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Erik Flannigan is a writer, music archivist and Manager currently based out of Los Angeles. He started shopping at Tower Records in Tacoma, WA thanks to a yearly Gift Certificate a relative would send him each Christmas. He worked at Tower Records Tacoma for one year with Jeff Prey as GM and Tony Siegel as Assistant Manager. He would go on to be Editor of Backstreets Magazine and a staff member of Seattle's legendary music paper, The Rocket. Flannigan left Seattle for LA in 1992 and was on the forefront of web based music journalism. He spent a considerable amount of time as a Vice President at MTV Networks and is now the Manager for music artists Raphael Saadiq and The National. Flannigan talks about his father's obsessive music collection of 78 recordings, Erik's 3 favorite concerts of all time, how shopping and working at Tower Records shaped his sensibilities as a music collector. Erik also believes that before Starbucks, Tower Records was the original "third place". We also talk about the film/cassette project from a couple years ago celebrating legendary concert taper Mike Millard with the "Juicy Sonic Magic" recordings of The National.