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Topic: All Things Must Pass: The Rise and Fall of Tower Records (2015)
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Mark Ogden
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 943
From: Little Falls, N.J.
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 11-06-2015 08:11 PM
A documentary: the story of retail music giant Tower Records, from its inception in a Sacramento drug store to the business miscalculations that caused its collapse. Viewed at the Landmark E Street Cinema, Washington DC.
*****
The day that Tower Records opened its Upper West Side location in NYC, I walked up with a coworker to check it out. From that day on, I was a devoted customer, there are shelves and shelves of LPs, CDs and home video whatnot in my home, most of which was purchased there, some still in their original shrink wrap because I never got around to playing them. Of course I had no idea what was going on behind the scenes, and while Tower thrived for almost forty years, some bad business decisions and the rise of services like Napster eventually brought down the curtain on what was a very wild ride.
This film features extensive interviews with Tower founder Russ Soloman, many of his fellow executives, and other insiders. They tell a tale of both success, excess and stockroom lunacy, including a funny explanation of how they wrote off cocaine on expense reports ("fuel for hand trucks"). Bruce Springsteen, Dave Grohl and Elton John, all good customers, show up and reminisce as well. I thought the picture was a little too choppy editing wise, it can be hard to keep the story and the players straight, and not everybody has something interesting to say. But the copious use of home movies and news reports from that era is fascinating and nostalgic and the story as a whole is interesting right up to it's emotional conclusion. Recommended, especially if you miss Tower (or, honestly, Disc-O-Mat, Coconuts, HMV, Licorice Pizza, or any other large music retailer, as I imagine the stories are somewhat the same).
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