Tower Records

[Big Beat Steve]

On 24.2.2020 at 8:23 AM, sidewinder said:

I used to regularly shop at the Tower in Piccadilly Circus, London, the one with the elevator up from the Underground. Best place for Japanese imports in the UK from 1990s onwards. 

I used to go there a couple of times during my visits to London throughout the 90s too but was sort of unimpressed/disappointed. It may have been a good place for Japanese imports (which were out of my monetary range for the most part anyway) but I found them rather weak in what they stocked (or, rather, did not) outside the major labels. Even in the first half of the 90s when vinyl was still around their range of smaller collector's labels (of which the UK abounded) covering jazz styles OLDER than hard bop wasn't that impressive, at least for my tastes. And strangely enough items on Charly, Ace, Affinity etc. often were more expensive than at specialist shops up in Camden Town or at Mole Jazz.

Edited March 2, 2020 by Big Beat Steve

[BeBop]

20 hours ago, BillF said:

Where was Tower in Colombia? Bogotá? (I'm interested as there is a Colombian in my family.)

My recorded GPS waypoint shows it in the Andino Shopping Center, Bogotá.  I'm pretty sure this location closed, along with the other "survivors" I visited in Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines and (recently) Hong Kong.  The only open locations I have seen lately have been in Japan (Kansai, Tokyo).

[Steve Reynolds]

I bought a whole slew of the last generation of the hat ART CD’s @ Tower in Paramus, NJ including Jump Up, Morning Joy, The Marmalade King & Special Detail 

probably 1996-7 or so just as Jazz Central Station was starting 

recordings that changed my musical life 

[Late]

27 minutes ago, Steve Reynolds said:

I bought a whole slew of the last generation of hat ART CD’s @ Tower in Paramus, NJ ... recordings that changed my musical life.

I really liked that series — when they were in jewel cases and with red spines. Often the booklets had more information than when hat switched over to paper sleeves — particularly with Lacy titles and Franz Koglmann titles. And of course a fair number hatART titles never made it into the hatOLOGY series.

Oddly, in my own Tower experience, I never saw hatART titles for sale. I found most of mine at Amoeba or through special order.

[Brad]

There used to be a record store with branches in East Hanover and Wayne, NJ that always had the latest releases.  When I first became in Jazz it was a godsend; it always had the latest RVGs, Connoisseurs and OJCs.  My first listen of Moanin' came from there. I'd buy everything they had. Unfortunately, like many record stores, they didn't last. Can't remember their name but they made a big difference in my Jazz listening. 

[Dmitry]

On 2/25/2020 at 11:44 PM, Captain Howdy said:

Documentary about Tower Records made a few years ago: 

 

Today, wife and me watched All Things Must Pass , the Tower documentary. Thank you for the heads-up. My kids were so bored that they watched the whole thing with us. Russ Solomon made us a family for 90 minutes.
I really liked it, but I do have a couple of questions regarding the making of the company into what it was at its peak.

Solomon owned the one record store for 8 years, when he opened the second one, this one became the world-famous location on Sunset Blvd. I didn't understand, from relying on the information from the film alone, how he went from 2 stores to 200, and a billion in gross sales in its pinnacle. It's a big difference. The film-maker almost made it so a group of California stoners got this operation going to the top.  

Anyhow, watching it was absolutely time well spent, and made me remember things from my past in the Tower Records, which was 15-20 years back. I'll add more later.

 

[Dmitry]

On 2/25/2020 at 7:42 AM, 7/4 said:

It was called Other Music.

Indeed.

This documentary on the store was just released a couple of weeks ago.

https://www.amazon.com/Other-Music-Tunde-Adebimpe/dp/B08DXNQNB1/ref=sr_1_1?crid=38N66SXGKJ65C&dchild=1&keywords=other+music+record+store+documentary&qid=1607831561&sprefix=other+music+%2Caps%2C171&sr=8-1

I haven't watched it, but will do so tomorrow.

It was an interesting place, which I never grew to love, because my musical tastes were elsewhere. I did go there a couple of times over the years, and bought some cds and records by Kenny Millions, Burton Greene, Curtis Clark, Sonny Simmons, John Lindberg, Baikida Carroll; this is the type of jazz they carried. Still, it's disconcerting that even in New York a store that caters to esoteric, avantgarde, and various other non-mainstream music doesn't have the vitality to exist. This is supposed to be the capital of the world. Or maybe our world is so that its capital doesn't feel the need for this any longer.

It was a great location for them, right across the street from the best, coolest record store in the city - Tower on East 4th street, between Broadway and Lafayette. Once TOWER folded in 2006, they were most probably affected by the major loss to foot traffic, some of which spilled into the Other Music. I'm sure it'll be discussed in the documentary.

Next door to the Other Music was a small hi-fi shop, In Living Stereo, with interesting tube amplifiers and headphones in the window. The closure of Tower, literally feet away, must've been a shock, but not a death blow to them as well. I see that they've moved on to another location.

Late 90s-mid-2000s was still a very interesting time to live in New York City, and Tower was a part of it. It satisfied an urge..one or two of them.