Who is popular today?

Record Store Day will have music fans queuing up this weekend – but how do these shops survive, and what do they bring to the high street in 2023? Our writer puts in a shift at Jumbo in Leeds to find outAs a teenager in Leeds in the 1980s, the centre of my universe was Jumbo Records. I bought all my New Order and Smiths singles there. The tiny unit in the Merrion Centre shopping precinct even hosted one of my earliest conversations with a pop star, when Billy Bragg played an in-store gig with loudspeakers on his shoulders. My week was geared around listening to John Peel, reading NME, watching Top of the Pops and heading to Jumbo on a Saturday to pick up the latest vinyl treasure.“Saturday was like Record Store Day is now, but every week,” remembers Choque Hosein, who worked in Jumbo then. “People queued up for us to open and then they’d be four deep at the counter. One of the most memorable moments was when Blue Monday came out. We were just handing them over the counter in Jumbo bags, one after another. It was the same when Frankie Goes to Hollywood released Relax.” Continue reading...