Record Collector

The king of the indie record stores in Sheffield, RECORD COLLECTOR, based in the suburb of Broomhill on Fulwood Road, opened in 1978. It was a shrewd choice, on a direct route between many of the main student halls of residence and the University buildings. Plus punk had thrown the record industry into semi-chaos.

Record Collector was started by owner Barry Everard who had been working at Virgin in town, hired straight out of University when their store manager heard him chatting to another customer and was impressed by his knowledge! But after a few years, Barry tired of Virgin becoming increasingly corporate and so started Record Collector. Originally a vinyl shop, when CDs came onto the market a few years later, Barry expanded into the premises next door, knocked the new shop through front to back and made one big compact disc department. Here he put new stock, and an extensive second-hand section. If you persevered through this, you could (and can still) get good reductions on quite new titles. The vinyl is still sold from the original store, with stock culled from a vast amount of records housed on the two floors above which Barry has assiduously built up over thirty years. Even John Peel shopped here when he was in the area.

Record Collector has been a stalwart so long now, and outlasted most of the city centre stores, that it’s hard to imagine the place without it. It was in the window that many local bands in the immediate post-punk era would be able to display their home-pressed debut vinyl offerings. I remember seeing the first privately pressed EP by The Comsat Angels in the window when it first appeared (their singer much later manned the vinyl department at Record Collector for some months – the in-store music has never sounded so good!). The store also used to offer a notice board for musicians to get in touch with bands looking for new members.

I still regard it almost as a duty to go there first for any particular title. You should too.

Simon Robinson