A couple of days ago, all the Tower Records stores closed for the last time. This really does mark the end of an era, and it sucks. There are now no record stores in my immediate area other than those that primarily sell used CDs and/or vinyl.
If I'm willing to drive a bit, there's a Wherehouse store in Huntington Beach, but Wherehouse was only a small step above the mainstream crapfest Sam Goody (of which none still exist in Orange County), and multiple steps below Music Plus, which devolved into Blockbuster Music starting in 1992, which after failing was bought by Wherehouse in 1998.
Also a little drive (in a direction there's nothing else I'm interested in, barring the occasional movie only showing at the AMC Theatres), but I'm heartened a bit to learn that there's now a Virgin Megastore at The Block at Orange — I've never come across it during my few visits to The Block, but I'll definitely check it out. The Virgin Megastore in the failed Triangle Square shopping center in Costa Mesa, while always a second choice to Tower when I was music shopping, at least was a competitor in the deep catalog game (and with a good selection of alternative music). Especially back when it was still two levels high, reasonably holding claim to the "megastore" title (in those giddy days when there was even a Virtual World location nextdoor to Virgin upstairs). But after a few years of operating in a truncated single-floor capacity, the Costa Mesa Virgin shuttered in September 2005. Update, 2009-02-28: I have since visited the store at The Block several times — it was comparable in quality to the Costa Mesa one — but sadly, it closed in January 2009, leaving the Hollywood location as the only one remaining in Southern California.
Closer to me than the couple of music stores that still exist in O.C., there are CD sections at Best Buy, Borders, and some Barnes & Noble locations that aren't completely without value (unlike, say, the CD section at Target), but these all have much smaller selections than a real music store and are much more mainstream-leaning than Tower and Virgin.
Best Buy actually had a surprisingly good music section in its first few years of operation — hard-to-find stuff I was able to purchase there included a Japanese import version of the long out-of-print (now worldwide??) Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom soundtrack. But ironically (or perhaps unsurprisingly), now that Best Buy has helped to kill off the real record stores, it no longer carries a selection that could compete with them. In Best Buy's favor, I will say that I've recently really been enjoying the feature of their website that allows you to look up availability of any product at all local Best Buy stores — I've long failed to understand why all businesses that operate both web and brick-and-mortar stores don't tie their inventory systems together in this extremely value-adding way. This feature is of little use to me when it comes to CDs, though, since Best Buy's selection is so poor when it comes to music I like. For instance, I recently was going to a Ziggy Marley concert in a couple of days, and wanted to catch up on any of his recent albums that I'd missed (being able to get CDs now, not in several days or weeks once Amazon has shipped them to me, is the best feature of having good local record stores), and while Best Buy had a big ugly mess of a Bob Marley section, they had exactly zero Ziggy Marley CDs.
That never would have happened with Tower. They would have had at least a couple of Ziggy Marley titles, if not several, and in the worst case a section card showing that they usually stocked him but were temporarily sold out.
Other things I loved about Tower:
The people who worked there were generally real music and movie fans (of my local Towers, this was especially true at the Costa Mesa store). The page for each store on towerrecords.com's Store Locator would even list the names of several of the expert employees along with the areas they were expert in. So many times when I'd be buying something, the person ringing me up would say, "Oh, that's such a great CD..." or "If you like this, have you heard...", or "Did you know they're playing a show soon?". I generally knew what I wanted when visiting the store, so this expertise wasn't a vital element for me, but it was really helpful for people like my parents. My Dad used to do all his Christmas shopping for my brothers and me at Tower, because he knew he'd be able to find stuff on all of our want-lists, and because he could get help and opinions from the employees there if he needed it. And it was just so much more pleasurable to deal with intelligent and knowledgeable employees, vs. the minimum wage idiots at Best Buy. For instance, I recently needed to ask a Best Buy employee where their CD box sets were, and the guy, who worked in the music department, led me to the music DVDs. I had to point out his error to him. Not even knowing the difference between different types of media is certainly a far cry from being expert at certain genres and artists.
For most of the years I was going there, the Costa Mesa store was open from 10 AM to midnight. This was awesome for a latenik like me. Unfortunately in their last few years they cut down their hours to 10 AM - 10 PM on Sunday through Thursday, but they did retain the midnight close time for Friday and Saturday.
Having a Ticketmaster window manned by employees who actually cared, and who understood how every second counted during weekend morning onsales for popular shows. The couple of times I went to a Ticketmaster at a Ritmo Latino or a Robinson's-May, it did not go well.
Back in the days before I could just point my smartphone web browser at www.towerrecords.com while I shopped, the Muze kiosks they had in the Tower stores were often invaluable for looking up artists, albums, and songs.
A magazine section meeting or exceeding those of the best bookstores.
About the only thing I didn't love about Tower was their prices. The Wikipedia article on them mentions their policy of selling most CDs at list price as one of the factors in their demise. I didn't mind paying a bit more for the selection and for the convenience of being able to get things fast, even at a late hour, though. Also their prices for most new releases (within the first couple of weeks or so) were pretty good.
The Wikipedia article also mentions that towerrecords.com was sold separately from the retail stores, and will be unaffected by their closing. I'm very happy to hear that, for multiple reasons, including that it's the only site I've ever found that lets you search for Artist + Song name. Also, they sometimes have import titles that Amazon and other sites don't. Likewise unaffected by the bankruptcy is the chain of Tower Records stores in Japan, which per the Wikipedia article became completely independent in 2002. I visited the 4-floor Shinjuku location on one of my trips to Japan, and it was every bit as good as the Towers back home (and way better than the HMV store I had previously visited in Yokohama). Very cool that there will still be Tower Records stores in the world.
Back to the U.S., while I was in Costa Mesa on Christmas Eve running over to Mother's Market (with its superior selection to the Irvine location) to grab some Silk Soy Nog before it was gone for the season (why egg nog and soy nog aren't available all year round, and on a lesser note, why Mother's no longer carries Amazake Rice Nog even during the holidays, is the subject of another rant), I stopped by the dead Tower Costa Mesa store to take some photos. Here's the first of them:
You can see the rest in my R.I.P. Tower Records photo album.
Update, 2007-01-17:
While I was at The Market Place (getting a DVD
at Best Buy), I took some photos of the Tustin Tower, which in recent years
had been my local store. These have been added to the album.
Update, 2007-01-18:
I was back at Best Buy today (for a replacement for my DSL router that died),
and I took some more photos of the Tustin Tower (now in the album) since the camera in my Treo
700p has poor low-light performance, limiting the shots I was able to take of
the store last night.
Update, 2007-01-19:
I was visiting Hollywood to see David Lynch's new film Inland Empire
before it disappeared, and the Hollywood Tower stores were just down the
street, so I took some photos of them which have also been added to the album.
Still to come:
To finish this off, I'm going to stop by the Laguna Hills location (a former
"WOW!" store), and add a few more miscellaneous photos, e.g. relating to the
long-closed Tower Alternative store in Costa Mesa.
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Dan Harkless
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