man do I miss Tower records and

The comment by Billy Corgan in the post above is really sad. If artists only release singles, there will be pressure to focus on what is likely to be commercially successful. Music will become more Top 40 oriented and formulaic. That's fine so far as it goes. Certainly there are many albums containing songs that are just "filler" to get the album out and meet contractual committments. However, there are also many albums that have hidden gems pushing artistic boundaries or just don't meet the commercial format. I'm always thrilled to find things on albums by my favourite artists that never see the light of day on most radio stations. Many of these are amongst my favourite tunes.

I miss Tower as well.

i feel lucky to have known tower and its people. tower's demise started long before napster and downloading. the internet itself put the world at one's fingertips, and as for our culture, music became less important.....store inventories dwindled for well over a decade, which was really their lifeblood, and the core customer simply stayed home, or stopped collecting music all together....the good news is that vinyl is now growing faster than any other entertainment software....not because its arguably better, but because its 'nuthin' but fun'.....it has been since i proudly played jan and dean on a g.e. wildcat.

Had a chance to do some vinyl shopping today. I picked up a mint copy on Argo "Evensong for ash Wednesday" and an Emi greensleeve with Batiz "Music of Mexico" for a total of less then five bucks. I sometimes on Carmine st in Manhattan to a store I used to prowl for Lps. This is the pony tail run establishment that are now trying their best to empty every one's pocket with the ridiculous price's their charging. I found Academy's prices have really come down in the past couple of years and charging very fare prices for Decca's and Emi.

As is often the case in life, you don't know what you've got until it's gone, eh? I used to spend (waste?) countless hours in the Tower here in Austin, TX. Several places to buy used vinyl here in town (thankfully) but Tower (along with Warerloo Records) always had a great supply of the cool reissues that were coming out in the 90's. And then, it seemed like overnight, they were gone. Oh, and I wish I would have gobbled up all the $12.99 XRCDs they blew out the door toward the end as well (which disappeared in about two days).