liberal who hasn't bathed in months? That's the kind of staff they've had at Tower Records since before I left LA.
I prefer cutting out the abuse and buying stuff from eBay or the iTunes Music Store.
The fact they haven't made records in 20 years is a pretty good clue your in the wrong business with a name like Tower Records. That, and something called an MP3.
Liquidation Sale?
Free markets punish poor businesses and reward good businesses. Tower has already been replaced by other retailers in the marketplace over they past 10 years. The 3000 jobs, and probably more, have shown up elsewhere in the economy. The auction and dissolution of Tower completes the process and allows successful businesses to redeploy what remains of Tower's assets, including its employees, in the form of new jobs.
But time and technology move on and Tower was probably the last big buggy whip company in the brick and mortar space.
I wondered when this would happen, was never able to come up with a viable model for them after technology changed.
One of the big selling albums of the 1970's had it's album cover's location as in front of Tower Records on Sunset. Name it.
Its a damn shame, Tower was the employer of several good musicians. I remember seeing many of the Gin Blossoms working at the University and Mill branch in Tempe, AZ.
Times are changing.
LOL. Maybe you and I go to the same one. The place is disgusting. Reminds me of a head shop without all of the paraphenalia. It's like a little trip to San Francisco.
Maybe they can get jobs following the Dave Matthews Band around cleaning up band scat.
Mmmmmmm?
Record stores are going the way of the buggy whip, which used to be one of the main hangouts at the mall are going the way of the buggy whip.
The above should be,
Record stores which used to be one of the main hangouts at the mall are going the way of the buggy whip.
Time for me to get some coffee.
I cut Tower out of my budget for the surly clerks, as well as the pro-gay and pro-abortion views of their Pulse publication.
I try to make all my music purchases from spun.com now.
True, and aside from the impact of Ipods & downloading individual songs instead of buying an entire recording.
What role has the "Rap" movement had on CD sales and the disintegration of record stores, nationwide?
There's a connection, but you can bet those responsible would never admit it.
"I prefer cutting out the abuse and buying stuff from eBay or the iTunes Music Store."
Amen to that, though I'm still an "old timer" I guess since I continue purchasing entire recordings.
...& almost always from Amazon.
Wrong. Vinyl records have resurged in the UK and sell great in Japan. New pressings are available here in the US in limited quantities and titles, but they're still around.
The Doors? Strange days?
hmmm Wherehouse is almost nothing, and Rainbow Records is nothing...
well before MP3s
It's by The Sweet. Album "Desolation Boulevard."
I think it's one of the few I saw on 8 track more than album form.
Trivia: There is also a Tower Video store on Sunset where Axl Rose once worked as a night manager in the early 80's. He challenged Vince Neil to a fight in the parking lot in 1990.
I used to buy my laser disks at that store.
The main store on Sunset used to be the place for artists to premier a new release. It's definitely part of music history.
The Gin Blossoms were one of my favorite groups while I was in college, and I really thought they were going to have long careers after releasing a great first album. The follow-up had a considerable drop in quality, and then they faded away. I wonder what the members of the group are doing now.
Sorry Tower records...I can pick up all the tunes I want on the internet...Bye Bye...
The original store on Sunset in LA devolved to that level years ago. I moved to Dallas over a decade ago, and when Tower came here, I decided to visit it to see what it was like.
It was exactly like the Sunset store; the same surly "I'm cooler than you and I'm only doing this until my band makes it big and I don't know anything about any other kinds of music than what I like" clerks, same unwashed liberal "managers", same insanely high prices.
During the 80s, Tower was the place to go to get what you heard on KROW. It was cool. The staff was friendly and knew their stuff. Sometime around 1991, that all went to hell.
Erm, not KROW - should be KROQ. Which has since been ruined by Viacom.
Um, I'm buying entire albums from eBay - as in on CD (to play) and occasionally on vinyl (to display).
Um, one of the founding members (chief songwriter) had an alcohol problem. He was fired (because of it) from the band after 'New Miserable Experience' was recorded and committed suicide shortly thereafter. Turns out that the remaining members started having a lot of disagreements after that and called it quits in 97. That pretty much ended the band; though everyone in GB moved on to other bands.
20 years - Jeez, maybe I shouldn't be surprised when I see that gray in the mirror. Yikes...
My son right now is the age I was when I used to spend so much time listening to "The Beatles - Magical Mystery Tour" album.
I actually turned my kids on to the Beatles to introduce them to rock music. Now they believe that is the standard. They won't listen to my other stuff like "Van Halen" or "Led Zeppelin".
Gives me a smile to think that they love the same music I used to love so much.
And it's still miles above what the labels want to shove down one's throat.
Interesting.
Vinyl to "display", bet there's an interesting tale behind that.
...amazing what people are up to. ;^)
There sure is that effect. As an old teenage radio hobbyist, I was hit with nostalgia and for the first time in decades, was looking up vacuum tubes.
I could not believe what I was reading, regarding audiophile reviews of the "tones" of different makes of audio amp tubes.
A perfect amplifier does nothing to the original waveform. It sounded like reviews of Yuppie bottled water.
Likewise, the physics of a needle-and-transducer on a mechanical record groove is one explanation of what happened to vinyl records.
Established technologies are not discarded for no reason.
Oh...and the PRICE!
You can play vinyl X times before you do damage to that $1000 needle...
Sad to see them go. I worked in a record store in downtown Buffalo to earn my way through school. Met a lot of famous people who were passing time in the store. Also learned that I knew nothing about music compared to some of our customers. Amazing command of facts, they had.
Mall stores are an expensive venue for any retailer. It's no surprise Tower had difficulty staying alive.
What would album art be without Roger Dean?
Silly me, of course they would.
Been seeing more & more cafe's, bars & coffee houses displaying the old albums *for* their art value.
My all-time favorite stuff was done by an underground outfit from the late 60s who called themselves, Globe Propaganda.
A great example of GP's work is the album cover for "It's A Beautiful Day".
Looking at the cover art on old Quicksilver Messenger Service & Marshall Tucker Band albums one sees a similar style leading me to suspect GP did those, also.
Beautiful stuff & "Classic" art in every sense of the word.
...& quite all-American. ;^)
I knew one of them had committed suicide. I remember seeing a short article online sometime in either 2000 or 2001 saying the rest of the group were going to re-unite, but I guess that went nowhere.
Vinyl records are stil availble. I have bought many new releases lately, and you can also get expensive reissues on 180-gram vinyl.
They still press vinyl today, but it is for audiophiles... and you would not believe what some will pay for that form of recording!
LLS
People who still run the catridge/stylus signal into a separate all-tube pre-amp and power amp equalizer component rig en route to a set of massive, room-hogging Klipschorns?
Analog nirvana.
It should be an easier job. I understand the band bus has acquired a Nordon bomb sight.
LOL! That was my first thought when I read the article.
Perhaps in the sense that the distortion adds an element to the sound the way a tube audio amplifier does.
They obvious haven't listened to a properly-mastered HDCD-format Compact Disc, SACD or DVD-Audio disc. SACD have excellent sound quality because by drastically increasing the sampling rate for the audio, which eliminates the harsh-sound treble of Compact Discs (you have to hear cymbals or violins mastered on an SACD--they are phenomenally clear).
But getting back on topic, the fall of the Tower chain is a combination of the rise of book superstores like Barnes & Noble and Borders Books (who could buy books at much lower prices than Tower could), big-box retail chains like Best Buy and Wal-Mart (who could buy CD's and DVD's at much lower prices than Tower could), and the dramatic rise in Internet sales through Amazon.com, Buy.com and several others. I'm going to miss the Tower stores on Watt and El Camino and downtown on Broadway and 16th. 
Who could forget the Bone Daddies, an LA bar band that almost made it big.
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