Send us a text On Friday, August 9th, Charles R. Cross passed away from natural causes. For those who knew Charley in the Pacific Northwest music community, the Springsteen community and in real life, it was a shock. Charley was only 67 years old and was in the middle of working on his 10th book. Back in October 2023 Charley sat down with us and di…

Send us a text When Greg Wallis was hired at Tower Tacoma by Dave Coker, Greg had never heard of Tower Records. It was simply the big, new record store to move into his town. When Coker left to open and run the Seattle U District store, Rob Bruce came up from Anaheim CA to be General Manager. By this time, Greg was the buyer for all sections of mus…

Send us a text Melissa Greene-Anderson grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia. Since high school she was a part of her family’s music business; Gotham Distribution, Collectables Records, and the direct-to-consumer website Oldies.com. Melissa’s father started in a record store in Times Square NYC. At a very young age, Jerry Greene bought the rights …

Send us a text “Son, never trust us lawyers because we’re going to fuck you every time.” In 1991, how did Freddi Szilagi find himself face to face, hand-delivering a $10,000 check to Edwin Edwards at the Hotel Monteleone? In short, because of Russ Solomon and Tower Records. For a more detailed explanation, you can hear our guest this week break it …

Send us a text Just a quick check in with everybody on this hot & beautiful 4th of July week. Find out about some upcoming events and episodes, including an "Ask Me Anything" episode where you can ask any question about the Tower Records Podcast by sending an email to . We'd love to hear from you Cheers!…

Send us a text When Kat Gavin was born, her mother was only 18 years old. And as a result, Kat’s crib was right next to the stereo. So to say Kat grew up “with music” would be an understatement. After a stint working record retail in the malls of Northeast Philadelphia, Kat made her way into Center City Philadelphia and got a job at Tower Records S…

Send us a text “A month before my 12th birthday, I turned on the TV on a Sunday night and there were these guys calling themselves The Beatles…And after that, everything was different for people of my age. After that, music was our art form.” Like many of that time and after, Paul asked his mother to buy him a guitar. He started with an acoustic. A…

Send us a text Richard Leibowitz grew up in the Hudson Valley of New York to a father who listened to pre-1960s jazz and a mother who was more into folk music. Neither held much sway for young Richard, so he set out on his own and like a million other kids his age, KISS was the starting point for his music obsessions. Before working at Tower Record…

Send us a text Serge Bielanko was one of the leading forces behind the Philadelphia-based rock & roll band Marah. Part Replacements, part Van Morrison, part Phil Spector, part Rod Stewart & The Faces, part Philly & Motown soul, for years they were poised for success as the “next big rock & roll band”. Marah was a critic’s darling and counted some f…

Send us a text Growing up in a small town 50 miles outside of Los Angeles, Denise McDonald has a very clear memory of getting her first library card at the age of five. For most of her life, Denise has been a dedicated bibliophile. In this week’s episode, Denise tells us all about working book product at Tower. From friends at Sacramento State help…

Send us a text “I remember standing on the sidewalk, talking to Rick [Briare] and telling him I was interested in going [to the new San Diego store] and he basically said ‘Well we don’t hire girls’. “ Thus began Jennifer Birner’s journey, leaving the Watt Avenue Bookstore to help open a new Tower Records location in San Diego where, for a time, she…

Send us a text “ ‘There’s a place called Tower Records’ and the way that he described it, it was a supermarket of music! It’s got two stories. I was like, wow…I’ve gotta go there!” Not only did Pete Pataro *go* there, he had a 15-year career - starting in that Washington DC store, assistant managing in the brand new Annapolis store, and eventually …

Send us a text Kevin Winnick was working in Washington DC for a small chain of pop culture/entertainment-themed stores called Another Universe when he got a call from a headhunter saying a large company was looking to hire someone who could identify trends and had experience as a buyer. Though content where he was, Kevin took the interview and befo…

Send us a text Megan Jasper grew up in Worcester, Massachusetts an industrial town, just an hour outside of Boston. Megan remembers it as a tough place to grow up. As a young girl, her family would travel to Boston and she and her sister would hit Newbury Comics when there was only one store. As a teen, she traveled to Boston for punk rock shows. A…

Send us a text “He [George Scarlett] said that someone had suggested me for the position [Administrative Assistant] because I looked so intense when I worked. I don’t know what that really means. I guess it’s a good thing” And thus, another Tower career was born. Renee Tyler spent 12 years working as George Scarlett’s Administrative Assistant in Re…

Send us a text While Chris Hopson was putting together Tower Records’ in-house advertising agency, in a parallel universe, or at least somewhere else in California, Steve Nikkel was doing the same for a small independent chain of record stores called Eucalyptus Records, based out of Fairfield, California. When an opening became available, due to Mi…

