A small record shop on Portobello Road is one of London's musical institutions. Aaron Coultate explores its remarkable history.
As the Hammersmith & City line tube rattles across a bridge
between Westbourne Park and Ladbroke Grove stations, you get a brief
glimpse of the Honest Jon's shopfront on Portobello Road. Early on a
December morning in 2014, Alan Scholefield, the shop's co-owner, peered
out from the train on his way to work. He saw a crowd of around 15
people huddled in the chilly air outside Honest Jon's, waiting for it to
open.
When he arrived a couple of minutes later, Scholefield took the names of everyone in the crowd and made sure they all got what they were after: Woman / Midnight, a 12-inch with two legendary Loefah tunes that hadn't been released on vinyl until now. For Scholefield, who's worked at Honest Jon's for 27 years, the morning was "one of those weird little events that sums up the time we're in as record sellers." He's not just talking about the level of excitement but its provenance. People were simultaneously clamouring for Woman / Midnight online, over the phone and inside the shop. Scholefield fielded calls from as far afield as Australia and Canada, and the allocation on the Honest Jon's website sold out within minutes.
"We're suddenly in a period where it's de rigueur to buy records," says Scholefield. "We still never seem to make any money, but we certainly sell a lot of vinyl and we pay our bills. It feels like yesterday, but it was probably ten years ago, when there were no deadlines, you just came and hoped for some action. But now, you're under pressure to get the stuff in, to get it out, to arrange this, arrange that. It's genuinely perky."
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