Tower Records -- the continuing collapse

I wish I had more money.

and yeah, that tower has tons of six degrees stuff too. i'm waiting to get bebel gilberto for xtra cheap.

It is rather depressing.

I still instinctively think of the Virgin Megastore at Piccadilly Circus as Tower Records.

Even though I seldom purchase items from there.

if the rap is 70% off right now will dance be 70% off next week? they are going to take a beating on the dance imports!

Must be! (I say this based on other specials they've been running.) But there's an easy way to check -- I'll swing by tonight and see.

Tower.com was sold separately in the bankruptcy auction and is still running (mostly) normally, so there won't be any liquidation clearances there. You'll get normal holiday sales, though.

(Full disclosure: I still work for Tower.com)

They had some ComSat Angels import re-issues that were similarly priced but for single disks, so I didn't succumb. How is their BBC sessions disk?

70 bucks or so; pretty happy.

x-post: Ya damn right!

That's for sure.

http://iranzoo.tripod.com/Golden-Jackal/jackal-3.jpg

http://www.patria.org/pdp/ORDER/RA/JACKAL.JPG

and I came away with nothing, it was too distracting. I'm going back over the weekend I think.

I made away with:

Comus - Song to Comus (import with everything the band ever recorded on two CDs - only worked out to be $13, which is a steal)
Flux of Pink Indians - Strive to Survive/Neu Smell
Daughters - Hell Songs
Agent Orange - Living in Darkness
Trae - Restless
JFA - We Know You Suck
Black Halos - Alive Without Control
Black Lips - Let it Bloom
Hellacopters - Payin' the Dues
Dwarves - The Dwarves are Young and Good Looking
The Frogs - Bananimals

Best stack I've come away with in months.

Anyone know what the chances of the sale going to 50 or 60% are?

I've noticed a bit of that too, my guess is things were just coming out of storage or something...

Sounds like it's happened at individual stores already, based on the comment about the Pasadena Tower -- probably they're just judging how quickly stuff moves.

uh, wow.

Jazz very picked over but I got Vijay Iyer - Raw Materials and the Subjazz Proxy disk (there were still at least 20 copies of this one).

Dance still had a couple hundred, and I got the Optimo Psyche Out, Karsh Kale, and a Zuco 103. They had one of the Lindstrom & Prins Thomas disks that I bought at 80% off, so I put it in front and it was gone by the time I left. Forgot to check for Ellen Allien, who had half a dozen there Monday. Found a Dizzee Rascal "Off 2 Work" in the singles, and in the main Rock/Pop got the Sadies, Walkmen, Vacation, John Cooper Clarke, Peter Perret EP, Mice Parade EP, Bailter Space, John Greaves, and finally Malcolm Mooney from 1998 with "Father Cannot Yell" on it. Never knew he did anything after Can, but it's worth $1.70 to check out. Also noticed one last Matt Friedberger, which I had bought at 60% off last week.

my favorite/strangest find was the alan braxe and fred falke cd single for "rubicon" with sticker for $2.

Absentee - Schmotime
Lewis Taylor
Tangiers - Never Bring You Pleasure
Ladyfuzz - Kerfuffle
The Automatic - Not Accepted Anywhere

Gifts:
The Associates - Fourth Drawer Down
My Computer - No CV
Girls Aloud - Chemistry
The Passage - For All and None
Wildhearts Must Be Destroyed!
Syd Matters

Bye bye Tower.

