OK folks, bust out the rose-colored glasses, I’m going to get a little nostalgic.As you probably know Tower Records was bought out in October and all the stores are currently having going-out-of-business sales. The company had been in trouble for years and was rumored to be going out of business many times in the past, but it has finally happened. The company is being liquidated and in 2007 Tower will no longer exist as a brick and mortar store.

This is sad. Tower was a fully-function dedicated music store with a broad selection of music in many hard to find genres. It was corporate, but it had an understanding of music, and the staff was knowledgeable and usually helpful. The place was huge but carried deep titles and indie labels. The store I most often frequented even had a separate, seemingly hermetically-sealed room for classical and jazz music.

The Tower Records that is indelibly etched in my brain is the Christown/Spectrum mall location, in which I spent many junior-high hours looking for hot 12” singles and buying TDK SA 90s. This was an era before I had any musical sophistication, and was casting far and wide to find my music. One Christmas around this time I received both Culture Club and Motley Crue albums, so there you have it.

Tower was huge and when I first started going there it featured the top 100 Billboard hits laid out for sale in racks. This is where I spent most of my time trying to figure out what this volatile thing called popular music was. It was just before the dominance of CDs, so the section was full of 45s and 12 inches, and wading through that section and in that store helped me develop taste beyond popular music.

I do feel lucky that I grew up in an era where the top 40 stuff was pretty unusual for popular music. The new wave stuff I gleaned from the radio lead me down the path to where I am today, a non-registered music nerd.

Tower at Christown (I just can’t call it Spectrum Mall, y’all) represents the most important source of satisfying musical discovery for my young self, and was seminal for years. That is until my friend’s sister not only told me about Zia Records but brought over The Smiths’ Self Titled and The Cure’s Pornography in the same day and everything changed.
I have no idea the number of times I set foot in that Tower Records, but it was loads. There were many, many arcade sessions in the nearby mall that included visits to the store, lots of random times I convinced family or friends to take me or drop me off there. And once I was able to get there under my own power. There were many late night Tower runs. They were the first and only corporate record store to stay open until midnight.

Another feature that kept me coming back as I got a little older and into my adult years was the excellent video selection they offered. My experience in that area also encompasses the Tempe Tower. For years it was the only place I would rent from, and it was for the same reason I shopped on the music side. Tower had stuff no one else did and the people that worked there liked movies. They would even share their knowledge with you if you asked for recommendations, again usually without pretension.

Even now I pine for Tower Video and their catalogue of awesomeness. I’m not going to open up this vein right now, but when I walk into a Blockbuster I’m saddened by the lack of knowledge or enthusiasm for movies shown by the staff. It’s the same kind of apathetic, impolite “this is the only job I could get mentality” that is so pervasive in music and video retail, and I hate it.

This may have something to do with the fact that I’ve worked in numerous music related retail jobs, which is a natural progression in the evolution of a music nerd. My first retail job was in fact at Zia Records, the old 7th Ave. location, back in the 90s. I was a cocky pup and sometimes didn’t wear shoes to work because I didn’t have to. But I loved music and enjoyed the “freedom” a minimum wage job affords a young person transitioning not so smoothly from high school to college.
I also later worked at the Tempe Zia, Rockaway Records in Mesa and for a short time at the, get this – the Tower Video location at Christown. That’s right, for a couple of months I worked in the store that was so formative for me as a music fan, but on the video side. I was irresponsible and didn’t get along with the manager, but I loved the job and would have stayed for a while if not for a “scheduling misunderstanding.” Which is a nice way to say, “I don’t really have a reason to get rid of you other than my desire to do so, so your fired!”

That was a great job for a 19-year-old. I was working with musician friends in an environment full of creative stuff and people, and though I wasn’t making any money or anything creative while I was there I was happy. I can’t remember if this happened before or after I worked there but I even wrote a paper for a low-level sociology class about the video store and its employees as a microcosm of the outside world. It was cool, if maybe a little too pseudo-intellectual.

I was working with good friends, working but not that hard, and getting the coveted (only by people of my stripe) Tower Records discount. You could also check out movies for free, and I felt pretty cool working there.

Over the years, based on that experience and the fact that I always seem to associated with musicians, I have known many people who worked for Tower. The store didn’t pay well, and retail is a drag, but a lot of the people I knew who worked there were in a kind of holding pattern before their real lives began. Before they either found a way to pay the rent and be creative at the same time or hung it up and assimilated. I feel badly for Tower employees, especially management, that this brick and mortar haven for music and music lovers is gone and so is a lifestyle friendly place to make a living.

I love the Internet. I love finding out about music online but I’m sad to see such a powerful force in real-world music retail disappear. I mourn the loss of not only Tower Records, but of the tactile exploration of musty record stores. I am old.