When I graduated high school, my first real job was at a record store.
Disc Jockey Records, part of the Kentucky-based chain owned by WaxWorks Inc., was opening a new location at the newly refurbished Eastwood Mall located just outside of Birmingham Alabama. I was hired as one of the many “associates” for the store, and my first job was to setup the store. There was nothing there – no fixtures, no CDs or cassettes, no displays. We had to do it all. It was a back-breaking job, and we had a week to get the store ready.
I loved it.
The opening of that store, seeing customers browse the inventory that I had personally put out, was thrilling. I loved music, and I loved helping people find the albums they loved in the new, expensive CD format. It was hard work, but fun. I became friendly with the rest of the team, and the few friends I had hung out on Saturday nights.
I became the “movie guy” and eventually ran the video department, and became a store manager. I opened on Sundays by playing the music that I couldn’t play when the main management was there – Public Enemy, Prince, Beastie Boys, Megadeth. Heaven help the poor church goers visiting when I was manning the music those Sunday afternoons.
It was a seminal experience for me, a time where my love of music and film and my job aligned perfectly… which made the recent viewing of All Things Must Pass especially moving. All Things Pass is the story of Tower Records, the music chain that stores like Disc Jockey was so desperate to imitate. It was the first major music chain in America, and eventually expanded to huge parts of the rest of the world.
The documentary is an impressive and accomplished set of interviews and archival footage of the store’s history, and we see the highs and the lows. The lows, of course, were the lowest – the chain went bankrupt, thanks in part to the death of singles and the competition from Napster and the Internet. The brand and stores now only exist in Japan and as an online store.
All Things Must Pass was directed by Colin Hanks, the son of Tom, and he does an amazing job of telling the story organically – there is no narrator, because the interview subject tell the story well enough. Especially Russell Solomon, the founder who took the idea of buying used records from juke boxes and reselling them to an international chain. Even at an advanced age, you can see the spark and excitement that drove the growth of the chain. His regret at the mistakes made is heartbreaking, and to see him reflect on the past as he sits in an empty abandoned Tower Records is potent and moving.
While I worked at a rival chain, I also went to the Tower Records nearby. Even though they were the “competition” they had more stock and carried some of the more obscure artists I was interested in. While I bought most of my music with my employee discount, I also picked up quite a few albums from Tower.
Of course, the dawn of the Internet did more than kill Tower Records. Eventually, Disc Jockey records at Eastwood Mall went out of business, and in the end the chain was sold to an international company. An Internet search of the chain finds… very few results. Eventually the entire Eastwood Mall, the first enclosed air-conditioned mall in Birmingham, was torn down to build… a Wal-Mart.
All things must pass.