I was thinking about those (the Ethiopiques) today. I think I forgot to look for them. I’m still waiting for stuff to drop to 50%. The Tower on Broad Street in Philadelphia seems to be dying a remarkably slow death.

found a cd of rorem songs that i’d tried to order from amazon three years ago (they ended up cancelling the order because they couldn’t get the product)... there were like 10 copies of it! crazy! i need to go back sometime soon, though cause the night i was there i couldn’t remember any of the cds i was supposed to buy.

If anyone wants to pick up a bunch of CDs on the Six Degrees label (which covers a lot of Brazilian electronic stuff, but “world music” (gag gag at the term, yes, I know) in general), I would say stop by Tower in Philadelphia in about two weeks, when there should still be a lot of them left, but at pretty good prices. They seem to have cases of that stuff.

store in lower queen anne in seattle:

all cds 40%

all rap cds 70%

today only take an additional 20% off all rock/pop.

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.

my friend’s company bought all of tower’s product and is liquidating it. they’re supposed to make 10 mil

went a couple weeks ago, still 40%(of $18.99+) for the most part but I did score Outkast’s Idlewild for $7.00. Also got a Jim Reeves two album import. The dance selection is wack, the country selection is wack, those are my recent obsessions so I couldn’t muster much energy to sift through the rest with the prices still so high.

i got the rhino soul box

does that mean all of the bay area tower’s are empty?

No online sales then?

In Battersea there is a pizza takeaway shop named Tower Of Pizza and they have designed the sign with exactly the same colour scheme and lettering font as Tower Records of old.

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.

I wonder in there, wonder why the magazine selection isn’t as radical as it used to be, then remember it’s not Tower anymore.

Ok, I think it’s time for me to make a trip to the Broadway store.

Me wonders is this worth a road trip to Boston?

probably not at this point; unless you feel like rounding out your collection with easy finds

i spent $88.88 at tower today. it was 40%+20% more for rock/pop.

Whadja get?

so does that mean that rock/pop is at 40% or 48% original price?

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!

Vahid — it means rock/pop is now 60% off total.

actually, no, ned. at least in seattle, it’s 40% off plus an additional 20% after the initial 40% is taken off, which works out to 48% off the original price. maybe your tower is different though?

Or maybe Ned’s SAT scores were V790 M200?

maybe your tower is different though?

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.

No online sales then?

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’re selling MIDI keyboards for cheap in Dublin. Not the music though. I’d say that the store is just a franchise rather than owned outright by Tower so no great hopes for cheap CDs or similar in future :(

Okay, so indeed 20% off the 40% off, not 60% total. This is not to say that some deals weren’t found.

The Pasadena store was doing the full 60% off. The stock didn’t look much different than when I was there Friday, so they don’t seem to be selling a whole lot. Didn’t have time to browse but I got Kevin Ayers’ Island years disks (3 LPs on 2 CDs) for $10.39 (tagged $25.99—import).

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?

I grabbed a bunch today.

Dexter Gordon, One Flight Up

Gil Evans, Out of the Cool

The Everly Brothers Sing Great Country Hits

Hot Chocolate, Every 1’s a Winner/Very Best Of

Double Exposure, My Love is Free/Best Of

Salt-n-Pepa, Hot, Cool & Vicious

Kid Creole and the Coconuts, Fresh Fruit and Wise Guy

70 bucks or so; pretty happy.

I bought 29–30 rap cds which I’m not going to take the liberty of listing for about 160 at the Seattle Tower today.

Oh crap, I just realized I’ve been posting my full name and unfuckedwith email. Oh well.

x-post: Ya damn right!

I’m just playing Rodney. If I was near a Tower I’d be filling my boots too.

Ya damn right!

That’s for sure.

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

One mo’ gain.

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

Meh.

Tripod will probably block this, but here goes:

Thank you, for helping me express my scavengerness.

And now it’s blocked.

Shoulda gone with this one anyway:

I somehow missed that one. I’m not sure how. I think I must have been too enraptured by the snarl to keep looking.

In the meantime, any new sales changes today?

I went to the Tower in NYC on Broadway yesterday and found it looking worse than a K-Mart after a cabbage patch kid black-Friday tornado. I actually saw a girl get crushed in the rotating doors by someone who, I suppose, was running to take advantage of the savings.

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

When I went in yesterday I noticed that my Tower had oddly restocked since the last time I had been in there...nothing new (in terms of release date), but lots of things that weren’t on the shelves the time I had been there before.

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?

my Tower had oddly restocked since the last time I had been in there

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

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

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.

If you see new stock in your stores, it came from either the dregs of the warehouse or other already-closed stores.

I admit I wouldn’t think of the Kirsty MacColl box set as the dregs, but noted, noted...

No effect still in Dublin place. Bought the keyboard though so yay me!

I’m pretty sure it’s only American stores.

Yeah, all international stores are franchises and have no ties to Tower Records in the US outside of the brand license. The bankruptcy and liquidation should not affect them at all.

The Pasadena 60% may have been just yesterday, I drove by it on the way to work today to check for the extra 20% sign but didn’t see it. I may have missed it, though.

I also noticed restocking, included large quantities of certain disks (The Real Tuesday Weld being one such band). And I’m sure those ComSat Angels weren’t there when I went over a week ago.

(xxpost) :(

i got lots of good stuff at the hmv in philly when it closed. i was so happy to see that place go. what a sucky store. when it opened i was actually kinda happy cuz they were selling tons of 99 cent cut-out vinyl and i got lots of 80’s metal and punk/artpunk stuff. i think it was all old carolinedistribution overstock. but after that they could go to hell.

got lots of great stuff at the blockbuster closing sale on south street too. they just kept backing up trucks to the door and unloading old videos. last day was like 99.9 percent off or something. but by then you only had tai bo and benny hill comps left.

as far as the tower on south street, ugh, they should have nuked it years ago. it was a black hole for years. so gross and bad. not at all what it was like when it opened. it just deteriorated more and more as time went on. the one that opened on broad was was a little better. just cuz it was new and all. still pretty lame though. magazine section was halfway decent.

I have never lived less than an hour away from a Tower Records (there’s only one in Maryland, in Rockville), and that never bothered me until now.

I used the 70% off on hip hop yesterday. It was heavily picked through, but still a slew of things I wanted in there (including grime imports that I never would have bought at list price.)

there isn’t one in D.C. proper, is there? (goin next week)

I went to the Tower in NYC on Broadway yesterday

I went last Saturday and got some good stuff .... couldn’t find any rap albums I wanted for the 70% discount though. picked up some dance imports and two older Oneida CDs.

the imports aren’t that great of a deal yet, the 40% off knocks them down to the price of a regular CD at Best Buy ($12 or so).

apparently there is one in D.C., but I’ve never been.

