I sure miss them as well. I spent many Saturdays wandering through the store on 4th and Broadway in Manhattan. Every couple of months I would head into the city with an audio buddy or two and make a day trip to Tower. Not only did they have a huge store, but they also had a gigantic Classical Clearance Annex in the building next store. You could spend a day in there alone going through aisles and aisle of cutouts (although the name was the classical annex they eventually ended up carrying all kinds of closeout albums there.)
Tower declared bankruptcy and closed all of their stores in 2006. There is a good documentary on the rise and fall of Tower Records called All Things Must Pass. You can get it on Amazon, but I found it in my local library.
I saw the documentary tonight. Very well done and brought back many memories of talking music with the store clerks and spending some Friday and Saturday nights there with my best buds.
Too bad theyre no longer around, except, apparently in Japan. The title of the documentary says it all.
Yup, those were the days weren't they?
Now we have pretty much the entire catalog of what would be stocked at Tower, if it was open today, right at our fingertips via Tidal etc. But somehow it's just not the same.
At least for now, if you live on the west coast there is still Amoeba.