![]() ![]() Young listeners didn’t have $17 to buy albums, and the singles trade was important in cultivating that market so that when it matured, the listeners were ready to enter into the album sales market. While CDs were originally $12.98 list price in 1982, when there were only three pressing plants in the world, they crept up to $17.98 over a fifteen year period where economies of scale should have seen the product lowering in cost. The film cited the elimination of the CD singles market in the late 90s, coupled with greedy pricing by the labels as setting the stage for a huge fall. By the late 80s, growth was enormous as listeners sought to replace their record collections with the silver discs. The emergence of the CD market was depicted as both the apex of the music industry as well as the seeds of its doom. Barring a small music industry recession like the one in ’78-’81, it was the nearest thing to a sure bet as generations of youth grew up to stoke their love for music in these temples of commerce. The film outlined how a handful of stores in California grew to be a worldwide presence of over 160 sites in over a dozen nations. There would not have been a Virgin Megastore chain without their lead to follow. Russ and crew in the Sacramento store in the mid-70sīut the Tower chain stood as a beacon to the music industry for decades. The gent who ended up in charge of the hugely successful expansion of the company into the eager Japanese market recalled famously how he was in the tree outside of one store smoking some powerful herb one afternoon when Russ called and wanted to know some particularly detailed information that his slack brain was having a terrible time processing. Most of the execs interviewed for the film reflected this casual vibe, of course. Peruvian marching powder was seen as a must. It was our good fortune that Russ aspired to run the best record store in the world.Ī memorable scene showed how VP Heidi Cotler admitted that there was a euphemistic line item on an a ctual budget where almost $400 worth of cocaine was given the less transgressive nomenclature of being “handtruck fuel.” The crews would often perform re-stocking after hours. As anyone who worked in a record store probably knows, a lot of behavior that would get you arrested elsewhere was usually fine at a record store. The film showed how Russ built his empire from the ground up, attracting record store types with a mixture of good cop/bad cop dynamic courtesy of his business partner who managed the finances offsetting Russ’ more lassiez-faire attitudes. ![]() The elder Solomon had no time for that folderol so he gave that part of the business to his son and let him get on with it. The film revealed that it was down to one man, Russ Solomon who wanted to sell records out of his father’s Sacramento drug store Tower Drugs. While I accepted the level of excellence that Tower records aspired to and maybe even took it for granted, I was in the dark as to how the particulars of the once-mighty chain had come together. Massive amounts of import CDs and an import CD single selection that would put many whole stores in Orlando to shame! Every trip to Atlanta for the next five years involved a visit to Tower! The store was jam-packed with exactly the releases that I was buying in the era. It was shortly afterward when I got in the habit of trekking up to Atlanta for some excitement, that I came to find that Hot-Lanta had its own Tower Records in the Lenox Square Mall outer zone. Now that I think about it, I can’t recall how I did this in the pre-internet era, but I suspect a phone book was involved! The first Tower experience was profound. and made sure to visit them during the down time. As usual, I scoped out what record stores of interest were in D.C. I was presenting a paper I had co-written at a conference back in those earlier days of my career, when it had some promise. I first shopped at a Tower Records in their Foggy Bottom, Washington D.C. Where I lived in the cultural wasteland of Central Florida, such stores were unknown. I didn’t have the firmest of relationships with the music megadealer. ![]() We wasted little time in giving it a spin in the antiquated DVD player. The order went out and we got it to watch this week. I had probably heard about the making of this film, by Colin Hanks a few years back and my wife came to mention it to me recently as she was buying films on DVD for the library where she works at. Dark clouds were on the horizon for this Mecca Store of Wrecka Stows by the 21st century ![]()
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