Amongst the cutthroat competition of the mom-and-pop music stores that litter Mass. Ave, Tower Records somehow manages to stay in business, proving that multimillion-dollar corporations can still survive in alternative-era Boston.

Tower Records looms over the corner of Mass. Ave and Newbury St. in all of its sandstone and blue-steel glory, daring passers by to share in its decadence. Indeed, everything about Tower Records screams excess, from the double revolving doors to the haphazardly placed blue and orange neon lighting. According to Beth Blodgett, a store employee, Tower is "big and cheap and... so Tower!"

The atmosphere is that of a three-story disco, minus the cage dancers. It's hard to resist funking it up to the mothership once George Clinton is pumped throughout the building via the store's massive sound system.

The sheer amount of capital to which Tower has access allows the musical behemoth to provide an exhaustive inventory of every type of media known to man. Besides the standard collection of CD's (each with the standard price tag of $16), Tower supplements its offerings with everything from books to laserdiscs.

This selection spans various genres of music, with one floor almost entirely devoted to classical music and a separate listening room for songs with a Latin beat. A trip to the second floor yields an impressive collection of 12" vinyls, including selections from Mariah Carey ($9) and the So So Def Bass All-Stars ($6).

Not surprisingly, Tower Records has also spread its abundant financial resources into non-audio products and services. It is now possible to rent videotapes from Tower, as well as to buy new releases at the priced-for-rental tag of $100. Other products include custom mailboxes, hemp necklaces, tiny pouches of "Zodiac Essence" and "Hello Kitty" pencil boxes.

Tower Records also carries a stock of vintage Grateful Dead wine, cleverly named "Dead Red Unwine" ($15). Rumors suggest that Tower may soon be coming out with a new line of clothing, "Tower Gear," which presumably would sell alongside the now-existing racks of "Ghost in the Shell" t-shirts and Pantera wife-beaters.

Store employees have no opinions of the eclectic inventory. Blodgett listlessly declares in a dull monotone, "It makes no difference to me." Further questions send her into retreat behind the "Employees Only" full-gauge double steel door in the corner of the store. Then she talks to the overlord they call "the manager," (an investigation of Blodgett's workplace during her absence reveals a small black box with hundreds of blinking lights, each possibly representing the heartbeat of a co-worker) and essentially disappears.

In essence, the Tower on Newbury Street is identical to every other Tower in the United States. But beneath its generic surface, Tower is possibly the ideal place to expand one's music collection locally, while shopping for gifts ranging from the unusual to the obscene.