The Music Room

Name: The Kevster
Comment: For mainstream rock albums it was The Music Room, which allowed you to listen to records in a booth before you bought (they had another branch in nearby Tonbridge).

Name: telegramsam
Comment: Singles upstairs in the main area with listening booths at the rear - and a really funky, darkly lit basement with an oil wheel adding psychedelic colours to the two listening booths down there. It smelled of damp and incense and I simply adored the place.

Name: Ivan Marchant
Comment: I loved The Music Room- my choice of venue for 45s and LPs. Didn't go to the Tunbridge Wells shop myself. Had a great selection of posters too as I recall. The ladies who served were all rock chicks (if indeed I can still say that) - Angie, who was about 25 then was one in 1979. She was killed in a car accident with her boyfriend a few years later, 1982/83. Short blonde hair with an Annie Lennox look, the stuff of a younger man's fantasies. The only shop in Tonbridge to stock the new wave of British heavy metal. The lower floor was the place for such people, darkly lit and it was there that I knew I belonged. Very much missed.
(2022)

Name: Michelle Loetz, née Chilard
Comment: I used to work in The Music Room in Tunbridge Wells, Monson Road in the mid- to late 1970s. I was based downstairs in the red-painted basement with its listening booths and oil lamp filter. I adored it. The arrival of piles of then-new stuff, Wish You Were Here wrapped in black plastic and all warped so they had to be returned! A Night at the Opera... I long to have a photo or two of the shop because we didn't take any back then before mobiles... we had great wall displays too... guys used to come and redecorate. I remember the Never Mind The Bollocks poster which my then boyfriend later acquired.... Tony Prebble was a lovely boss to work for, and he had another branch in Tonbridge too.
(2022)

Name: Paul Crook
​​​​​​​Comment: I brought my first Beatles records there back in the early/mid-1970s with my paper round money. I used to love going into the booths to listen to a few tracks. I didn't always buy the album I listened to but really enjoyed my time in the shop. I would love to hear from anyone who has a photo of the shop, inside or outside.
(2023)