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Dub Vendor is a long-standing, and pioneering, London vendor of Ska and Reggae music that now is mainly a London-based mail order company specialising in Jamaican music. In 2006, TimeOut magazine termed it "the best source of Jamaican music in Europe" A visit to Dub Vendor is online at the Internet Archive.
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History
Founded by John MacGillivray in 1976, Dub Vendor began life as a market stall in London's Clapham Junction in response to the considerable lack of West Indian music at the time. Clapham Junction at that time was a poor inner suburb, and the surging population of immigrants from the West Indies made Battersea and nearby Brixton their new homes. The stall, and the shop that followed, were instant successes, and the second Dub Vendor store (or 'record shack' as it's known) opened four years later in Ladbroke Grove right next to the Underground station.
In response to London's reggae scene flourishing in the early 1980s, larger premises were required to cater for the increasing demand for reggae, ska, and allied genres. Subsequently, 274 Lavender Hill became Dub Vendor's flagship store and also the home of its home-brew recording studio label, Fashion Records.
The Ladbroke Grove shack continued to operate alongside the Lavender Hill store until 1991, when it was moved down the road to 150 Ladbroke Grove, due to the lack of space in the shack to accommodate the ever-increasing patronage of reggae lovers.
The future for the Ladbroke Grove branch began to look bleak, however, as sales fell and the rent increased. The final nail in the coffin came in 2007 in the form of the Western Extension, which resulted in the store closing its doors to the public just over a year later on 28 June 2008.
Dub Vendor today
As of September 2015, Dub Vendor now have a physical shop on Portobello Road in the Mau Mau Bar, a legendary live music venue in Ladbroke Grove.