The stock at both the Lincoln Center and W.4th NYC locations is pretty thin, save for dance imports most of which aren’t yet cheap enough to fuck with.

For $30 I picked up:

Schoolly D-A Gangster’s Story

Oneida-A Place Called El Shaddai’s

Ice Cube-Greatest Hits

No Limit Greatest Hits

All CDs now at least 50% off, Hip Hop still 70% off, DVDs still 40% off. I didn’t buy anything today, I think I’ll wait for the next bump.

Hit up the Stonestown store tonight and picked up Ethiopiques 5 and 9 (passed on 11 and 21) for 50% off and grabbed the last Lil Kim album and Ridin Dirty for 70% off.

i’m glad my tower is the only one on earth that has never had an ethiopiques for sale.

i found a copy of the project: mersh ep by the minutemen at the 4th and broadway tower a few days ago. it was so picked over though, it was unreal. i also saw a copy of the 1st ghost album, but decided not to go for it. was this a crazy decision?

there isn’t one in D.C. proper, is there? (goin next week)

— Dr M (wjwe...), November 30th, 2006. (Dr Morbius)

its part of a stripmall type thing near the Georgetown/Foggy Bottom metro stop

was this a crazy decision?

yes.

Quite. (If the baseline is now 50% flat out, my advice is do not hesitate if there’s only one copy of something interesting.)

damn. maybe i’ll see if its still there tomorrow.

The DC Tower, near a Metro station and GW, has always had a better and bigger selection than the suburban Virginia stores. But when I tried to get some Brazilian stuff at the DC store, their previously large selection was alreaded picked clean.

I made the sad trek to the Carle Place NY store. CDs are now 50% off or more. On the one hand, I could’ve held all the remaining reggae CDs in two arms. On the other, a few artists with some rep still had easily findable stuff: Al Green, Cassandra Wilson, the Fiery Furnaces, DJ Shadow, Radiohead, Blur, Coldplay, and uh the Coach Whips if they count.

What I ended up getting: Various Artists, The House That TRANE Built: The Story of Impulse Records; Leonard Cohen, Songs of Leonard Cohen; Teena Marie, Love Songs; Terry Allen, Lubbock (On Everything); The Avalanches, When I Met You (a.k.a. the Gimix set. WTF?). In total, about $58,

What I ended up not getting: The Music of Islam, Vol. 13; Amadou & Mariam, Dimanche à Bamako ; Charles Mingus, Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus; The Go! Team, Thunder, Lightning Strike; Lee Morgan, The Sidewinder; Patty Waters, College Tour; The Rapture, Pieces of the People We Love; Gavin Bryars et al., On Photography; Richie Valens, In Concert at Pacoima Jr. High; a DVD documentary on William Eggleston; a four-hour Colt Studio porno based on Brokeback Mountain (nb: I have never bought/rented/borrowed/stolen a porn video in my life, seriously); and some few others by the artists listed in the first para above.

Waah.

thanks for convincing me to go back and get that ghost album. it is great. got that and the new television personalities for 15 bucks total. my mind is still going back and forth about the tv personalities album. i’ll give it another listen tomorrow.

If the rock ever gets up to 70% then I’m going to wipe Tower clean. I saw so many things that I wouldn’t buy for 50% off, but at 70% I’d snap up without even thinking.

Kind of weird how that few dollars makes that much of a difference. But then again I’m a poor college student.

Yeah well it’s not a few dollars when you are buying 10–20 CDs is it haha.

the lincoln center tower is selling all hip hop for $3.

all hip hop is %70 off in Pasadena, everything else at least %50 off. Needless to say there’s no hip hop there worth buying. Picked up Tom T. Hall’s Essential collection and a Dwight Trible cd for myself and the Larry Levan comp for my sister. Lots of dance imports but they were like $28.00 to begin with so I’ll wait for %60 or %70, I’m tapped out right now anyway.

70%, 50%, 60%, and 70% respectively, i’m buggin.

I’m going to kick myself for not going to Memphis when I had the chance.

I wonder if the flood of available product is going to depress Amazon Marketplace prices even more.

Depends what people are looking for. (I’ll say this much — the sale’s been a blessing for me finally scooping up a slew of jazz and classical stuff for cheap.)

went to the one in emeryville today, and found:

went to tower in emeryville today, 50% off. there was a surprising

amount of good stuff.

i bought:

juana molina: son (last copy)

new mojave three

nouvelle vague: new one

liars: drums not dead

the knife: silent shout

mccartney: s/t and ram

gravenhurst: some ep

thee more shallows: more deep cuts

$77.

there are a number of electronic things I’ll go back and buy if they’re still there and the prices drop as well

i hit the pasadena tower today — it was pretty damn picked over already, but i found a few things, mostly imports. i was feeling trigger-happy, so the total bill including tax was $151.08. once i sell my textbooks back, i should be able to recover a good bit of that.

the big takeover issue 58 (59 cents!)

kogan’s book

lansing-dreiden the dividing island

trembling blue stars her handwriting reissue

primitives buzz buzz buzz: the complete lazy recordings

the fall middle class revolt and perverted by language expanded editions

starz coliseum rock

jamc automatic reissue

kate & anna mcgarrigle heartbeats accelerating

skeeter davis all american country

space needle recordings 1994–1997

babyshambles down in albion (yeah yeah, i know)

free design one by one and there is a song

ethiopiques 12 and 21

u got skills, I specifically looked for ethiopiques, guess I’m just impatient.

Mr. Jaq made a second run on the lower QA store today. He’ll have to list what he found, tons of CDs from the sound of it including some he’d been looking for, but I was not paying close enough attention. BUT! He got me a copy of Vernor Vinge’s Rainbows End. This book’s apparently not as excellent as Fire Upon Deep or Deepness in the Sky (two of my all-time hard sci fi favorites), but I’m glad he found it.

Is there any word, any idea, any rumor as to which Tower location will be the last to close (in America)?

hey la people the topanga cyn tower still is kick ass and ripe for the pickin!

And all CDs are now 60% off. Picked up the following over lunch:

Studio One Lovers

Sound Dimension Jamaica Soul Shake Vol 1

King Jammy in Roots

Bunny Wailer Black Hearted Man

Sizzla Da Real Thing

Lee Perry Presents African Roots

And all CDs are now 60% off.

! Maybe they *are* planning on nuking everything before Xmas. V. glad I was going to swing by again today.

YOU PEOPLE ARE VULTURES

Haha yes, yes we are.

Oh hell yes.

