Whoooooosh! What’s that giant sucking sound? Oh yeah – it’s the sweet reverberation of another record store totally biting it and going out of business in this era of iTunes. In this case, we’ve got Tower Records bowing out of the business, a fact that, though it feels inevitable, saddens us all the same.

According to an AP article that ran in the Post,

On Friday, after a 29-hour auction, most of the bankrupt music retailer’s assets were sold to liquidation firm Great American Group, which bid $134.3 million. The company outbid Albany, N.Y.-based retailer Trans World Entertainment by a mere $500,000.

Though Tower is a national chain, I have super fond memories of all the

local stores scattered around the area. My particular favorite was the

one on Route 7, where I bought my first-ever CD (Radiohead’s The

Bends), a purchase that sent me on the downward spiral of total

music obsession and cost me a fortune spent on weekend shopping binges

at the store during high school.

DCist Hemal has her memories of Tower too, saving her from Tysons

purgatory:

I was working at the most soul crushing job ever

in the paved hell of Tysons corner my first year out of school. I’d

escape into the tower records two to three times a week during my lunch

break and browse through the CDs, trying to reconnect with something artistic for a few minutes before I had to go back and be an office bitch.

And DCist Matt says:

I remember when my right-wing Christian ex-girlfriend broke up with me and I went out and bought Bad Religion’s Against the Grain and a couple of other great punk records at Tower, and I remember thinking, “Aaah, freedom.”

See? Even though Tower might have had insanely high prices,

often-snooty employees, and happily shilled talentless Top 40 artists,

it still managed to resonate with some people in the area. Well, maybe not with DCist Ian:

I’m hoping for a FUTURE Tower memory in which they eventually start having stuff marked down to the point where I can finally take revenge for years of having to take it in a very uncomfortable place from Tower once I reached the cash register.

Point taken. But still, I, personally, can say

that I’ll kinda miss it. And one more bonus: keep your eye out for out-of-business deals at the stores as the

weeks go on.

Do you have any memories (good, bad, or ugly) of Tower Records?