R.I.P Tower Records

When it was announced recently that Tower Records would be closing I diddn’t give it much thought. Tower will always hold a special place in my life but it had been years since I had been a regular customer. I still listen to as much music as ever but I have been getting it from a variety of other sources including the internet and trading copied cd’s with my music-fanatic friends.

In Sacramento I used to hit all three Tower stores on Saturday afternoon. The Broadway store always had the best import singles, the Watt Ave branch had the best Japanese pressings and you just had to check out the Sunrise location in case something special was stashed away in the cutout bin.

The Import section played a huge part in getting music from the late 70’s British punk bands into the hands of American fans. The first Clash album was released in the UK in three years before it was available in the US and when it was finally made available here, the American label took the liberty of replacing some of the original songs. Elvis Costello’s “My Aim Is True” could be bought at Tower three months before it was issued in this country. His next two albums were available in much different forms as imports and could always be found in the Import bins at Tower.

I had forgotten exactly what made Tower so special and why it will be so deeply missed. This weekend I had an experience that brought the message home to me in an amazing and wonderful way.

I don’t buy music the way most people do. I have rarely listened to the radio to find out about music and I’ve never had MTV or VH1. Most of my musical research has been done by reading. When I read Greil Marcus’s Mystery Train, which is a critical history of American music, I began seeking out the artists he explored in the book. This is how I first came to listen to the music of Robert Johnson, The Band and the Sun Sessions by Elvis among others. I have frequently bought albums by an artist without having heard a single note of their music.

It was also not unusual for me to wander the aisles of the store with absolutely no idea of what I was looking for. Just hunting for something to find. I’ve discovered some amazing music this way including something I came across in Tower Saturday.

I was browsing through the blues section when I saw a cd that intrigued me. On the cover was a blurry, black and white photo of a figure dressed all in white, walking with a guitar. The name on the cd was “The Legendary Marvin Pontiac” and the album said it was his Greatest Hits. I’d never heard of the guy, but I noticed a series of endorsements from famous musicians.

“Marvin would kick your ass for nothing. A true genius, a pure original.”- Iggy Pop
“The innovation and possibility in this music leaves me speechless.”- Beck
“A dazzling collection. It strikes me that Pontiac was so uncontainable prescient that one might think that these tracks had been assembled today.”- David Bowie

“This record changed my life.”- John Lurie

I couldn’t figure out why I’d never heard of the guy. On the back of the cd was a small bio of Pontiac that claimed he had lived in a mental institution and been killed by a bus. How could I have missed something like this? I was hooked though, and bought the cd (along with a copy of Ry Cooder’s Chavez Ravine).

I threw the disc into the cd player as soon as we got home and and was floored by what I heard. Clearly, this was not what it appeared to be. The music was beautiful and weird but it was also quite obviously not the work of a long dead bluesman. The singer is a strange mix between Tom Waits, Robbie Robertson and Captain Beefheart. The music is equally eclectic, part delta blues, part free jazz and some hilarious lyrics like “I’m a doggie/I stink when I’m wet/cause I’m a doggie.”

A quick google search revealed that “Marvin Pontiac” is the alter ego of John Lurie, best known for his work with the Lounge Lizards and as both an actor and musician in Jim Jarmusch films like Mystery Train and Stranger Than Paradise.

Lurie also directed and starred in a series of films called “Fishing With John” that spoof the old “American Sportsman” show which would take celebrities on hunting and fishing trips. Lurie’s version teams him with friends like Matt Dillon, Tom Waits, Jarmusch and Willam Defoe. It’s one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. So convincing that it wasn’t until I saw the director’s commentary that I realized the whole thing was a prank.


I had been had by a master and couldn’t be happier about it. The album is one of those rare pieces of music that I just can’t stop listening to. It’s on the Strange and Beautiful Music label and that’s a perfect description of what’s found on the cd.

This is a cd that could never be found in the other music outlets in a town like Fresno. There’s no way it’s going to show up in Best Buy or Circuit City and since we don’t really have any independent stores that means it wouldn’t exist.

It’s a perfect example of what Tower records brought to society. And it’s a perfect example of what will be missing when it goes.

Oversized Baggage

It shouldn’t take eight hours to fly from Fresno to Boise. The actual flying time is about 2 ½ hours but of course there are no direct flights to anyplace from Fresno. I once tried to book a flight to Reno from Fresno only to discover that my route would take me on a tour of California cities including San Francisco and Sacramento before landing in Reno. In all, it was going to take nine hours to make a trip by air that can be done in less than five by car.

This time the flight to Idaho went through Portland where the layover was supposed to be an hour. Ten minutes before boarding the announcement was made that the plane was still in Seattle and would be 90 minutes late. This was repeated with an additional 45 minute wait before we were finally able to board.

As I walked down the aisle to me seat I passed two incredibly fat people sitting side by side a few rows up from my seat. These two gastropods must have come in at a combined weight of 700 lbs. The male of the species was sitting on the aisle. I mean he was so fat that he spilled out into the aisle and clearly couldn’t be contained. I assumed the two were together, I mean what are the odds of two passengersauri ending up side by side as a result of bad luck?

I heard the guy grumbling about the tight fit and saying things like “ gee , they must be really trying to save money with these seats”. And I’m thinking, no, it’s more like the fact that you weigh more than most zoo animals and you’re trying to squeeze into a cookie cutter.

It became obvious that something was keeping the plane from taking off and I could see the crew holding a conference near the front. An announcement was made that the departure was being delayed because of a “cargo loading problem”. My first thought was that this meant my oversized, rolling cart loaded with about $10,000 of camera gear (someone elses camera gear, by the way) was about to be chucked from the plane and onto the tarmac. It became evident that the problem was more of human one when the crew came down the aisle and began ‘redistributing the cargo’, which in this case meant putting one lard ass on each side of the plane rather than having the aircraft lean to the right during the entire flight.

To me, this has to be one of those moments of clarity for the excess baggage. I mean, if you’re so fat that your presence on a plane puts the other passengers lives in danger, I think it’s time to cut back on the Cheeze Whiz-stuffed, deep fried Oreos for a while.

Shit, when my camera gear tops a certain weight, the airlines don’t hesitate to charge me an extra $50-75 so why not charge a passenger more for weighing over a certain amount.

I’ve been saying for a while that instead of checking everyone’s shoes and making people take off their belt before flying the airlines should just make everyone fly naked. Now, this could have some serious shortcomings because like a visit to any nude beach will prove, it’s not always the people you want to see naked who want to be seen naked. Still, something tells me it would cut down on the kind of cargo loading issues that popped up on the flight to Boise.