“Absolutely Fucking Amazing Amazon Tower Sale (US Posters Only)”

Maybe that Wall Street Journal douche will show up and berate people for taking advantage of poor Tower.

And all CDs are now 60% off.

Damn! I went to the Tustin store yesterday. Ethiopiques, Al Green, Fairport Convention, Thomas Mapfumo, Leo Kottke, Solomon Burke, etc. etc.

Ethiopiques still at the Tustin store? Hmm, noted.

What Ethiopiques are you still missing, Ned?

4, 8 and everything from 12 on.

Ooh 4 and 8 are both great.

So I’ve heard.

I picked up 12, 15, 16. Did not see 4 or 8, things are all over the place in there. Very strange things were buried in the latin section. I’m trying to decide if I’ll be able to get back over there Sat. am after shift is over at 6 and I have dropped co-worker off at John Wayne around 8. This may be a possibility.

Indeed? Hmm, he said. Check your e-mail.

YOU PEOPLE ARE VULTURES

WELL THIS CRAP AIN’T GONNA BUY ITSELF

“Maybe that Wall Street Journal douche will show up and berate people for taking advantage of poor Tower.”

What poor Tower? We are taking advantage of an evil liquidation company! Who could possibly argue against that?

And we aren’t really even taking advantage of them, because I am sure that however this works out they are making money hand over fist.

I just called the Portland store to see about today’s hours and was told “they are closing right now”. oh well, I guess my plundering days are over...

WHO STOLE MY OHM BOX

FESS UP

NOT ME.

Swung by mine an hour back and it had already closed, full stop. I took it as an omen, got some tea and a muffin and caught the next bus home a few minutes later. It was a good run, though — thank you, Costa Mesa, for having thoroughly terrible taste in music for the most part.

I swung by one of my local stores after work. With two days left, everything was two bucks or less and I kind of went on a rampage, somehow ending up with 40 discs, including the initial pressing of Midlake’s Bamnan and Slvercork, which, for some reason, is selling for $64 used on Amazon Marketplace. Anyone know why?

Probably because they spelled the title correctly.

This Nao Wave is certainly interesting, but a little more post-punk and less distinctively Brazilian than I had hoped for, and I just don’t get why post-punk is so well loved. Of all the types of music I’ve listened to, it’s one of the ones that has aged the least well for me.

xxxp: i didn’t do it, vahid, i don’t even know where you are.

and RIP tower cherry hill, NJ forever. you won’t be missed much except the past couple of months of spectacular bargains. and amusing stashes of black metal CDs in the hip-hop and dance sections.

I just don’t get why post-punk is so well loved

The coldness. I adore it.

Try ice-cubes!

WHO STOLE MY OHM BOX

FESS UP

— vahid (vfoz...), December 20th, 2006. (vahid)

why did you ?uestion buying it in the first place? u got snaked fair and square!!!11

Warning: evidence of my insanity below. Yes this is ridiculous, yes I spent too much, YES I KNOW THAT. Leave me alone.

Okay, here is the full accounting (aside from a slew of gift discs I picked up which I obviously would rather not list here!) of everything I got over the past few weeks, sorted by markdown. (I really don’t want to total the full price, though I’m still kinda amazed that through writing pay and regular salary, plus a healthy sell back of stuff to Amoeba that I wasn’t listening to any more, that I much covered most of this pretty readily — and whatever I ended up charging will be covered soon enough thanks to Xmas.)

40/50%:

Prodigy, Experience: Expanded

Go-Betweens, Spring Hill Fair, Liberty Belle, Send Me a Lullaby, Before Hollywood (double disc versions)

Idol Tryouts Two (Ghostly double-disc comp from this year)

SIANspheric, RGB (CD/DVD overview), The Sound of the Colour of the Sun

Love and Rockets, Sorted! DVD comp

We Jam Econo: The Story of the Minutemen DVD

Mixed With Love: The Walter Gibbons Salsoul Anthology

Vic Godard and Subway Sect, Singles Anthology

Gwen McRae, The Best Of

Bill Withers, Live at Carnegie Hall — had been meaning to get this for a long while and I ended up getting it for $5!

Cee-Lo Green, ...Is the Soul Machine

Ghostface, Fishscale

The Nomi Song DVD

Neurosis, A Sun That Never Sets DVD

Caribou, Start Breaking My Heart (some two disc early stuff comp for hypercheap, so why not?)

Sonic Youth, the 2006 reissue of the first EP with bonus hoohah

Sweet, Sweet Fanny Adams — reissue from two years back

June Carter Cash, Keep On the Sunny Side (two disc career spanner; looks like a good sampler all around)

Devotchka, Curse Your Little Heart (interesting looking EP — has a cover of Siouxsie’s “Last Beat of My Heart” on it, which is what sold me)

Mahler’s 6th, the Bernstein/NY Philharmonic Columbia recording from the late sixties

Ornette Coleman, At the Golden Circle, Volume 2 — got volume 1 a couple of years back so this was nice.

The Wild Swans, Incandescent — two CD comp of all their early eighties stuff

Eluvium, Talk Amongst the Trees

Felt, Crumbling the Antiseptic Beauty, The Splendour of Fear, Let the Snakes Crinkle Their Heads to Death

Explosions in the Sky, s/t debut reissue

Jesu, s/t

The Gathering, Accessories

Ethiopiques: 1–3, 5–7, 9–11

Beethoven symphonies:

3rd — Giulini/LA Philharmonic from 1979 on Deutsche Grammaphon

4th/6th — Masur/Gewandhausorchester Leipzig on Universal (budget rerelease but hey, it was cheap and there)

9th — Furtwangler/Bayreuther Festspiele (Schwarzkopf on soprano) from 1951 on EMI

Mahler symphonies:

2nd — Rattle/Birmingham Orchestra from 1987 on EMI

4th/Das Lied von Der Erde — Kletzki/Philharmonia Orchestra from 1959 on EMI

5th — Barbirolli/New Philharmonia Orchestra from 1970 on EMI

7th — Barenboim/Staatskapelle Berlin from 2005 on Warner

8th — Kubelik/Symphone-Orchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks from 1970 on Audite

9th — Walter/Wiener Philharmoniker from 1938 on EMI

10th — Ormandy/Philadelphia Orchestra from 1965 on Sony

John Coltrane on Impulse!:

Crescent

Impressions

Meditations

Sun Ship

Interstellar Space

Also on Impulse!:

Alice Coltrane, Journey in Satchidananda

Freddie Hubbard, The Body and the Soul

Pharoah Sanders, Karma

Charles Mingus, Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus

Sun Ra, Space is the Place

Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers

On Blue Note (Rudy Van Gelder remasters):

John Coltrane, Blue Train

Cannonball Adderley, Somethin’ Else

Dexter Gordon, Go!