boris - pink
mclusky - the only difference between you and me is i'm on fire
loren mazzacane connors - sails

the rest over the past couple weeks, most 70% off, some 80%:

isolee - 'western store' and 'wearemonster'
luciano - 'sci fi hi fi'
erase errata - 'night life'
meat purveyors - 'someday soon things will be much worse!'
a pair of studio one comps
a certain ratio - 'i'd like to see you again'
wolf parade - 'apologies to the queen mary'
larry young - into somethin'
the knife - silent shout (2 copies)
kylie minogue - impossible pricess (2 disc import)
luomo - the present lover
esg - a south bronx story
wolf eyes - human animal
comets on fire - avatar
carla bozulich - evangelista
gwen mccrae (a 2 albums on one CD import)
arizona amp and alternator - s/t
nao wave: brazil post punk 1982-1988 (2 copies)
the free design - kites are fun & one by one
islands - return to the sea
neko case - the tigers have spoken
black heart procession - the spell
moodymann - black mahogani
detroit cobras - baby
annie - anniemal
black strobe - the other side: paris
mountain goats - we shall all be healed
architecture in helsinki - in case we die
excepter - sunbomber
echo and the bunnymen - songs to learn and sing
jolie holland - springtime can kill you
the hold steady - boys and girls in america
booka shade - 'movements' and 'memento'
tim hecker - 'mirage'
saint etienne - 'songs for mario's cafe'
fiery furnaces - 'bitter tea'
wayne shorter - 'speak no evil'
andrew hill - 'pax'
nina nastasia - 'the blackened air'
burial - s/t
uusitalo - 'tulenkantaja'
colder - 'heat'
the dresden dolls - 'yes, virginia'
the handsome family - 'milk and scissors'

Is Friday the last for West 66th NYC store as well as West 4th? I'm thinking something salvageable might be uptown.

I got:

ICP Orchestra - Oh, My Dog
Vitalic - OK Cowboy
The Juan Maclean - Give Me Every Little Thing
Erase Errata - At Crystal Palace
Justus Kohncke - Was Ist Musik
Nervous Cop - s/t
Luomo - The Present Lover
Susumu Yokota - Cat, Mouse And Me
Systems Officer - Systems Officer
Lisa Papineau - Night Moves
Henry Flynt - Raga Electric
Rosalia De Souza - Garota Moderna

Holy fucking shit, they got an orchestra?

I had a pretty nice coda to all this today when I hit the Amoeba in SF and scrounged through their bargain bins after selling back some stuff:

Currituck Co. -- Ghost Man on First
Tsunami -- Deep End
Craig Wedren -- Lapland
Azita -- Life on the Fly
rhBand -- Third Order Parasitism
A-Frames -- Black Forest
Michael J. Sheehy -- No Longer My Concern
UiLad -- Fires
Clearlake -- Cedars
Books on Tape -- The Business End
The Dead Texan -- s/t
Frausdots -- Couture, Couture, Couture
The Delta Waves -- Dream in Real Time
Urinals -- What is Real and What is Not
Magnapop -- Hot Boxing
Jale -- Dreamcake
Bright -- s/t

Plus two Tower Recordings spinoffs:
P.G. Six -- Parlor Tricks and Porch Favorites
Samara Lubelski -- Spectacular of Passages

...all for $13. So it felt like a bit of the Tower luck was carrying over. ;-)

Holy fucking shit, they got an orchestra?

indeed. it's truly the cream of the juggalo crop.

"When I was younger, Tower was the place," Kenney said. "I don't download, or do any shopping on the Internet. I like to experiment when I shop, and pick up a CD and hold it in my hand before I buy it. I'm more old-fashioned that way."

http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/entertainment/16294886.htm

VINYL RECORDS TO GO THE WAY OF THE DODO! NO MORE VINYL RECORDS!

Anyway things I will miss about Tower:

1) Buying Riddim magazine. Now I have to find a Barnes & Noble who stocks it or buy it from VP's record wing.

2) The Market stores fantastic bargain bin which was a treasure trove for imports (esp. Soul Jazz stuff.)

