re: Tower Records

Having concluded from its piss-poor store in Toronto that Tower wasn't worth the effort, it came as a really big surprise to find that the Shinsaibashi store in Osaka is terrific. As a jazz newbie, I find their selection overwhelming, but everything that I've gone looking for recently has been there, and the new music section (which diverges from the jazz section in a way that only the shelf-stockers understand, as the Shipp/Anti-Pop Consortium disc is in the jazz section, but Derek Bailey is considered to be new music) is pretty impressive for a chain store, too. (Actually, it pounds the hell out of most of the other stores that I've found in Osaka that aren't largely second-hand vinyl shops.) -me