I saw All Things Must Pass, Tower Records movie

I may be totally dating myself - do you remember Penguin Feather? Stores usually inside three story old houses, a certain herbal smell coming from the "back room." I bought my first CD from them in 1987.

 

I applied for a job at the one on Rockville Pike. I took the rejection pretty hard. Worse then any girl who'd ever dumped me.

 

Yeah, I just watched the film a couple of weeks ago and while I love the footage of people record shopping in the 1970s, this film left me cold. I just didn't end up liking the people involved with Tower Records very much. Everything felt seedy and greedy.

Love record stores but I wasn't a fan of the people who worked there at all.

 

The Internet Movie Database has comments on this documentary from people who felt the Tower Record employees were "elitists" and/or "dweebs." I never had that experience with them. You can get that type at any specialty retail store. Guitar Center being one example.

 

This is now available on Hulu + if anyone is interested.

 

Interesting, found it on the shelf at a local library.

I definitely recall the 5+ story Loop store in Chicago, plus after seeing bands in clubs or checking the Blues bars you could drive over and shop a little before closing time!

A little teary-eyed over the old days of buying Vinyl, CD'S, Maxi-CD singles, Imports, etc... and a ton of music styles under one roof, I can think of a few businesses that started out with "Party-attitude" backroom shenanigans, that climbed in sales and growth and long gone before Tower's demise.

Nice effort by Colin Hanks to get the story out, and released!

 

We watched this a couple of months ago and loved it. So many memories... At one point, my wife was nearly in tears. One of our favorite things to do when we were first dating was to check out the new music in the sound stations at the San Mateo store.

 

Tower Records was like Aladdin's Cave when it came to music collecting. Thank you napster......not.

 

Tried to find this on Hulu the other day, and nothing came up... anyone know if it came and went?

 

Wow.... Holy crap... That's pretty wild.

I have a UK 1st-pressing double-LP of "All Things Must Pass", but wrong "All Things".

 

Woe woe woe..hold on here. I use to live in Springfield/Fairfax area back in the early '80s. I distinctly remember walking from my house for some distance to this small record shop that was inside an old house. It was dark and dank and smelled like stale smoke. Creekey floors. They had metal albums I'd never heard of. Remember getting the Queensryche ep and Shout at the Devil during one visit.

I'm wondering if this is the same place?

 

That could have been the Annandale Penguin Feather - or it could have been another indie shop. There were quite a few. Dragon Song Records in Manassas was open until the late 1990s and fit your description too - but it was in Manassas. I bought a colored vinyl Kiss Greatest Hits set there in '95 or so.

 

Don't blame Napster, blame the managers. I just watched the movie, and the key managers all but admit that they were incompetent when it came to business administration, so that when their lack of planning caught up with them and the bankers had them by the short and curlies, there was little they could do.

More generally, I thought the doc was OK but maybe would've been better as a one hour PBS special than a 90 minute movie. Since I haven't spent more than an hour total in Tower stores, all the mythologizing - "Tower Records was awesome, man", "we were like family, man", "it was a magical place, man" - didn't resonate and ultimately felt like padding. Still, an interesting tale at its core and it was nice to see all that vintage record store footage.

 

Nah! Illegal downloading killed the golden goose. "I haven't spent more tban a hour total in Tower stores". Tower as a music lover and consumer I spent days there shopping in bliss.

 

I think they omitted Amazon.com as another reason for their decline....please correct me if I missed that.

 

As did I. I loved the footage of the Tower on West 4th in NYC. I spent a LOT of time in that shop back in the day.

I can't say I agree that illegal downloads are the sole reason the "golden good was killed", however. There are some great books out there on the demise of the biz such as this one:

Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age: Steve Knopper: 9781593762698: Amazon.com: Books »

It was a combination of record company greed (getting rid of singles and forcing consumers to buy full albums in the 90s), downloading, Apple introducing legal digital downloads for 99 cents and honestly an entire generation influenced by these things that no longer needed or wanted to buy physical product (opting instead to store digital files on their phones or iPods) that did them in.

 

Well Downloads per se, like a lot of little bookshops couldnt stay afloat.

 

It was beauty that killed the beast.

 

The freebie that killed the beast.

 

Saw this today and there was one scene where a guy was interviewing Russ Solomon (during the 90's, I think) and asked him (paraphrasing), "what about these new technologies, mini-discs, DCC, and beaming stuff straight to your home"?

Was he referring to DCC (the audiophile label) as a "new technology" there or did I misunderstand him?

 

I think he was referring to the Digital Compact Cassette. Digital Compact Cassette - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia »

 

Thanks, I don't remember those at all. Did any releases come to market in that format? I skimmed through the page you linked, but didn't see any mention of albums actually getting released as DCC.

 

The format was never a big hit in my neck of the woods. Did a quick search on eBay: dcc cassettes. | eBay »

Nothing too exciting imo.

 

I remember seeing Tears For Fears' Elemental on DCC but luckily the format died a quick death. Terrible idea!

 

The format was around for 2-3 yrs so there were definitely releases. IIRC, it was similar to the availability of CDs 10 years earlier in '82-'83.