Ep. 18 Sharon Vitro (Boston, Nanuet, Sunset)

2500 DelMonte Street: The Oral History of Tower Records

This week’s guest has an extensive music retail resume. Prior to working at Tower Records Sharon Vitro worked for Record Town, a New England music retailer for six years. She ran stores in Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts before quitting over a ridiculous corporate policy. The next day Sharon was working at Tower Records on 360 Newbury Street where she worked for 5 years, briefly with Greg Wallis and then with Robert Stapleton.

Leaving Boston, she worked for Tower throughout the country with a who’s who of some of Tower’s best; The Southwest Regional Office where she was Kevin Cassidy’s assistant , General Manager of Nanuet LI where Steve Harman was the regional and San Diego, Brea and the last General Manager of the fabled Sunset Store where she worked with Bob Feterl.

Regarding Sunset, Sharon remember one particular morning when there were 3 staff members on the sales floor and the customers included Elton John, Elvis Costello, Diana Krall and 50Cent. These kind of shopping “drop ins” were so frequent, staff members and records reps first words were often “Who did I miss?” Sharon eventually put a sign up on the back room refrigerator listing what musicians and actors had shopped there that day and staff members would write what they were wearing, what they bought and other snarky comments.

The biggest event Sharon oversaw was an “unsanctioned” Prince in store in March of 2006 for “3121” when they were asked qt 4:30pm if Prince could play at the store at Midnight. Realizing that it wasn’t a joke and not having had the event approved with by city of West Hollywood, Sharon and the Sunset crew had an insane day they’d long remember.