Tower Records

I honestly don’t remember the last time I bought a record (for sake of discussion here, I’ll denote all possible audio delivery media systems as “records”) at Tower Records. Cynics and self-professed new media experts will naturally suggest that was the problem with the “Records” part of Tower: Tower didn’t establish a 21st century identity, Tower’s business was too archaic, Tower closed it’s eyes and pretended that it would all go away, Tower was the stereotype guy-lost-in-desert with the vultures of iTunes and Amoeba circling overhead, ad infinitum, ad nauseam.

As with everyone else that’s blogging about Tower this week, I spent GDP-sized cash at Tower and contributed mightily to altering the earth’s rotation from the movement of vinyl from Tower to home. My home base from 1981 through 1986 was Tower Records in El Toro – not the new one near Laguna Hills Mall, but the old store in the Rockfield/El Toro Blvd. strip mall. If El Toro was sold out of something then another one (Brea, West Covina, Sunset Blvd. were my favorite substitutes) might have it and after all – they are all open until midnight!

I’m not bemoaning the loss of Tower, but it’s worth a blog post because Tower was one of the last remnants of 1970s rock-and-roll culture. Despite all attempts to modernize (remember “Tower Alternative?”), that bright yellow bag with the narrow fonts was as iconic of that era as Licorice Pizza, priority ticket wrist bands, giant wall-sized airbrushed album art, the movies FM and Roadie, satin tour jackets, and giant KMET-sized “Whoo-Yas.” Hell, I remember when Tower El Toro still had a head shop (hidden behind a curtain, as if it was porn or something). Other things I remember fondly about Tower are:

• Finding an original copy of Pink Floyd’s “Point Me At The Sky” 7″ for $3.
• The secret parking lot behind Tower El Toro, where much closer parking spaces were available.
• Random in-store concerts: The Dream Syndicate (see below) and the Meat Puppets were my faves.
• Whoever it was that kept playing Roxy Music’s Avalon at twenty minutes until closing time.
• Whoever it was that kept playing Roxy Music’s Avalon at twenty minutes until closing time.
• The day when Rush’s Hold Your Fire and Pink Floyd’s A Momentary Lapse Of Reason were released on the same day. Every loner rocker in South O.C. was in Tower that morning.
• The outstanding zine selection in most every Tower.

The last time I bought something at a Tower was a copy of Simon Reynolds’ Rip It Up And Start Again, which is basically a catalog of everything that I bought at Tower Records twenty-five years ago. “What goes around” I suppose…

Photo of The Dream Syndicate playing at Tower Records El Toro in 1982. If memory serves, I’m standing somewhere behind and to the left the cameraman. I had no idea this was even filmed until I ran across the DVD at Fingerprints a couple weeks ago. Gotta love those prices back then.