Keep on Track-ing

IT began in a dry cleaners' shop and 25 years and two moves later, Track Records is still on track in York. Down the years, 78, 45 and 33 have been the significant numbers in the pop music world, but tomorrow 25 will be the figures on the birthday cake when Keith Howe and the staff of his independent record shop in High Ousegate celebrate Track's silver anniversary.

Keith had begun by selling records on a York market stall before taking the plunge at 19 and opening his first shop at No 50 Fossgate.

"It was Mr Tebb's dry cleaners at the time, and when I moved in, Mr Tebb carried on at the back doing his contract cleaning and I rented the shop at the front," Keith recalls. "It was great that he took a flier on me. I was just 19, and there I was, wanting to open a record shop on a rent of £3,200 a year, thinking 'Oh god, that's a load of money'.

"So I borrowed two grand off the NatWest Bank and of course I'd been saving like a Trojan on the market stall - and I still have the notebooks with details of expenditure, like paying £250 for an Escort van."

At the time, there were no record superstores, no HMV or Virgin Megastores, and no supermarket record racks. Track was competing in a market place far removed from the price-cutting warzone of today.

"There was Feelgood Records at the bottom end of Goodramgate on the right, and Red Rhino, which was in Gillygate, and Sound Effects in King's Square, and of course Banks Music in Lendal, which has always been there!," says Keith.

"So it was different, but places like W H Smith and Boots and Woolworths did sell records, and Comet were still doing them...or maybe they had just stopped because I bought up their LP racks."

Did it help that he was already an obsessive music fan? "Yeah, I suppose so. I first bought Terry Jacks' Seasons In the Sun on seven-inch vinyl when I was 14 and two years later, in 1976, I was selling ex-jukebox singles on Saturdays and in the school holidays, because my parents had market stalls in York," Keith says.

"My dad ran the sweet stall on the end, and he had the second stall in, so I nicked that for my jukebox stock and then I started selling new albums."

The family was living in Sheffield, where Keith had been studying art at Granville College.

"My mum and dad finally found a house in York in February 1978 and by then I was 18, and I said I would come with them but only if I could have a shop within a couple of years," he recalls.

College over, he focused initially on the market. "It was a case of casual work. At the time it was a vicious game trying to get a market stall, which was very depressing, and I was only making a bit of money out of the poxy stall, so that inspired me to think I should start a shop," he says.

He opened the shop with no advertising."I just opened the door, and I believe I took £89 on the first day," says Keith, whose stock combined chart albums with more specialist records from the very start.

"In the early days we had Motley Crue records before they had a proper record deal and Bon Jovi records before they had a British release."

Track Records moved to Coppergate in 1985 - "I was fed up of being the last port of call and we desperately needed a better shop and a better location" - but the rent tripled, the overheads were massive, and Keith had to borrow money for the £20,000 refit. There was a cash-flow shortfall, despite increased turnover. "I nearly threw in the towel in 1986.

"I remember going home and sitting in front of my parents and telling them it just wasn't working," he says.

The move ultimately worked out, however. Keith opened a second shop, in Doncaster, and set up the Track Records mail order service with colleague Alan Beecroft that now contributes 20 per cent of Track's business.

Clients include Andy Kershaw, the BBC Radio3 world music presenter.

By 1992, Track was on the move again to its present two-floored premises in High Ousegate.

The record industry has changed and continues to change.

Cassettes have vanished, replaced by CDs and now DVDs; vinyl has gone out of fashion and back in again; records can now be bought on the Internet and stored like a digital mobile library on iPod; and for the first time, record enthusiasts in their 40s and 50s are spending more than teenagers on music.

HMV and Virgin, supermarkets and even petrol stations are providing ever more competition in York.

Keith, however, will fight his ground, refusing to join in the vogue for price-slashing.

"When we moved here, there was no stupid price cutting, no supermarket tactics, but we've gone deeper and deeper into mail order, which has allowed us to get a bigger range, and I still feel there's room for the independent record shop," he says.

"The backbone of the business is music - and it's a wide range of music. We sell T-shirts, posters, badges, DVDs, but the core of the business is still music."

Track Records has 12 staff in York, five in Doncaster, and the service continues to move with the times, be it embracing the expanding music DVD market or providing a website with daily updates of the stock in store.

"I've seen the news reports talking about the death of the music biz but I think they're sensationalising it, because the biggest down-loaders are also the biggest record buyers.

"I used to tape off the radio but I didn't stop there; I went out and bought the records," says Keith.

"I remember those stickers that used to say 'Taping Is Killing Music'...but it didn't."

Famous fives

Five celebrities who have gone record-hunting in Track Records

Van Morrison

Robert Plant

Britt Ekland

Rula Lenska

Lightning Seeds' Ian Broudie

Five personal appearances in Track Records

Lonnie Donegan

East 17

Adam Ant

Massive Attack

Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson

Five of Keith Howe's favourite bands

Little Feat

Steely Dan

Free

Led Zeppelin

Golden Earring

Updated: 10:05 Thursday, April 08, 2004