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“That was the first time that music really hit me on an emotional level” says this week’s guest, Jackson Griffith, when discussing the first time he heard The Beach Boys. Jackson came from a broken home and a friend of his mother gave him a transistor radio where he first discovered & loved early Motown and the 60’s girl groups. It was at his first concert in 1969 that he heard a band, Santana, two months before their debut album was released.

Jackson tried for a long time to get a job at Tower Stockton but was stiffed by the managers. When Phil Minas took over as manager in 1977 he hired him. Jackson did store artwork and slowly grew into a jazz fanatic As things got crazy in the store (have a gun pulled on you for not returning two LPs?) Jackson moved out to the brand new 24 hour Tower store in Las Vegas.

Jackson bounced around Tower locations until a legal matter caused him to leave the company and he moved back to Stockton to deal with it. He returned to Tower in 1983 at the new Stockton location with Tom Pompei at the helm, but hisgoal was to get out of working in the store and work in the Corporate Office. Seeing a notice for an editorial assistant at PULSE! Magazine, Jackson submitted a number of record reviews to Mike Farrace and was hired.

At PULSE! Jackson found his voice and jumped into magazine production and writing. Not every assignment wentaccording to plan. Artist Shelby Lynne simply did not want to be interviewed the day he showed up to talk to her. And how do you spend a week in Minneapolis profiling The Replacements? Drunk enough to have tapes full of gibberish, calling the band on the phone to get quotes to flesh out your story.

Jackson talks about all of this and more in a wide-ranging episode you won’t want to miss.

044 Jackson Griffith (Stockton, Las Vegas, PULSE! Magazine) 01:11:43 Share

2500 DelMonte Street: The Oral History of Tower Records

Shownotes Transcript

044 Jackson Griffith (Stockton, Las Vegas, PULSE! Magazine)