Rex Ray is a San Francisco based fine artist, whose collages, paintings and design work have been exhibited at galleries and museums, including the The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, University Art Museum in Berkeley, San Jose Museum of Modern Art, The Crocker Museum in Sacramento, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, Michael Martin Galleries, Gallery 16, New Langton Arts, and Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions.
Saddened by the Closing of Tower Records (01/21/08)
I don't often 'blog' but I have no other use for this nostalgic essay I wrote about my experience of working at Tower Records.
I listen to music constantly. Not radio but music I paid for, music I took the effort to seek out, pay for, carry home, remove from it's packaging, place on or in some contraption, dropped the needle in the groove and/or pressed play at. I think of myself as more of an active listener rather than a passive listener. I 'curate' my music daily. Just this week I had my neighbor build a cd rack to finally house all my cds in one place. My cds were previously on a lot of random shelves, in drawers, cabinets, and boxes all over my house. I wanted a better system so I had him build a 6 by 14 foot rack with a total of about 180 feet of shelving. Much to my horror I underestimated and the damn thing is completely full and there are still 5 big boxes of cds still on the floor. I've decided it's time to purge until everything fits on that rack. It's genuinely obscene. How did I get to this?
From 1980 to '84 I was fortunate enough to work at Tower Records at Columbus and Bay, San Francisco. That was over 1000 years ago - before compact discs and before chain stores took over the world.. At that time Tower had only a handful of stores and they were considered among the best on the planet.
The best (and worst) part about working any record store is the strangely addictive, steady flow of new product at your fingertips. The second best thing is learning about other music from your co-workers. Obsessive music people are an eccentric bunch so of course I'm drawn to them. My modest record clerk began in 1975 at a Sound Warehouse - a chain. I hated the job and staff but loved the music. By 1976 I was working at Budget Tapes and Records in Colorado Springs where my hippie/geek co-worker Dan Lawrie turned me on to European Prog-Rock, Krautrock, Can, Neu and even that weird Canterbury shit - for which I'm eternally grateful. That was where I was when punk began. Customers provide even more discoveries. I will never forget that one semi-scary customer who drove in from some desolate 'compound' on the Colorado prairies every few months to buy only James Brown and Throbbing Gristle records. Years later when those drawings of the Unibomber appeared in the newspapers I instantly thought of him. In Colorado, Wax Trax in Denver was the flash point for punk. I remember waking at 8am and driving the 70 miles to WaxTrax with a couple friends to be there when the first boxes containing the brand, spanking, new UK import, Never Mind The Bollocks Here's The Sex Pistols were opened. Because of the shipping delay the same records would arrive the next day at our store but that extra 24 hours advance made it that much more satisfying. It was a great and memorable time. The experience of being on the cutting edge of a new music form in the middle of absolutely nowhere, in a cultural vacuum, is worthy of a separate essay - but not now. Eventually, I knew I'd whither and die, or at least the very least become a fat, miserable alcoholic if I stayed in Colorado Springs any longer so I packed my bags and left.
I'd driven to San Francisco from Colorado with a suitcase and 50 dollars in my pocket and literally came off the freeway straight to Tower Records and asked for a job. In the previous five years I'd worked at three record stores in Colorado, which had exposed me to what I thought was a wide variety of music, from Abba to ZZ Top and everything in-between! I said to Tower's manager, 'I'm going to work here.' The manager said 'We're not hiring right now.' I left and returned the next day. 'I'm going to work here', 'We're not hiring right now.' I was hired on the third day - sooner than I'd anticipated! I slept in my car and did a sleeping bag tour of San Francisco's many city parks for the next three months until I could afford an apartment - but that's another story. Tower distinguished itself on being a 'catalog' store. This meant that it carried every record currently in print by every artist in a particular genre. So, if Bix Biederbeck, the Sex Pistols, or Mary McCaslin had 5 records in print, Tower had them all - in stock now. Today most chain stores are 'hit' stores who stock an artist's most popular work. At that time Tower employees were experts in their various fields. On that third day the manager handed me a stack of about fifty assorted records and timed how long I took to put the records back in their proper places. Fortunately, I had nothing better to do but wait to be hired so I'd spent a few hours each day getting to know the store. Restocking those records only took a few minutes and so I was hired.
I was a product of the Colorado suburbs and Denver was as close to a 'big city' as I'd ever gotten. I knew no one in San Francisco when I arrived so Tower Records on Bay Street was where I embarked on an entirely life.