I went over to the Tower in Santa Monica the Thursday night before they closed to see if they had anything decent at the 70% off discount. Not only did they have decent stuff, they had a lot of great metal CDs that nobody else was getting because they had never heard of the bands. After much agonizing, I trimmed my purchase down to about $60 worth of stuff. I brought it up to the front counter, and the guy scanned a couple things in and told me that the total was $27. I blinked. He asked me if I had anything else that I put aside, and I nodded quickly and rushed over to where I had left the discard pile. I brought that up front, he scanned the top CD, and gave me about $100 (after the 70% discount) worth of merchandise for $32.50. Since he was losing his job in two days anyway, and any profit was going to the liquidation company that purchased Tower, he had no real reason to care. What were they going to do, fire him? Hell, they cost him his job.

I went back on Sunday morning, since the store was closing and had everything at 90% off, and ended up getting another 27 CDs for $40. I called my friends to let them know, but just as they walked through the door, the guy up front announced that the store was closing and everyone needed to check out. Bummer for them.

My haul, all for a total of about $100 (including a couple CDs that I had purchased at the store earlier for a lesser discount), all brand-new and unopened:

April Wine - Stand Back
Ayreon - Actual Fantasy Revisited
Blackfoot - Strikes
Candlemass - Essential Doom
Candlemass - Doomed for Live
Cathedral - the Garden of Unearthly Delights
Craft -Fuck the Universe
Cronian- Terra
Darkest Hour - Undoing Ruin
Daylight Dies - Dismantling Devotion
Dead Meadow - Shimmering King and Others
ElDopa - The Complete Recordings
Ephel Duath - Pain Necessary to Know
Fandango - Fandango
the Flaming Lips - at War with the Mystics
Genghis Tron - Dead Mountain Mouth
Guano Apes - Don't Give Me Names
Herod - Rich Man's War... Poor Man's Fight
Home Video - No Certain Night or Morning
Kalas - Kalas
Lennon- Damaged Goods
Lullacry - Volume 4
Merzbow - Rainbow Electronics
the Mission - Children
Motorhead - Ace of Spades
My Ruin - The Brutal Language
The Obsessed - Lunar Womb (Reissue)
Passenger- Passenger
Pentagram - First Daze Here Too
Planes Mistaken for Stars - Knife in the Marathon
Point-Blank - Point-Blank
Brian Posehn - Live in: Nerd Rage
Raunchy - Death Pop Romance
Rebel Meets Rebel - Rebel Meets Rebel
Red Sparowes - Every Red Heart Shines Toward the Red Sun
Red Sparowes/Battle of Mice/Made Out Of Babies - Triad
Rumpelstiltskin Grinder- Buried in the Front Yard
Samhain - Final Descent
Satyricon - Dark Medieval Times
Satyricon - Rebel Extravaganza
Scar Symmetry - Pitch Black Progress
Suffocation - Suffocation
The Sword - Age of Winters
the Start - Initiation
Thunder - Thunder
Tito and Tarantula - Hungry Sally and Other Killer Lullabies
Voivod - Katorz
Warrior Soul - Drugs, God, and the new Republic
Witch - Witch
Wizardzz - Hidden City of Tourmond
Yob - the Unreal Never Lived
Yyrkoon - Occult Medicine
Zoroaster - Zoroaster

Yeah, I was a similar beneficiary on what turned out to be my last day in this respect. I wasn't complaining.

Warrior Soul - Drugs, God, and the new Republic

Really, the only great thing on this album is the cover of Joy Division's "Interzone" with the howled "And we rock and ROOOOOOLLLLL!" bit at the very start. Completely ridiculous. That said I admit I can still hum the chorus of the title song after all these years.

I was down in the area of the Costa Mesa Tower today doing some other errands -- no change on the outside of the building or anything yet, just looked forlorn.

they closed the miami virgin sometime last spring, and now the space has got that dreadful 'bodies' exhibit from china. ha!

haha. i would. plus i'd be sure to emphasize AMERICA when i said their name.

Maura - Appreciate the offer, but I need that Warrior Soul CD to keep my copy of WCA's "Climbin' the Walls" company.

Someone should really start a "Warrior Soul/Wrath Child America Appreciation Thread."