Wayne Shorter, Adam’s Apple, Speak No Evil

Jimmy Smith, House Party, The Sermon

Don Cherry, Symphony for Improvisers

Art Blakey, A Night at Birdland, Vol. 1, At the Cafe Bohemia, Vol. 1

Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, Moanin’

Bud Powell, The Amazing Bud Powell, Volume One

Eric Dolphy, Out to Lunch

Django Reinhardt, Memorial (1947 era recordings, double disc)

Jimmy Smith, Root Down

Dennis Brown, Money in My Pocket

Hawkwind, Doremi Fasol Latido

The Chambers Brothers, The Time Has Come

Prince, 3121

Journey Into Paradise...The Larry Levan Story

Yello, the remasters of Solid Pleasure and Claro Que Si

Aretha Franklin, Lady Soul

Jessica Bailiff, Feels Like Home

The Very Best of Brand Nubian

Super Furry Animals, Love Kraft

Negative Trend, Negative Trend EP

The Jesus and Mary Chain, Psychocandy reissue

Converge, Caring and Killing

Low, Transmission EP (that took me long enough)

Dollar, The Platinum Collection (just for the Trevor Horn productions)

Arthur Russell, World of Echo reissue

The Slits, Cut

Kirsty MacColl, From Croydon to Cuba (I can’t believe they had this!)

The Perrey and Kingsley box set

On EMI Classics:

Holst, The Planets and Elgar’s Enigma Variations both conducted by Boult with the London Philharmonic

Mozart — Symphony No. 40, Gran Partita, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik and Piano Concerto No. 20, all conducted by Furtwangler with the Vienna Philharmonic.

Dvorak, Concerto for Violin and Orchestra Op. 53 and Romance in F Minor Op. 11/Bartok, Rhapsodies for violin and orchestra nos. 1 and 2 — featured violinist Kyung-Wha Chung with the Philadelphia Orchestra (Dvorak) and the City of Birmingham Symphony conducted by Rattle (Bartok)

Rachmaninov, Symphony No. 2, Previn/London Philharmonic

Ravel, Daphnis et Chloe/Debussy, Jeux—Poeme Danse, Cluytens

Windy and Carl, The Dream House/Dedications to Flea

Emperor, Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk

Darkthrone, Transilvanian Hunger, Plaguewielder, Ravishing Grimness

Acid Mothers Temple and the Cosmic Inferno

Cult of Luna, Somewhere Along the Highway

The Gun Club, Death Party

Nine Horses (aka David Sylvian and friends), Snow Borne Sorrow

Pet Shop Boys, Fundamental (two disc version with the remixes)

Six Organs of Admittance, The Sun Awakens

Matmos, The Civil War

Triad (Red Sparowes, Made Out of Babies, Battle of Mice)

Electro Sessions (handy two disc comp — some fairly random choices but hey, Eric B and Rakim, Lovebug Starski, Def Jef, Just Ice, The 45 King...)

Schubert, Musik zum Schauspiel “Rosamunde,” Ouverture “Die Zauberharfe”, Standchen (Zogernd Leise), Lehmann/Berlin Philharmonic

Orff, Carmina Burana, Mehta/London Philharmonic

Nardwaur’s DVD Doot Doola Doot Doo...Doot Doo!

60%:

Ethiopiques 14

Zanzibara 2

Acid Mothers Temple — Starless and Bible Black Sabbath

The Trip — curated by Jarvis Cocker/Steve Mackay

Melvins — King Buzzo

Denim — Back in Denim

The Walker Brothers — If You Could Hear Me Now (recent CD covering the three reunion albums, thankfully including all the Scott tracks from Nite Flights, which was nice as I’d only had mp3s — scarily this only cost $4, and was an *import*)

The Chris Connelly ‘box set,’ which is this slightly odd but welcome packaging of a slew of his late nineties/early this decade efforts that I’d been slack on getting around to, plus a couple of discs of rarities and outtakes back to the Fini Tribe days. $14 for seven CDs.

Celtic Frost, Monotheist

Ivor Cutler, An Elpee and Two Epees (his earliest stuff from 1959–61)

Delta 5, Singles and Sessions

5ive (not the boy band), Versus (some inexplicable thing with Justin Broadrick remixes)

P J Harvey, B Sides (just an EP for Uh Huh Her stuff)

Kid Creole and the Coconuts, Fresh Fruit in Foreign Places (score!)

Mission of Burma, The Obliterati

Gruff Rhys, Yr Atal Genhedlaeth

Sparks, “Perfume” CD single (for an alternate track plus a Clor remix)

The Flaming Stars, London After Midnight — two discs of singles, Peel Sessions, etc.

Terry Edwards, Terry Edwards Presents...Birth of the Scapegoats — one disc of singles, Peel Sessions, etc.

Kate Bush, Hounds of Love — which might not sound too remarkable in and of itself except 1) it was the import remaster with bonus tracks and 2) the original list price was only $14.99. Even the cashier was jealous.

The Gathering, Mandylion & Bonus

Mad Professor, Method to the Madness

Stina Nordenstam, The World Is Saved

Scott Walker’s Climate of Hunter at long last, happily being the reissue/remaster from this year at that. Only $5!

Mogwai, Mr. Beast (the bonus DVD edition — ooh, fancy package)

Roland Kirk, Kirk in Copenhagen

That Suburban Base comp Base For Your Face

Tweaker, The Attraction to All Things Uncertain — I had no idea what this was aside from the fact it was one of the Six Degrees overstocks but turns out it’s Chris Vrenna, Trent Reznor’s former (?) main collaborator, and that David Sylvian, King Buzzo and Craig Wedren were all on it, which was all I needed to know

Brahms, Piano Concerto No. 1/Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel (Gelber on piano with the Munich Philharmonic)

John Fahey, The Yellow Princess (reissue with rare bonus cuts etc.)

Amorphis, Eclipse

Lalezar — Music of the Sultans, Sufis and Seraglio Volume 2 (as you might guess, traditional Turkish music — there were at least two hundred copies of this thing there and they had it marked down to $1.50 so I thought ‘what the hell’)

The double disc Sister Sledge comp in that Definitive Groove Series that Rhino put out.

70%, plus clearance knockdowns in some cases:

The Nightingales, Pigs on Purpose (remaster with bonus tracks etc. — only really discovered these guys recently and I think they’re wonderful, v. underrated)

Arthur Russell, First Thought, Best Thought

Produced by Trevor Horn — great double disc set of some of his finest moments, from the Buggles to Tatu

Scenic/Lanterna — split live disc from their 1996 tour

Dream Babes Vol. 3 — Backcomb’n’Beat (Bob Stanley-curated series, sixties UK female singers — pure Moz bait, essentially)

The Delays, Faded Seaside Glamour ($4 or something, why not?)

