Best movie of this year hands down!

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

I recall being excited to visit the Tower Records store in LA in the mid 1990s on my first visit to the west coast of the USA. When I returned a decade later to their San Francisco store, it somehow felt less exciting, the store looked a little too ordinary and it seems they were having a fire sale on. A few months later Tower Records had gone bust.Colin Hanks documentary examines the growth of this record chain from its early years from founder's Russ Solomon's dad's drug store where he had a section which sold records.Russ took over the business in the 1960s, starting in the west coast and moving to the east coast and then internationally to Japan.As is the case, these heady years of the counterculture was a supposedly drug and drink fuelled hazy party for the staff (it always seem to be the case with maverick start ups.) Live hard and party hard was the motto. The staff I saw in the 1990s seemed to be mainly bored teenagers on minimum wage.At the turn of the millennium Tower Records was valued at $1 billion. Their seemed to be no end to its success and they were determined to sell albums, preferably CDs. The impact of online shopping was a body blow. The Apple Store allowed you to buy singles you wanted for 99 cents. Tower Records wanted you to buy the whole album for an ever increasing price and their online servers was on AOL.Even worse the young IT savvy consumer could now get music for free from Napster and other torrent sites. Combined with the company's debt laden expansion, choppy waters awaited them.The documentary interviews key staff from the early days as well as the man himself Russ Soloman who comes across as a charismatic maverick. We also get to hear from musicians such as Dave Grohl, Elton John and Bruce Springsteen about their joy in visiting the Tower Record stores, browsing, talking to aficionados. Elton admits he spent a fortune in their shops.The documentary was a bit messy, in fact a little overlong. We see a former executive being fired by a new management team and how Russ took him out for a meal after a Christmas party which bought him to tears. I wanted to know why he was fired, why he could not get another job, what happened after he went for a meal with Russ and then the same executive turns up later on when the attention shifts to the company's declining fortunes.In fact seeing some of the staff being interviewed I was impressed how they managed to become so big, it seemed to be more by serendipity than design.

Growing up in Los Angeles, Tower Records was the one stop megastore to hit for the latest LP's, imports, posters etc. It definitely has its place in the lexicon of California culture, and the Sunset Boulevard store had a nice selection of indie punk rock 45s during the late 70s where you could stop in after a show at the Whisky a-go-go and find the latest vinyl.I don't know how much truth there truly is in the story offered here, although the cover notes state that it was not the internet that brought about this company's demise. Sorry, I find that very hard to believe.While other reviewers have noted greed and price fixing was responsible, ultimately it was the internet, and digital technology and the obsoleting of the cassette and, in one word, progress. The founder Mr. Solomon remained mistakenly sold on the fact the buyers would always want to have a library collection of music in their homes in the form of vinyl LP's boxed sets, CDs and the like, but this would not apply to later generation of buyers with their new gadgets i.e. iphones, ipads, e-pods, a-frames, tampads, etc etc ad nauseum.And then add Napster, Kazaa and all the other "wares" to the mix, the writing was on the wall. They were nice store personnel and more often knew their stuff, styles, genres, and history, but it just couldn't last without a product to sell. Much in the same way that X-rated theaters went the way of all flesh with the boom of the videocassette and the DVD, technology eventually trumped it all.Nevertheless, they remain a wonderful memory in the annuls of history and made a difference in the lives of so many music fans during the earlier days of rock and roll and they should be proud.

The "Rise" portion was nostalgic and interesting. The second half was a load of self-serving baloney: Russ Solomon admitting he made a few mistakes but, if the banks had only continued lending him money without telling him what to do, all would have been well. A bunch of longtime employees kvetching about losing their jobs, but not ONE SINGLE WORD about all the labels and distributors who got royally screwed and are still trying to cope with their losses to this day. I started out as a specialty music retailer in 1974 and, thankfully, am still going strong. I well remember Tower's predatory greediness, demanding ridiculous terms from labels and distributors: six months dating, 100% return privileges. Finally, the labels and distributors had to say 'no' to getting in any deeper. The fact that this painful fact wasn't even mentioned, reminds me of the 'ServPro' motto, "Like it Never Even Happened".

They call it luck, but it takes a particular type of wisdom to be at the right place at the right time. Russ Solomon had this in spades, when he branched out from his entrepreneurial father to expand into records. This movie is a blueprint of how to start a great business. First of all, have the vision. Secondly, get great people, give them freedom and back them up. Sounds simple, but very few businesses actually do this. In the movie, various key employees are interviewed and they all basically tell the same story. That is that they were given a chance to prove themselves and they rose to the challenge. Russ also realized that he could tap into the collective wisdom of all his employees and this he also did, especially with advertising and the Tower Records publication Pulse! It is refreshing to see the 60s again, the hope and the freedom. Russ also realized that he was not a financial type, so he hired an excellent money manager in Bud Martin. The demise of tower records was quite sad, but technology replaces one thing with another, so it was a tremendous ride.