The Tower Falls
If you haven’t heard already, Tower Records is shuttering all their stores as part of a bankruptcy sale.
When I moved to Seattle in 1995, the 5th and Mercer Tower Records was eternally busy on weekdays and weekends. Occasionally you’d see Big TIme Seattle Grunge Rock Stars shopping there (though they were usually at Cellophane Square). Tower had everything. Even had a classical music room. The one in the U District was two-level and was crammed with all sorts of randomness. While Tower wasn’t the prototype for the Virgin Megastore, it did share a lot of the same qualities — massive selection, funky spaces, listening stations.
But then came Best Buy, Amazon, Napster, and finally iTunes. All the while the record companies were jacking up CD prices. Tower was increasingly squeezed. They moved out of the 5th and Mercer spot for one a block north, which in some ways made them less visible. The U District store moved to the old Penney’s, where it felt more sterile and spare (though it remained one of the last national chains not selling coffee on the Ave).
And now, with Tower gone, Seattle loses another record retailer. Nothing against Easy Street or the other (semi-)local chains, but it’s nice to have something with the sort of scale and variety as Tower in the market. Ever tried to buy an independent label CD at Best Buy lately? Ever seen one? And it was nice to have an entire back catalog behind an artist’s divider, rather than 60,000 copies of the most recent album — or 60,000 copies of the “popular” album from two years ago every college freshman has unloaded at the CD buyback counter.
Fare thee well, Tower. I probably handed you $700 over the last 11 years. Too bad you didn’t spend it more wisely.