Alter Ego, Rocker EP (50 cents! Eight mixes, etc. etc.)

Smoosh, Free to Stay

Six by Seven, 04

Vitalic, OK Cowboy

Three Six Degrees discs at $2 each:

Zuco 103, Whaa!

Cibelle, The Shine of Dried Electric Leaves

Genghis Blues soundtrack

And the one book I got: Comrade Rockstar, a biography of Dean Reed, who really should be more famous (new documentary film soon!)

75% (50 bucks for all this):

From the EMI Classical vaults:

Beethoven, Missa Solemnis, conducted by Otto Klemperer

Britten, Sinfonia da Requiem and Shostakovich, Symphony No. 10, conducted by Simon Rattle

Handel, Piano Suites 9–16 and Beethoven, Piano Sonata Op. 31 No. 2, played by Andrei Gavrilov and Sviatoslav Richter

Mozart, Le Nozze di Figaro, conducted by von Karajan with Elizabeth Schwarzkopf singing

Satie, a variety of piano pieces, including Trois Gymnopedies, played by Aldo Ciccolini

From the Six Degrees clearout:

Bebel Gilberto, s/t

Zuco 103, Tales of High Fever

The Go-Betweens, 16 Lovers Lane double-disc reissue

The Goslings, Spaceheater/Perfect Interior

Lakeside, Ultimate Collection — recent comp, a number of the tracks are the single edits but I’d yet to have anything by ’em so I’ll take this!

Matmos, The Rose Has Teeth...

Satyricon, The Shadowthrone

Africa Vision, Volume 1: 1975–2005 : Le cinéma africain francophone

80%:

Coachwhips, Double Death

Christian Kiefer/Sharron Kraus, The Black Dove

Bunny Brains, Sin Gulls (Goring St. Eddy)

The Tears, Here Come the Tears

Isolee, Wearemonster

Lucid, Idylls and the Secret Remain

Mouthus, The Long Salt

Double Exposure, My Love is Free — The Best of

Crib, Remnant

Liaisons Dangereuses, Liaisons Dangereuses

Acid Casuals, Omni

The Icarus Line, Mono

Loleatta Holloway, The Anthology (double disc Salsoul)

Bobak, Jons, Malone, Motherlight

Get Physical 2nd Anniversary Label Compilation

Get Physical 4th Anniversary Label Compilation

And a Kranky trifecta:

Bird Show, Lightning Ghost

Chihei Hatakeyama, Minima Moralia

Christmas Decorations, Model 91

Plus cheap copies of the Ohm CD/DVD box and The World of Arthur Russell via donut.

And approaching 90% for the last batch ($85 spent, $700 saved):

v/a, Well-Suited for General-purpose Audio Work (Schematic comp)

Converge, Unloved and Weeded Out

Space Needle, Recordings 1994–1997

John Frusciante, Shadows Collide With People

Al Green, The Belle Album

Nils Petter Molvaer, An American Compilation

Sonic Youth, SYR 5

Blank and Jones, The Singles

Black Dice, Smiling Off EP

50 Foot Wave, Golden Ocean and the Free Music EP

v/a, Legendary Sound Vol. 1

Clogs, Stick Music, Thom’s Night Out and Lantern

The Knife, Silent Shout

Free Design, Sing For Very Important People, Kites Are Fun and There Is a Song

v/a, Wattstax: Highlights From the Soundtrack

Ladytron, Extended Play

Puccini, Messa di Gloria/Preludio Sinfonico/Crisantemi (Antonio Pappano w/London Symphony)

The Whispers, Greatest Hits (specifically the Solar late seventies/early eighties era)

Steve Kilbey, Remindlessness remaster

v/a, The DFA Remixes, Volume One

Vas, In The Garden of Souls

Lift to Experience, The Texas/Jerusalem Crossroads

Tigran Mansurian, Ars Poetica

Tchaikovsky, Symphony No. 5 (Chicago Symphony conducted by Abbado)

Zuco 103, Outro Lado

Midnight Star, No Parking on the Dance Floor

v/a, Body Language Vol. 1

Nathan Fake, Drowning In a Sea of Love

Khanate, Capture and Release

Gregg Kowalsky, Through the Cordial Window

Lee Morgan, The Sidewinder (RVG remaster)

Electrelane, Axes

The Mars Volta, Amputechture

Super Furry Animals, Phantom Phorce (odd but potentially interesting remix collection with an extra EP to boot; it’s designed to turn into a stand alone mock up hand-held video game, early eighties style)

v/a, The Rough Guide to Fado (Portuguese folk music style, been wanting to give this an ear for a while)

v/a, Techno Classics Volume 2 (Rising High comp from ’92)

Boris, Pink

Clifford Brown, Memorial Album (RVG remaster)

v/a, Check the Water (Leaf label two disc 10th anniversary comp)

Evie Sands, Any Way That You Want Me

Vidna Obmana, Memories Compiled

plus on DVD:

The Best of the Beta Band — Film (didn’t even know this existed!)

Gallon Drunk, One for the Ladies (which I got more for the bonus ‘Dora Suarez’ film but hey)

Boudu Saved From Drowning (Jean Renoir’s early sound classic, on Criterion)

Well. Now to listen to it all. And watch it in some cases.

WOW, ned. cool stuff. lots of stuff i either like or would like to hear. come on, give us a grand total. that is sooooooooooooooo much music.

Oh, it’s crazy, Scott, it’s easily something like...I dunno, approaching $800 if not more? (I really hope I didn’t break a thousand.) But like I said, thank god for credit and freelance pay, I turned it all around pretty quickly.

ROFL

holy shit ned

And thanks for the kind words, BTW! As you can kinda easily tell, my big goal here was to finally get in a slew of classical and jazz recordings in particular — really I’m only scratching the surface but I think I’ve finally got some more to play around with. As for the rest I just let my mind wander and keep an eye out for what was there.

The vast majority of it all was from the Costa Mesa store too. I was constantly amazed at what still remained there over the weeks (and I’m also very glad I only started swinging by at 40/50% off, which turned out to be a wise move all around).

