Looking for the new music community

There have been a number of articles about the glory days of Tower Records. But if your association with Tower was that of a corporate giant trying to muscle out your local independent music store, then you probably don't understand why anyone cares that it is going away.

Here's an article about Tower in San Francisco, where the store opened in 1968. It used to be a gathering place for music fans.

There's the online world now, but that doesn't give you a place to go when you want to get out of the house and see people.

For S.F. rockers, Tower Records was where it was all happening -- now the party's over: "'On Friday nights, the place was like an event,' says record promotion man Dave Sholin, who back in the '70s ran the city's ruling Top 40 station, KFRC. 'Just going in and seeing everybody in the place, the aisles jammed, all the new releases -- it would be hard to describe to someone who wasn't there.'

"Clerks like Powers were the rule, not the exception. They knew music and they worked at Tower because they liked it. They also recognized musicians and treated them to employee discounts. Michael Carabello, the original conga drummer with Santana, remembers going down to Columbus and Bay with his band's guitarist, Carlos Santana, and raiding the jazz section for Gabor Szabo albums, which miraculously cost nothing when they went to the cash register. That Santana went on to record Szabo's 'Gypsy Queen' on the band's breakthrough album, 'Abraxas,' makes Tower a fairly direct tributary into the cultural mainstream.

"It was a place that could be packed for in-store appearances by Joan Jett or Luciano Pavarotti. The opera in-stores were an annual event, in fact, and all the big names in the field made appearances. Tower always had the best selection of classical records at the lowest prices, too. Former manager Haynes remembers knocking down a wall in the store's warehouse to build the first opera room, laying down the tiles after the store closed at midnight. Inventories were also all-night affairs and such a party that employees vied for the assignment. ...

"Tower was more than a record store; it was a cultural hub. Tower was one of the main outlets for concert tickets in the days before computerized ticketing, and fans would line up for blocks outside the store when tickets for popular concerts went on sale. The chain also produced a giveaway tabloid called Pulse, full of record reviews, interviews and, of course, record company advertising. Tower was a market leader in innovations, such as in-store video plays or listening posts, which must have reminded Solomon of the old listening booths he used to maintain in his father's store."