Penultimate Thoughts on the Demise of Tower

Two weeks ago, Tower Records was sold to Great American Group for $134.3 million. Great American, a liquidator will sell off the Tower stock and close the stores.

The action constitutes a small loss to the largest market, fans of popular, rock, and hip-hop music. For them, the latest music is readily available at discounted prices in Walmart, Target, Best Buy, and other stores. The songs are available for download on the internet. Granted, the fidelity of the downloads is not as good as that of CDs, but most folks are not that concerned about fidelity. The music is still generally available.

On the other hand, the demise of Tower is a major loss to many much smaller segments of the music-loving market, specifically classical, medieval and Renaissance, jazz, country, folk, "new age," and "world." In other retail stores, CDs are just one of many products that they sell, and these genres are a necessary appendage. As a result, the stores offer little in either scope or depth for these types of music. Moreover, they do not offer the knowledgeable staff that Tower provided to help the buyers find the specific performances that will bring them the greatest pleasure. Nor do they allow the social dimension of meeting and sharing with other buyers with similar interests.

That this is a major loss is not just my opinion--it is fact. For example, here is a list of some major American cities that do not have a decent classical record store:

• New York City
• Philadelphia
• Cleveland
• Chicago
• Seattle

There are, fortunately for me, a few stores in the Los Angeles area where listeners to classical music and other genres of limited appeal may find some of the CDs that they seek:

• Amoeba Music in Hollywood
• Borders Books
• Barnes and Noble
• Dutton's Books in Brentwood and Beverly Hills

Maybe some of my readers can add to this list.

It is not always convenient, however, for a person to drive 40 or 50 miles to browse CDs in a store. Even in the stores that carry CDs, the space allocated continues to shrink in both scope and depth. For example:

• Borders or Barnes and Noble will offer several different performances of the The Four Seasons by Antonio Vivaldi. But how many of the more than 500 other concertos by Vivaldi do they have in stock on CD? How about the hundreds of other Vivaldi compositions? There are probably over 150 different performances of The Four Seasons recorded on CD but will you be able to find more than a handful in your local record store? There is a similar situation for Beethoven's Symphony No. 5, and for other widely known classical works.
• I suspect that, no matter how many stores you visit, you will not be able to find a work by Johannes Verhulst on CD. How many CDs can you find in Best Buy of Hawaiian slack key guitar music, or of Portuguese fados? Sure, you may not be interested in these works, but some people are.

The 2.5% of us who listen regularly to classical music are turning to on-line sources. They do not provide the social dimension of CD collecting, but they help us access those hard-to-find disks. The most prominent on-line source is Amazon.com, which offers a reasonably large variety and good value. I have listed a few sources that I frequent in my side bar. Maybe someone out there can suggest a few more.

Much important music has already been lost for all time. Some was lost to fires in libraries and monastaries. Some was just discarded, or lost. I am reminded of the anecdote about how the composer, Felix Mendelsohnn, noted one day that the fish he bought in the local market was wrapped in paper with musical notations on it. Closer inspection showed that the music was manuscript written by J.S. Bach. Mendelsohnn went back to the market, not to buy fish, but to buy the rest of the wrapping paper. As a result, several important Bach works were rescued from total loss, but we do not know how much more is gone forever.

Both Classical music and CDs as a medium for storing and listening to it are gradually disappearing from our lives. The sale of Tower records is just another part of the process. Some of this music is truly great art, and exceptionally beautiful to listen to. I hope we can do something soon to reverse the trend.