The slight addendum was picking up these ten albums for ten bucks at Easy Street’s clearance section up in Seattle:

Northern State, All City

Magnapop, Rubbing Doesn’t Help

Death in Vegas, Dead Elvis

Prince, Musicology

Mensen, Delusions of Grandeur

The Spinanes, Manos

Six Finger Satellite, Paranormalized

Dean Roberts, Be Mine Tonight

No Wait Wait, No Wait Wait (some weird Low side project thing)

The Icarus Line, Penance Soiree

So that was cool too.

in honor of your bunnybrains purchase, here is a new bunnybrains video JUST FOR YOU:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=K99HKwEGz5I

i wonder how much you could make if you sold all that via amazon or whatever. a lot more than 800 bucks that’s for sure. i don’t even like CDs and i’m jealous.

here is a new bunnybrains video JUST FOR YOU

:-D Thanks! That was truly strange. I already had the box set o’ course so when I saw the singles comp I was deeply pleased.

i wonder how much you could make if you sold all that via amazon or whatever.

Oh, god knows. But as AKM sez above the market’s likely pretty depressed now.

Damn, Ned! You’re really making me wish I kept better records.

Anyway, in the true spirit of dorkiness, I’ve decided to note the discs on your list that I got at the clearance as well.

Mixed With Love: The Walter Gibbons Salsoul Anthology
Bill Withers Live at Carnegie Hall (I probably jumped too soon from a financial standpoint, but it was cheap to start with, and I’ve been wanting it for quite a while.)
Jesu s/t
Celtic Frost Monotheist
Mission of Burma The Obliterati (I’m glad I didn’t get it when it came out:  it’s a real improvement on OnOffOn)
Arthur Russell First Thought, Best Thought
Coachwhips Double Death
...and The World of Arthur Russell...
The Knife Silent Shout

Damn, Ned! You’re really making me wish I kept better records.

I gotta be honest, I was keeping this running list elsewhere in part just to remind myself what the hell I got so I can listen to it all!

you can write it off tax-wise too, no?

I am keeping the receipts but since I don’t shop much for CDs any more (thank you promos) even all this might not help on that front like it used to a few years back. I’ll crunch the numbers and see.

Listen to Alice Coltrane’s Journey In Satchidananda before you listen to anything else! Unless you know it really well.

your tower obviously had a much better selection than mine. even during the earliest days of the clearance, emeryville didn’t have most of that stuff. jealous!

Yeah, I really got lucky there. I think the advantage was that the Costa Mesa store was a standalone as opposed to being in a mall like the Tustin and Laguna Hills ones elsewhere in the county (the nearest mall to it in Costa Mesa, Triangle Square, is dying by inches and has for years), and that just a few doors down was, as muttered above, Second Spin, which is all about used CDs first and foremost and has succeeded quite well at that. I’m honestly surprised they kept the Costa Mesa store open for as long as they did given the competition there but hey.

Listen to Alice Coltrane’s Journey In Satchidananda before you listen to anything else! Unless you know it really well.

Not at all, even! I’m going to be especially interested because that’s Geeta Dayal’s entry for the upcoming Marooned anthology so it’ll be a pleasure to hear it before I read her essay.

ned lemme know how that rising high comp was ... i saw copies every time at every tower i visited and never took the plunge ...

let me note that i got japanese impulse LP-style reissues of crescent / impressions / meditations for $5 each out of the clearance bin at the la jolla tower location years ago ...

i will not particularly miss tower—amazon’s zshops + half.com sort of made it irrelevant for me—but i will miss their clearance bin.

the one thing tower was really good for was 11:00 pm impulse-buy runs on nights when i’d been working hard.

Yeah, the clearance bins turned up a lot of treats over time, and in this sale I made some really good finds through that — the Walter Gibbons comp being one good example! Only spent $6 for that.

i’m also surprised that you didn’t already have a lot of that stuff, ned. Transmission ep, really? hounds of love? about time!

most of my eskimo / soul jazz / 2step comps came straight out of tower’s clearance bin.

i’m also surprised that you didn’t already have a lot of that stuff, ned.

A sentiment said elsewhere! But by the same token what people read/watch/hear in general is never going to conform to an exact model, after all — expectations never match reality. That’s a good thing, though, it means a wider range of individual perspectives.

Damn Ned! That’s quite a haul. I had it in my head that you were moving away from things that took space, ripping and selling CDs, etc. The last surge of music as object?

Yeah, pretty much. And you’re right in that I have been doing that for quite some time, but you’re correct, it’s a bit of a ‘last surge’ — I figured it was a golden opportunity to scrounge for a lot more stuff that I’d not heard before. The actual balance of the Raggettstacks pretty much didn’t change given everything I was selling back during the same stretch, and I’ll probably start another cull here soon.

I don’t think it quite matches Ned’s haul, but I was satisfied with paying roughly $5 each for:

Hot Chip—The Warning

Beta Band—Heroes to Zeroes

Knife—Silent Shout (they must have like a zillion copies of this)

Durutti Column—Return of (the reissue with the bonus tracks)

I couldn’t believe that even at 70% off, the Booka Shade and Isolee albums were still like $10. I probably should’ve picked them up, but when you compare to $5 a piece, seems high.

Things I regret not getting (because I forgot to look for immediately and they disappeared):

Z-Ro Let The Truth Be Told

Juvenile Reality Check

Things which I wanted, but which didn’t get cheap enough to get and someone else snatched:

VP’s Channel One Compilation

Studio One Funk

TI The King (which I should have bought at 50% off, but there seemed to be so many copies that I got lazy)

Sizzla Waterhouse Redemption

Sugar Minnott At Studio One (this I’m sort of eh about actually)

New Busta Rhymes

New Orleans Funk Soul Jazz thing (people bought this at $15!)

Things I never saw, but wanted and I am mad about:

This Heat Boxed Set

Things I never saw, but wanted and I am mad about:

This Heat Boxed Set

Amen.

I have 3/5s of it already so I’m not that mad, but still. . .

the three things that i’m pissed went before i had a chance to grab them were cluster’s “ii” (someone paid $20 for it), arthur russell’s “first thought best thought” ($10 when i passed it up) and kiki’s “boogybytes” disc (passed it up at $6).

:( You should have told me you were looking for Cluster II and First Thought, Best Thought. I saw the copies of the former at 50% and there were still copies of the latter at 60%.

i also saw some crazy looking GURU GURU reissue in a digipak that i passed on. still can’t figure out which album it was ... back cover had a band photo with a big thick red border around it. one of the revisited reissues, i guess ...

Ned, you should stack all that up and take a picture of yourself next to it like a proud fisherman.

The two things I’m most annoyed to not get were John Foxx The Garden (went really early—maybe even at 30% off) and the ZE Records christmas album which they had stacks of at the Blossom Hill store but which I passed up for $10 when I was there.