Tower taught me the true meaning of diversity. The store had about 40 employees, all incredibly well-versed - obsessed was more like it - in different genres of music. They ran a full spectrum from macho, tobacco chewin' Rednecks AND flannel-lesbian country western connoisseurs; effeminate, pale, Quentin Crisp-types AND straight, bad boy Black Panther soul experts, Anarchist, punk lovers, partying disco and droll classical and opera queens, and every contradiction of persona and taste imaginable. In spite of our vast differences and backgrounds, or maybe because of them, we formed a large, dysfunctional family who worked together brilliantly. I was in heaven, terrified and intimidated by the variety, the personalities, and especially the expertise. I was also fortunate to have arrived in San Francisco about a year before AIDS and about three years before it overwhelmed and changed the city and our lives forever. By the time I left three years later, four of our staff had died and about ten more died within the next couple years. But that too, is another story.
The music played in the store was based on a loose system where everyone working on the floor got one 'play', one side of one album. Ten people would play ten lp sides - and repeat - 9am to mid-might every day of the year.
It was by listening to unfamiliar music - but more importantly by listening to the people who loved it - that my head was split open and I discovered so much beauty in so many types of music I thought I'd never liked before. Country, folk, jazz, vocals, classical and opera as selected by their most devoted fans and discriminating connoisseurs made for a constant 'Ooh! Ooh! You have to hear this one!' atmosphere. Every day brought a new revelation. It was there that I came to adore Nancy Wilson, Miles Davis, Kitty Wells, John Coltrane, Earth, Wind & Fire, Patty Waters, John Fahey, The Ohio Players, Loretta Lynn, Mongolian throat singers, Maria Callas, Wagner, Doc Watson, Odetta, Chic, Gil Scott-Heron, Leontyne Price, Patti LaBelle, Floyd Cramer, Nikki Giovanni, Carla Bley, Meredeth Monk, Charles Mingus, indigenous Pygmy music, Om Kalthoum, Johann Strauss, Slim Whitman, Birgit Nilson, Burundi drums, Mahalia Jackson, Balkan gypsy music, Elvis Presley, Steve Reich, Korean folk music, Nino Rota, Esquivel, along with a steady stream of new bands, new records coming in the door. The list is endless.
Perhaps it was because there was no escaping it that I pushed myself to appreciate this unfamiliar music more. Being annoyed by your environment is counterproductive and while I did develop an ability to mentally turn off and tune out music at will I discovered far more I would eventually love, own, and play voluntarily, for my own enjoyment. You also didn't want anyone to know that you hated a particular record because then it would be used passive-aggressively against you, so I made an effort to, at the very least, not openly dislike anything. I remember one particularly loathsome night manager who absolutely hated Abba - so naturally everyone played Abba all night long.
This was all accompanied by an endless, smoldering soap opera of sexual coupling, feuds, cocaine, Jack Daniels, qualudes, bands forming, bands breaking-up, partying every single night, emergency room visits, bomb threats, car crashes, arrests, overdoses, superstar shoppers, and armed robberies - typical, run-of-the-mill work place fare. And it was my new, beautiful world!
I had more astonishing experiences there than any human could hope for; an unforgetable 15 minute conversation with Prince, eating cheap pizza with Lucianno Pavarotti in the backroom, helping Lauren Bacall shop for opera records, having lunch with Janet Jackson, Sparks, and Bono (not together), being screamed at by Herbie Hancock because his album weren't stocked in all sections (he considered himself the ultimate crossover artist), shopping for J. Paul Getty, having Leontyne Price sing 'God Bless America' in my face, long conversations with Tony Williams about Miles Davis, and many, many other great moments that I'll only remember after I write this.
My fellow employees formed a distinguished alumni; Ann Powers, who went on to become music critic at the New York Times, Brain Ware formed Thrasher magazine, members of The Residents, (whom I followed and eventually spent a few years working for), many musicians who went on to do great work, doctors, lawyers and business owners, and on and on.
My tenure at Tower came to an end when our staff was culled to open the New York store on Broadway. I was offered a position at $5.25 an hour and no moving expenses. I laughed at the suggestion and was told if I didn't take the position I would have no future with the company. I languished at the San Francisco store for a few months more under a manager who hated me (it was mutual) and was eventually fired.
And so, it is with mixed feelings that I watch 'my' Tower store close down for good. The experience defined the person I would become in the next many years. I feel utterly blessed to have been a part of it. I thank Tower for my amazing experience and my co-workers for the gift of such an amazing education - but I also blame Tower for the addiction to music I still suffer from and storage problem it's created.
Tower Records is dead. Long live Tower Records.
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