Send us a text Joy Slusarek Proft spent 15 years working for Universal Music Distribution. Like many before her, she started as an FMR (Field Marketing Rep), and like few, she ended up as the Vice President of Sales located in Los Angeles. While calling on stores in Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma and Nebraska, Joy found herself with a new band called W…

Send us a text Matt Lavelle used to listen to music with his grandfather. No talking. No commentary. At a very young age, Matt simply observed how the music moved his grandfather and it had quite an impression on him. As he got older, after making regular visits to the Jazz Department at Tower 4th & Broadway, Matt took a job in Nanuet under Store M…

Send us a text Fuzzy Swing never worked for Tower Records, but he worked at Tower Records in San Francisco as an inventory rep and sales associate on behalf of RCA. In addition to Tower, he had several mom & pop independent stores in the Bay Area. In later years Fuzzy was promoted to sales covering the Sacramento area stores Tower Broadway, Tower C…

Send us a text On Friday February 16th, Kevin Cassidy passed away. We are rerunning our episode from September of 2022 featuring Kevin, along with a short introduction. Once we receive information about a Memorial Service for Kevin, we will post it on the "2500 DelMonte Street" Instagram and Facebook pages.…

Send us a text Long before she became the face and voice of NPR Music, Ann Powers was just a Catholic school girl and new wave music fan who in 1979 was guided on a musical journey by Chris, an influential Tower Mercer Street clerk. Chris regularly assisted and turned Ann on to some great groups and albums at Tower Seattle's landmark location. On t…

Send us a text “I remember thinking, if the light turns red, I’m turning in the parking lot and I’m going to do a bagcheck. If it’s green I’m going to sail on through and I’m going home. And sure as heck, it was red and I turned in [to the lot] and I’m going to do the bag check” It’s in moments like these that you make your mark. Only five days ear…

Send us a text MTS Not the company, the man. Michael T Solomon sits down with “2500 DelMonte Street” to discuss it all; his time with Russ & Doris, Tower Records, Bud Martin, Sunday school with Stan Goman, chauffeuring The Rolling Stones around town before their show in Sacramento, starting out at the Tower Drug Store, working at Watt Ave, Columbus…

Send us a text Darrin Roberts grew up in Southern California with a “Kevin Arnold-Wonder Years” type upbringing. After a neighbor suggested his mother take her 3 year old to a recently released “war movie”, he became obsessed with all things cinema. After getting his degree at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts he began working on a series of music fil…

Send us a text “I knew quite a bit about [Tower]. I knew Sunset was the mecca. So I just popped in one day and that’s how it all started” says this week’s guest Marty Bender Sobolweski. From his earliest memory of his grandmother pulling out a record player to his mother coming home from her temp job at Capitol Records in Cleveland with a box of fr…

Send us a text Our guest this week, Cathi Ronnenburg, remembers being on the phone with the Manager of a neighboring location when men in black suits swarmed her store. No, it wasn’t a Tower Records she was running at the time, but being busted by the FBI for the bootleg albums she and her company were selling is a pretty exciting start to record r…

Send us a text Not many people are “One Degree of Separation” from Kevin Bacon, but this week’s guest, Jason Sumney is. Growing up in Pittsburgh, PA, the son of a rabid record collector, Jason started his retail music career while in HIgh School at National Record Mart, a locally based, national chain that at its peak had 175 stores in 30 states. K…

Send us a text Rob Chapman likes The Rolling Stones. Wait…check that. Rob Chapman loooooves The Rolling Stones. Not only that, but he regularly corresponds with a couple of the guys in the band. Several years ago Rob wrote a book about a very interesting period in the band’s history, Ron Wood and Keith Richards’ side project The New Barbarians. Rob…

Send us a text Bob worked for Tower Records 18.5 years. Washington DC, Seattle, Toronto, Boston, Philadelphia and Lincoln Center NYC. He loved working for Tower so much, he made a podcast about it. After multiple requests, he’s being interviewed for his story today. Our guest host/interviewer needs no introduction; that’s why we’re not going to tel…

Send us a text “The goal was to work at a record store and then everybody eventually wanted to work for a label. I envied the label guys and then I went and married one.” If the name Betsy Altomare sounds a bit familiar, there’s a reason for that. Back on episode number 33 we interviewed her husband Keith Altomare, who told us how he and Betsy met …

Send us a text Mike Pompei grew up in a big Italian family just outside of Buffalo NY. His family was very musical and it seemed to rub off on Mike, who currently plays wineries and breweries throughout Sacramento. At the age of 12, just as his generation of pop music was becoming a priority, the Pompei family moved to the sunny enviorns of Sacrame…

Send us a text Christina Sharpe grew up in New York City, mostly on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Growing up in a household where music was always being played and appreciated, Christina took her love of jazz and soul music and added twists of Duran Duran, Level 42 and early 80’s East Coast Hip Hop to her repertoire. Christina started her Tower…