I saw a couple of digipak Guru Gurus, one looked like a double CD, but I couldn’t tell if they were reissues or recent reunion-to-cash-in type deals, so I didn’t get either. Also I’m not familiar enough with them to really want it. I did get a 2-disk Krautrock DVD that I haven’t played yet.

I’m going to the 4th & Broadway location tonight after work. I have negotiated a budget of $3–400 from my wife.

At 90% off, I picked up:

An Albatross—Blessphemy

All 4 Coachwhips (sorry, but they aren’t worth much more)

Frog Eyes—The Bloody Hand

Mark Hollis—Mark Hollis

Plastikman—Musik

Rye Coalition—Curses

Sam Roberts—Chemical City

Serena Maneesh—Serena Maneesh

To Live and Shave in L.A.—Vedder Vedder Bedwetter

Whitehouse—Buchenwald

Zoroaster—Zoroaster

x-post — Have fun. AND IF YOU FIND THE THIS HEAT BOX SET I WILL HAPPILY BUY IT OFF YOU.

dammit, I kept procrastinating until the last day the D.C. store is open, and I just called and was told they’re only open til 5, which means I won’t be able to get down there in time. my friend who’s already down there that I was going to go with still might make it, though, hopefully he’ll call me when he gets there and pick up some stuff for me if he finds anything I want.

Phil—check your email.

Haha, poor Phil. “Uh, honey, I’ve got an extra $300 worth of requests here...”

Just left the Pasadena store, and it was within 10 minutes of closing. Spent another $50+.

Has anyone been to Lower Queen Anne in the past couple of days? I called twice this morning, but no answer. The weather’s so crappy I hesitate to chance taking the bus down.

I wonder if Serena-Maneesh sold more albums in the last two weeks than they had prior.

aw nick I just swung by the Pasadena store after work and they were shut down already, with big dramatic white bars coming down from the ceiling(maybe they were always there, I dunno). What was left?

Total spent: $204.01, mostly on metalcore, country, a few jam bands, and DVDs. The only things I might wind up actually keeping are a Table of the Elements 2CD sampler and a Marduk live DVD.

Whitehouse—Buchenwald

uh, wow.

Re: Pasadena store:

Classical was completely gone, I assume some other retailer swept it all up when they opened today. (Same story with the porn DVDs, which I checked just out of curiosity!) DVDs extremely decimated, maybe 60–80 total, music DVDs similar but I found a Live at Harrah’s with the Go Gos, Fleshtones, Waitresses, Lene Lovich, Pylon and more for $1.50. They also had a Penetration DVD but I noticed it was PAL and decided it’d be too much trouble to play.

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.

holy shit ned!!

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

I love the odd finds like that...

Does anyone know if the downtown Chicago Tower is still operating? I’m going to be there on Friday for a while and wanted to know if it’s worth checking out.

I believe Chicago’s Tower closed its doors for good tonight (Wed 20th). Downtown store was decimated two weeks ago. I made my last trip to the one on Clark and got these:

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.

tonight at 80% off in sherman oaks:

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’

You listmakers are the scary.

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

We hit the Tower in Henderson NV before we left on Monday and shipped everything home. The box should show up today, maybe tomorrow, so we can see what we grabbed in our spending frenzy. There was a mom in there screaming at her brood “Not everything is $1!!! Not everything is $1!!!”. Mr. Jaq found a bunch of Go-Betweens, I grabbed some Brazilian stuff and Ethiopiques 18, Louden Wainwright’s 1st album, Mission of Burma Obliterati, and many odd singles (Cornershop, Fat Boy Slim, Laptop User Manual?) as well as a bunch of foreign films ($5!!), the Cole Porter tribute DVD Red, Hot, and Blue, and a Mabel Mercer bio.

What about Buchenwald?

Nice job there, Jaq! And you got to go to Lotus of Siam as well.

Lotus of Siam—TWICE!! We hurried out of Tower around 1:30 and got to Lotus for lunch by 2 (after getting only minorly lost). It was a good day.

You didn’t have to use your motherfuckin’ AK?

Not once!

Lower Queen Anne at 90% off today. Weirdly, other than a few random King Britt cds in the wrong places, ALL of the Six Degrees stuff was gone.

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

So this was it, pretty much? All stores now closed?

ICP Orchestra—Oh, My Dog

Holy fucking shit, they got an orchestra?

They have that power.

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. ;-)

Oh and Alexander Kowalski’s Response too. Yay.

ICP Orchestra—Oh, My Dog

Holy fucking shit, they got an orchestra?

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

You got 20 CDs at Amoeba for $13?

$1 clearance bin items are marvellous things, as is a bit of store credit and some patience.

Posted on Fri, Dec. 22, 2006

Music dies at Tower on Broad St.
Digital era sounds death knell for some, not all, retailers.
By Dan DeLuca
Inquirer Music Critic

From the corner of Broad and Chestnut, the future of the record store looks bleak.

Amid the holiday rush, Tower Records’ Center City store went out of business yesterday, two months after the once-revered chain was acquired for liquidation. In the final days the shelves were half-empty, the selections grim—obscure metal bands such as Rorschach Test and Backlash.

“It’s sad, because I used to buy all my music here,” said Andy Fortson, 21, of Mount Airy. “But they just can’t compete with all the downloading and competition from stores like Best Buy. It seems like it’s pretty much impossible to have a record store that only sells music.”

So, like Tower, is the independent record store soon to be a thing of the past, as disposable as an MP3 file that can be deleted with a click? That would seem logical in an iPod culture where CD sales are down 5 percent this year and purchases of song downloads are up 66 percent, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

But the changes remaking the music industry tell a more complicated story, and while record stores face daunting challenges, some are finding creative ways to survive in a digital world.

The music retail wreckage this year isn’t limited to the 89 stores in the Tower chain. The Center City store, thought to be one of Tower’s busiest, had been an Avenue of the Arts linchpin since it opened in 1999.

The Musicland chain declared bankruptcy in January, prompting the closing of stores like Sam Goody in Ardmore. Independent outlets have gone under, too, such as Repo Records, down the road in Bryn Mawr, as well as hipster haven Spaceboy on South Street.

Not all record stores are suffering equally. Many local emporiums, like hip-hop- and R&B-heavy Armand’s Records in Center City, and WXPN-centric Main Street Music in Manayunk, are struggling to get by. Others, like wide-ranging a.k.a. music in Old City and Repo’s South Street store, which specializes in indie rock, are thriving.

“Consumers are attached to physically owning something,” said Jim Donio, present of the National Association of Recording Merchandisers, based in Marlton. “We’re a culture that likes things.”

