I remember buying a lot of Muse Records cutouts there and also a lot of those "Giants of Jazz" EU compilation discs. They had all kinds of good deals there on cutouts and such. I used to drive up there on a Sunday afternoon once or twice a month and spent lots of hours and dollars there. It was somewhere South of Market down by where the new(ish) ballpark is now located. There used to be a Tower Outlet store in San Francisco back in the 1990's to maybe early 2000's. I also remember once visiting a rather small Tower store in Chico, CA (which is also home of the National Yo-Yo Museum where one will find the World's Largest Yo-Yo, so make your vacation plans early). I also went to the Tower North Beach location (I remember especially going there after attending some shows at the nearby Bimbo's 365 Club) and one in San Mateo, I visited the Tower on Sunset Strip only once. My most frequently visited store was in Campbell, CA (the location is now a pet food/pet supply store), but I also often went to stores in Mountain View (that location was once a Rasputin Records store after Tower closed- I'm not sure what it is today) and San Jose (I think it's now a Party City store or something). I've only been to Tower stores here in CA. Philly had a chain called Sam Goody (originally out of New York, I believe), and back in the early 70's (and before, I ass ume) they seemed to have the same philosophy as Tower, of trying to stock "everything", though their corporate structure made them "just another chain" much earlier on. Picked up a bunch of British label CD's that were unobtainable in the USA. My most memorable Tower Records visit was to the store at Picadilly Circle in London while there on a short-term mission trip in July 1991. Very very different from Bourbon Street, which runs parallel just a block or so to the West. Decatur Street also was (Is still?) home to the Cafe Du Monde, and was by far my favorite part of the French Quarter. Long convention center) a very few years before Katrina. I remember visiting one on Decatur Street in the French Quarter in New Orleans (while on a business trip to Platforum, held in the Earl K. They had a third store in the Philly area, out in the Northeast, and I visited there a few times when I was in the neighborhood, back before the King of Prussia store opened. My first visit to a Tower was in San Francisco in the 70's. They died a year or so before they closed the doors, became just another CD store with high prices and limited inventory, rather than the marvel they had been. They built a fairly large store less than a mile from my house in King of Prussia! I used to look forward to the big all-label sale every January, and for the months when Blue Note and OJC were on sale, and enjoyed stopping in every week to look at the new releases on the shelves and appreciated the Pulse! magazine every month. Then, in the early-mid 90's, the miracle occurred. Three stories tall, plus two separate related Tower stores (classical annex and book/video store) across the street. They opened up the store on South Street (forget if 5th or 6th Street was the cross street) in Philly in the 80's. And most all the others were after I moved to Kansas City, circa 1994-2003 or so (London was on my honeymoon in 2001), and we went to Glasgow too, was there a Tower there too? - I can’t remember. Most all the Chicago visits were circa 1988-1998. Maybe one of the big university towns in Illinois? - was there ever a Tower in Champaign-Urbana? - can’t remember. I later (once each) visited Tower locations in NYC, London, and Toronto. Literally 5x bigger than any CD store I’d ever set foot in (the multi-story location), and 3x deeper inventory than I could ever imagine. And this was at the many-multi-story old Loop location (about a block off of Michigan Ave, iirc), before it closed and moved a little north is the Loop, iirc (I did get to that location a few times a well, later). I never lived in a city with a Tower (or any closer than 3 hrs drive from one, though that was before I ever owned a car, in college).īut whenever I did get up to Chicago (from Galesburg, IL - where I went to college) - maybe once or twice a year tops - I was totally in heaven.
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