The winning bidder in the auction for Tower Records is Great American Group, an asset management and liquidation company. All 89 Tower Records stores around the country are, in essence, shutting down. Inventory sales start today.
Part of me almost wishes I were in Honolulu or New York to see what kind of bargains I could muster. Honolulu stores carried a smattering of J-Pop, and I could barely tear myself away from the classical section when I was in New York City on vacation in 2005.
The retail landscape will be emptier without Tower Records, especially for areas that don’t have a Waterloo or an Amoeba or a Newbury Comics to take its place.
Napster Japan launched earlier this week, and I would have written about it when I saw the announcement. But I wanted to investigate the service before I wrote about it, and now that I have, there’s nothing to report.
I couldn’t access it.
Unlike iTunes, which is actually cruel enough to let you browse and search a catalog which US customers are barred from purchasing, Napster doesn’t even include a mechanism to switch locales within its interface.
Slim Moon started Kill Rock Stars in 1991, and the label’s roster includes the likes of Sleater-Kinney, The Gossip, The Decemberists and Deerhoof. Kill Rock Stars itself is moving its operations from Olympia, Washington, to New York City, where Nonesuch is also based. Moon’s wife, Portia Sabin, takes over the label’s operations.
Wilco and the Black Keys aside, Nonesuch doesn’t have much in the way of a rock roster. Nonesuch started out as a classical imprint but expanded to an eclectic mix of world, classical and pop. It looks like Nonesuch wants to expand its scope, and it’s positioning Kill Rock Stars to be its indie rock farm.
I like the idea of Wilco, Emmylou Harris, Steve Reich and Audra McDonald being labelmates, but I’m not sure throwing, say, Xiu Xiu and Deerhoof into the mix would maintain that balance. And if such an arrangement be forged, I’d hate to see KRS bands disappear from eMusic.
The reason? The director of the production stages a scene in which the decapitated heads of all the major religious figures are placed on chairs, including but not limited to Mohammed. Deutsche Oper director Kirsten Harms didn’t want a repeat of the protests that occurred after a Danish newspaper published editorial cartoons depicting Mohammed. So the production was canceled.
Cries of "censorship" followed, with some critics accusing Harms of Kniefall vor Terroristen — "kneeling to terrorists". Even the German chancellor has weighed in.
Named Golden Pink Arrow, the new unit consists of ACO, producer Taeji Sawai and lostage drummer Tanaka-kun. The trio is set to perform at the "sonor sound tokyo 2006" festival on Oct. 7 and 8. "sonor sound tokyo 2006" is the Japanese offshoot of the electronica music festival "sonor2006" in Barcelona, Spain.
Taeji worked with ACO on her albums irony and mask. According to the band’s MySpace page, ACO and Taeji formed Golden Pink Arrow after recording irony, heading to Berlin to work on new material. Golden Pink Arrow’s MySpace page currently includes a Madonna cover, relabeled "Material Gxxl".
Bounce.com characterizes the band’s sound having "freaky, dirty beats". (The words "grime" and "bile" also work their way into the description.) No releases are yet scheduled.
I’m not sure what the big deal is with the Sugarcubes reunion. Even Bounce is reporting on it. The reunion is a one-off concert for charity. Yes, Björk is performing with her old band for the first time in 14 years, but I think it would be a bigger deal if they decided to record and tour.
(I hear Einer Örn’s debut solo album from a few years back is decent.)
It’s like every time Bill Berry shows up to drum with R.E.M. for some random event. Granted, Berry’s departure from the group signaled a true turning point for the band and not in a good way. But what’s the big deal with a random reunion here or there? Log it under a bullet item and move on.
I’ve mentioned this to friends time and again, though — it wasn’t until Homogenic that I took Björk seriously as a solo artist. Debut was far too polished and had none of the rawness of Life’s Too Good, but then she wrestled free of Nelle Hopper’s boring ass and came into her own. Were the Sugarcubes to reform, it would be something of a step back for her.
Unless she pulls a Shiina Ringo and forms a new band. What’s the Icelandic word for "incidents"?
The highest bidder so far in the auction for Tower Records is offering $90 to $95 million for the beleaguered chain, so reports Musical America.
Great American has so far placed the highest bid, according to Tower. The company specializes in liquidating assets.
I remember when the Tower location in Austin closed back in 2004. I went there hoping to score some discounted goods, and the discounts were still priced higher than I would have gotten from Waterloo, even without my employee discount at the time.
At the same time, it would suck to be in Harmonia Mundi’s shoes. $1.2 million owed and a liquidiation still wouldn’t help? Damn.
I guess I watched too much Star Trek Voyager in my formative years because my first reaction was that it would have major repercussions on the timeline, and it would obviously violate the temporal prime directive. (Loser! == me)
Put it another way, he probably wouldn’t have heard Berlioz or Chopin perform or compose their major works because he probably would have left some sort of influence to inspire a random, unknown person to take those ideas elsewhere. Who knows?
Yes, I know the point of the article was to imagine something along the lines of what Jimi Hendrix would have thought of Lenny Kravitz. Or Kurt Cobain of Justin Timberlake. Or JS Bach of Ludwig van Beethoven.
But all that time watching Voyager makes me more interested in the science fiction of who else would have emerged alongside Beethoven and Hadyn.
Do a Google News search on music service, and you’ll see a bunch of stories about unlikely companies starting up music services to compete with iTunes.
(Because I know I immediately think of music when I hear the name Samsung.)
But Billboard.biz posted a story about a new music service launched by NPR. The story itself requires a subscription, but a press release is available.
Now there’s a brand that can be leveraged into a music service. I gave up on radio decades ago, but when I’m forced to tune into the airwaves — usually when I’m driving a really shitty rental car — it goes straight to public radio. I’m not sure whether I’d actually patronize an NPR music service, but if something had to tear me away from eMusic, that could be it.