Though downloading is inexorably eating into CD sales, “it still only makes up about 5 or 6 percent of the business,” said Billboard magazine’s Geoff Mayfield. He blames Tower’s demise equally on “lowball pricing from mass merchants,” meaning stores like Best Buy, Target and Wal-Mart. Those stores often sell new releases for as little as $9.99 to lure Jay-Z or U2 fans who might also pick up a digital camera or a washing machine.

Independent store owners like Armand’s Steve Ben-Moyal can’t compete, because it costs them more to buy Nas’ Hip Hop Is Dead wholesale than the $9.99 the hit album sells for at Best Buy in Plymouth Meeting.

“It’s a struggle,” said Ben-Moyal, whose second-floor Chestnut Street store was all but empty one afternoon this week. Business is down 70 percent over the last few years, he says, partly due to a new computer program, the Serato Scratch Live, that lets DJs use MP3 files instead of the vinyl LPs that were the backbone of his business.

Store owners face a laundry list of obstacles. There’s a music-sharing culture in which 2.8 billion ready-to-burn blank CDs were sold in 2006, according to the Consumer Electronics Association, compared with about 588 million CDs of recorded music. There’s competition from the likes of Amazon.com for baby boomers who are too busy or intimidated to venture into stores.

Then there’s the disappearance of the college student customer—now, happily downloading MP3s. Dan Matherson said that doomed his Main Line Repo store, which had relied on Villanova and Haverford students. But business is up 10 percent at his South Street store, where indie singer-songwriters Sufjan Stevens and Joanna Newsom are big, especially since Tower and Spaceboy went belly-up.

The loss of younger buyers does not bode well for brick-and-mortar retailers—and that will only worsen if Apple launches its long-rumored iPhone early next year.

“When I was in high school, when I was being more directly financially supported by my parents, I would love to buy CDs from Repo,” Gabe Yassky, 18, a Wynnewood resident who’s a freshman at Bard College, said by e-mail. “But I’ve lost those romantic views I had. I mean, I just don’t have the money now, and everything is digital.”

Raheem Palmer, 20, of Southwest Philadelphia, who goes to the University of Pennsylvania and DJs as “R to da Izza,” figures that fewer than half of the 15,000 songs on his iPod come from store-bought CDs.

“For kids growing up, who’ve never been to record stores, times change, and you’ve just got to learn to adapt,” said Palmer, who started working at Armand’s this week. “But at the same time it hurts, because the experience of just going to the store and seeing people and telling each other what kind of music they should check out is almost gone.”

Donio, of the merchandisers’ group, said thriving stores are selling more than just music—video games, action figures, MP3 players. That approach is typical of f.y.e., the chain owned by Trans World Entertainment, which tried to buy Tower in October for $133.8 million.

f.y.e. spokesman John Sullivan said this week that Trans World had bought the lease of the Tower store on Broad Street, and plans to open a store as early as February. He said this store—the chain’s area flagship—would be more music-centric than most, with “a good classical selection” to rival Tower’s.

Another approach that works at independent record stores, Donio said, is “the High Fidelity model, where it’s more about the music culture in the store.”

That’s the strategy of Amoeba Records, the three-store mini-chain on the West Coast, whose stores offer such a vast selection of new and used CDs that they are regarded as a Mecca to music-lovers. Co-owner Marc Weinstein calls his customers “culture hounds”—as good a term as any for the customers at a.k.a. on Second Street, where business this week was buzzing.

“We really try to carry a vast array of different types of music, and try to be as completist as possible,” said a.k.a.‘s Mike Hoffman, a former Third Street Jazz employee who carries 35,000 titles in his Old City store. He said business is up three percent this year. “We really cater to music heads.”

That means people like Kerry Kenney, 33, of South Philadelphia, who was Christmas shopping at a.k.a, his hands full with the Beatles’ Love and the Bee Gees’ greatest hits, Miles Davis’ In a Silent Way box set, and the African experimental collection Congotronics 2.

“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

oh GOD am i sick of “digital sounds the death knell” or whatever. get a new “meme,” shitty writers, thanks.

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

None of these articles seem to care to detail WHY Tower’s prices were so terrible and uncompetitive (a reason which has zip to do with downloads.) I mean indie retailer down the block who has to pay premium price for new Nas makes sense to me, but Tower was (or used to be) in a great position to negotiate Best Buy/Walmart competitive prices (they used to deal directly with labels in some cases IIRC completely bypassing distros like Valley.)

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’m slightly late on this thread, but anyway:

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

Brian Posehn—Live in: Nerd Rage

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.

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.

Meantime I admit the net effect of this sale has caused me to think used CDs at $6.99 are still way overpriced. This is actually probably a good thing.

And to top it ALL off, BTW, I have confirmation back from AMG to review a slew of the things I picked up, which means that everything I picked up essentially has paid for itself after a couple of earlier freelance checks. I really love the way the world works.

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.

We heard a rumor tonight that Silver Platters (local Seattle chain) might open in the lower Queen Anne location, which would be good news.

btw Ned, that classics done reggaeton I picked up in Tustin? That was probably a mistake.

I can’t say I’m surprised...

Tower Records will never apologize for this travesty. How am I going to get my magazines now? Nothing can make up for this loss, I’m afraid.

Honestly, I had never heard Warrior Soul before, but for some inexplicable reason I’ve been seeing their name around a lot recently. I saw that record in the clearance bin, the remastered version no less, and figured what the hell, it might be worth two bucks. I kind of like it. Not great, but I might pull it out every once in a while. The funniest part about that record, though, is that I purchased that at Tower Sunset when the discount was at 50%, and the guy in front of me in line was also purchasing a Warrior Soul record! That has to be the most sales in one night that band has done, like, ever.

Also, when I asked the guy in front of me what Warrior Soul sounded like, he actually said “kind of like Wrathchild America.” Who uses Wrathchild America as a description band?! Of course, I had actually picked up a Wrathchild America CD for $.25 somewhere. But still.

You didn’t hear it from me, but there’s a very good rumor that the Virgin Megastores are going to be the next to go in mid-2007. It won’t be a full-on bankruptcy like Tower, but lots of store closures/stock liquidation.

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

i’m a bit surprised they lasted as long as they did, too, because for such a “mega” store their selection sucked and most cds were in the $16-$20 range.

i think ‘the losers’ could have been a massive single if it’d been released around the time ‘man in the box’ was a hit. if you don’t like ‘drugs, god etc’ i’ll be happy to take it off your hands for postage (i only have ‘last decade dead century’)

Who uses Wrathchild America as a description band?!

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

God Punch—I’m honestly not sure what’s sadder, the fact that he referenced them or the fact that I not only knew who he was talking about but had one of their CDs, and wasn’t even listening to metal in 1990.

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.”

How’s Kory Clarke’s new band?

Boring.