Tower Records Project Remembers Music Retailer's Legacy
SACRAMENTO (KCBS) — The last Tower Records closed its doors in 2006, but the store's founder is hoping to keep the legacy of the iconic music retailer alive.
Russ Solomon, the founder of Tower Records, has donated a boatload of store memorabilia to The Center for Sacramento History. The first Tower store opened in Sacramento in 1960.
The Tower Records Project, a campaign to preserve and build a traveling exhibition launches on Thursday. But they want more than money. They want people to share memories about Tower Records, from those who shopped there, to those who worked there such as Axl Rose.
KCBS' Susan Leigh Taylor Reports:
"One thing that made Tower special is that each store kind of had its own identity and Russ promoted the fact that they created in-house art," said Marcia Eymann, Sacramento City Historian.
Eymann said Tower wasn't just a record store. "What was great about Tower is that so many people would say, 'That's where I was exposed to classical music. That was where I was first exposed to jazz'," she said, nostalgically.
Eymann noted that consumers these days are more solitary with iTunes purchases.
"The digital world is really doing that to us where we lose the communal experience of going to a record store, looking at things and exploring those with other people," she said.
You can find more information at TowerRecordsProject.org.
(Copyright 2012 by CBS San Francisco. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