Send us a text When The Beatles hit America, it came at about the perfect time for Joe Medwick. Just months earlier, when he was 7 years old, his father had passed away, a crushing moment in young Joe’s life. But it wasn’t as though The Beatles were his introduction to music. Joe had older brothers and sisters with album collections he borrowed and…

Send us a text In the middle of a very long shift, working to get the brand new Dallas, TX store open, Rob Tolleson had no idea why Kevin Cassidy wanted to go out for coffee with him. “I thought I was in trouble” was his first thought. When Cassidy asked if Rob had ever considered working in management, Tolleson told him that he had not for the sim…

Send us a text Charles R. Cross isn’t our typical guest on 2500 DelMonte Street. He never ran a Tower store…never worked in a Tower store. But he had a lot of business and personal relationships with Tower Records, as well as being a steady customer. In the parking lot of the Tower Records at 5th & Mercer in Seattle, weeks before the release date, …

Send us a text Jim Barber had a 19-year career with Tower Records. Starting in 1987, Jim worked in the Classical Department in Washington DC with Rob Bruce as the store’s General Manager. After only a year on the job, Tower decided to open a location in Tyson’s Corner VA and Jim was one of three employees to transfer to help get the new suburban lo…

Send us a text Growing up in the suburbs of Chicago and a fan of female pop vocalists, Miguel Ortuno made his way to the then-new Tower Records store in Bloomingdale, IL to purchase his very first CD, “The Bodyguard” soundtrack featuring his favorite female singer, Whitney Houston. It wasn’t long after that Miguel applied for a job, was hired, and …

Send us a text Geoff Mayfield has had a long and illustrious career in the music business. Starting as an Editor for a Columbus, OH music magazine called “Focus”, it wasn’t long before Geoff found himself behind the microphone at WBBY jazz radio. Geoff’s background in both music journalism and radio stood out to an executive at Camelot Music, the m…

Send us a text With a father who was primarily a jazz drummer, but would play all kinds of local pickup gigs (and still plays today at 87 years young) music came naturally to a blooming Mike Redmond. So it’s no surprise an early career in music retail came naturally to young Mike. Starting in Sherman Oaks under the tutelage of Dave Montes, Redmond …

Send us a text “My interactions with the ‘higher ups’ after I moved to Annapolis largely consisted of [them saying] ‘When are you going to stop doing this?’ and me saying ‘You hired me to do the job, either fire me or shut the hell up ’ ” Scott Edward Phelps had an interesting journey at Tower Records. Moving to Nashville with his bandmates to stri…

Send us a text If you worked in a Tower Records store or at the corporate offices in Sacramento and had issues with a computer, chances are you probably talked to our guest this week, John Correa. Leaving his life as a member of a local Break Dance crew, John started working for Tower at the TVID warehouse in 1988. John’s first professional endeavo…

Send us a text This week’s episode takes us away from the coasts and back into the heartland. Jen Gies is originally from Chicago and it was at Tower Records on Clark Street where she began her career with the company, hired in as a Holiday temp employee. As luck would have it, her first day working at Tower happened to be the same her favorite ban…

Send us a text Don Erwin started with Tower in 1972 and was a Manager for Tower Posters from 1973-1978. He worked for Dick Harris whose MTS Inc’s employee number was 1. Dick, Don and MTS eventually got smart and spun off Tower Posters' success by becoming California Posters, later CP Rock, one of the country’s premier distributors of counterculture…

Send us a text Travis Michael Anderson grew up in Yakima, WA more than 2 hours from Seattle. A classical brass player, Travis moved to the Bellevue WA area and applied to Tower Records Bellevue. He was turned down because he didn’t have enough retail experience. For the same reason he was turned down at Barnes & Noble and ended up working for Where…

Send us a text When Tim Wessman started working at Tower, it was never previously on his radar. Tim was immediately impressed by the level of devotion his co-workers had for music. He felt an immediate fit when he started working for Tower. With no portfolio he interviewed for the Artist position at the Berkley Video store and he was hired by Sue P…

Send us a text “College Boy” Greg Harrington started working at Tower Records Burlington MA and did so well on his first day of register, they threw him back in receiving to do pricing. Not the usual path to working in the receiving department, but our guest this week didn’t have a conventional career at Tower Records. Burlington MA, the big store …

Send us a text Pam Hopson first began working for Tower Records/MTS Inc. in 1976. But unlike many, Pam had to pay to get the job. One of the employment agencies Russ Solomon used back in the early days charged the employee and not just a little bit. Pam paid $400 in 1976 ($2,137 in 2023 dollars) to get a job doing what she did best at the time; run…

Send us a textDi Bob Zimmerman

Send us a textDi Bob Zimmerman

Send us a text As a 13 year old from Southern California Russ Eisenman listened to KROQ, stole quarters from his step-father’s nightstand and went to Tower Records in Campbell to buy cassettes recommended to him by one of the store’s clerks. This opened up Russ’ depth and knowledge of popular music. Many years later Russ Eisenman started with Tower…