Nigel Overton dropped us an email to say not to forget Rare & Racy in our Sheffield record shop a-z, which he remembers as “a good second hand record shop in the mid to late 1970s.” And indeed it was, so we are remiss in not yet covering it in more details as both of us visited here innumerable times over four decades. Indeed I think along with Record Collector in Broomhill, this is one of the cities best know indie shops.

Rare & Racy first opened in the centre of Sheffield at 164/166 Devonshire Green, two small shops knocked together at some point, and was started by John Capes. It quickly became a destination point for Sheffield’s alternative culture, stocking fanzines, agitprop works, as well as it’s main business – lots of second hand books (with an upstairs devoted to rarer titles and prints, and some printed ephemera) and of course VINYL (and later tapes and CDs) in the right hand downstairs side of the shop. Not only did Rare & Racy have lots of second hand stock but they also championed local indie labels and the edgier improv and jazz scenes (which they played in store). There was also a good stock of classical vinyl in the backroom which I used to rummage through looking for interesting sleeves. For much of its nearly 50 years the key figure for most of Race and Racy’s record customers was Joe Mhlongo.

John opened a second shop up on South Road in 1974 which was basically his family home. However he sensibly realised that the front room shop – an old butchers – was worth keeping and so filled that with books as well, albeit with restricted opening hours. It’s easy to forget that back in the 1970s South Road was a mecca for small indie shops and there was also the original Untitled Photographers Gallery (now know as The Site gallery), which was brilliant back then (you know, real photographs rather than effing digital art!). As well as exhibitions, you could hire time in their darkrooms to do your own printing which I did for some time. But the area slowly changed as buy to let landlords bought up property, converted shops to student lets, and footfall fell away. I don’t know when this branch of Rare & Racy stopped opening.

The Devonshire Green shop continued to serve Sheffield, and they even survived having to rebuild the shop facade later on when the original brick began to fail structurally (they continued to stay open, operating out of a portakabin at the back of the building). John passed the reins of the main shop at Devonshire Green on to his brother in the late 1990s after moving to Staithes to open a … second hand book business (albeit online).
Rare & Racy survived and only finally closed in July 2017. Not because the owner Allen Capes wanted to, but because of the spineless attitude of the city council, who have always hated independent retail. This interesting Victorian terrace was by then one of very few left in the city centre, but they allowed the owners of the site to evict all the tenants.

Today, thanks to the wonders of the interweb, the shop’s old Faecbook page is still viewable and a fuzzy walk round video can be viewed

You can also view the shop on Trip Advisor and many other sites. And lest we forget, Nick Robinson and Martin Archer from Sheffield’s music scene played a short improv set inside the shop to mark the end.

The irony in all this of course is that the council are now scared witless by the decline of the city centre as a shopping destination, having sat by watching it all go to pieces and actively taking part in or encouraged the destruction of so much of it (like so many we now go to Chesterfield or Bakewell for a mooch). And to rub salt in the wound the Rare & Racy shop is still stood there – having now been empty for nearly ten fucking years. Just another entry on a property landlord’s portfolio spreadsheet.

As far as we can remember Rare & Racy never did print bags for the record ‘department’. Sleeves were on display and vinyl stored behind the counter, with each inner sleeve rubber stamped with their lovely Victorian logo, which also appeared on the brown paper sleeves.

If you have any stories about the shop and vinyl you bought there, or any photographs, do get in touch

With thanks to John Capes. Simon Robinson