![]() ![]() I’d peruse Tower’s LP and CD bins and get educated on my latest genre and artist obsessions in reggae and jazz. Mind you, this was the pre-internet era, where you couldn’t just punch in Wikipedia, YouTube or Spotify for discovering new music. ![]() (At some point Keith Richards lived in the co-op above.)Ĭirca 1992, living within a 10-block walk to the East Village, I relished the ability to get my music browsing and buying fix any late night of the week (they’d close at midnight) if there was nothing on television. At its peak, the home entertainment beachhead extended all the way to Lafayette Street, selling and renting DVD discs and VHS tapes. ( Pulse also killed an interview I did with Gil Scott-Heron because they thought he was too critical of Arista Records and feared the label might pull its advertising.)įor New York City music lovers, the downtown three-story Tower supermarket on the corner of Fourth Street and Broadway was mecca. In 1986 the monthly magazine also published a two-part series that featured portions of my master’s project about how MTV had changed the record industry and the record-buying habits of Penn State students. I should point out that in the mid-1980s I was a regular contributor to Tower Records’ in-house publication Pulse, for which I interviewed musicians including Aimee Mann, J.J. Courtesy of Tower Labs/Christian Anwander. The Tower Labs store and performance space. Then in November 2022, a Tower Labs performance space/pop-up store appeared in Brooklyn, offering limited-edition music and merchandise releases, and listening parties. Then the pandemic hit, delaying Tower’s business plans, which I will not divulge here.īut the good news is that re-emerged later in 2020 as an e-commerce operation, preceded by an Instagram presence providing music trivia that garnered scores of fans and potential record buyers. I let David and Danny know it might take a while before I could help them further. He opened a large briefcase of legal papers that satisfied my inherent journalistic skepticism, proving that their European-based employer indeed was the current owner of the Tower brand.Ī month later, I was sidetracked by my father passing away, and getting his affairs in order. David and I met again – this time without Danny – at a different diner in Columbus Circle. Apparently that deal never closed.Ī few weeks after at a diner in Chelsea, Manhattan, I met David, an associate of Zeijdel’s. But I cautioned Danny that if I was to help him, I needed proof that the investment company indeed now owned Tower, because Billboard’s last reporting of the matter was that a different entity bought the brand name. Zeijdel then attended the next Making Vinyl conference in Los Angeles in October 2019, and soon after, the two of us met to talk about how I might help with a relaunch as a consultant. As far as I had known, the assets were sold during the bankruptcy, so obviously I was intrigued. As we walked back to our hotels, Danny introduced himself, and shared the news that he now represented Tower. That attendee was Danny Zeijdel, who appeared to be no more than 30 years old. That’s why I was gleeful to learn from an attendee at the May 2019 Making Vinyl Europe in Berlin that Tower was planning a comeback. Since the company’s Chapter 7 liquidation in 2006, I know there’s been a void in my life. ![]() At a time when institutions and entities we cherish might disappear, the rebirth of the Tower Records brand is especially welcome.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |