Photograph
The Deaf Institute
25th May 2008

Vinyl Exchange celebrated its 20th birthday party last night at The Deaf Institute. Manchester's largest second hand record shop has made it through two decades...

Vinyl Exchange was opened in 1988 by Mark Jarratt and Jo Bindley. Mark and Jo had both worked at Reckless Records in London and decided that it was time to start their own shop. I'm not sure why they chose Manchester, as neither of them are from here - Mark is from Wolverhampton and Jo is a London lad.

The shop opened at 20 Oldham St.

Oldham St at that time was still a grotty strip of cheap shops and dingy pubs. The rent was minimal. It is probably partly due to the shop opening there that area started becoming more 'trendy'. Afflecks was already there and Eastern Bloc opened about this time too. (Dry Bar opened 3 years later a few doors away, followed by Piccadilly Records and Fat City Records). Opening with a pretty good stock, the shop immediately started to get busy and it wasn't long before two new members of staff were taken on - Steve Yates (now a writer for magazines such as The Word), and Adrian Gent, (soon to become a Dj under the moniker Adrian Luvdup). It was perfect timing - taking on Steve and Adrian meant that there was now a reasonable amount of expertise, covering most genres of music. Steve and Jo knew their 'Black Music' and 'Punk' well, Mark was 'Rock' and Adrian 'Dance'. The house boom had just started and the VE must've been one of the first shops in the country to start dealing in rare dance records and quickly became well known amongst the Dj set who bought and sold their records there. It also became a big outlet for second hand CDs and rare promos.

I started working there in summer 1990 (I was 'Indie' and 'Rock'). It was a dream come true! The wages were fantastic (for a second hand record shop), it was a four day week, the hours were good, the discounts good and it was a great place to work.

The shop was doing extremely well - on a saturday it was pretty much impossible to move, every foot of the floor space was packed with punters. It is hard to believe how busy it got and we used to wonder at why people came on a Saturday it was just so uncomfortably busy! To this day I still believe that, for it's size, VE must have been the busiest shop in Britain on a Saturday afternoon- really.

It wasn't uncommon for all the staff (now about 5-6 of us at this time) to all go out clubbing together, and I think we must have gone out drinking together after work pretty much every day. It was a great time for the shop and also a great time to be in Madchester.

The shop would have a monthly listing in the Record Collector magazine that did us very well too. The stock was so good and we would put aside certain items just for the listing which got us a great name around the world, and the mail order dept blossomed. I was put in charge of mail order and really enjoyed it. It seems like eons ago now and whenever I see Record Collector these days I feel a bit sorry for it, Ebay has nearly totally destroyed the magazine. I used to love going through all the lists of records people were selling. The mag would phone us and ask us for advice on discographies and pricing sometimes.

Many famous people would come in - some became regulars. Whenever a touring band played manchester it was common to see a couple of them in the shop marveling at it's impressive stock. This and the next 5-6 years was really the shop's heyday. It took on many new members of staff, I became a manager and we moved to a much bigger space next door at number 18 - it's present position on the corner of Oldham St and Dale St. (It used to be Harry Hall's bike shop). Eventually after being empty for a while Fat City Records moved into the old space next door. Being surrounded by new-stock record shops was a great thing for the VE.

The shop carried on doing very well in it's new prominent position. Oldham St became the centre of the new trendy Northern Quarter, and the area started attracting more interesting shops and businesses.

Jo and Mark decided to open a smaller shop on Bridge Street, off Deansgate which would only sell CDs. This shop was also where the successful mail order dept. and the shops office was based. By this time i think there were about 25 people working at the VE!

However with the huge number of staff, rising rents and overheads and more differing opinions than ever before things started to change at the VE. Staff fall-outs became more common and the mood changed. Around this time Mark decided he'd been at the shop long enough and sold his share to Jo and eventually moved out of Manchester to Shropshire and raised a family.

To cut a long story short the shops started struggling - Ebay became the biggest outlet for people selling their old records and cds, and with the opening of shops such as Fopp, the internet explosion and cheap broadband selling music from a shop has become a fairly difficult task. (Don't get me wrong - the shops still tick over, it can still be quite busy and the mail order dept is still successful.)

Luckily I had started working for the band Doves (old friends of mine from back in the clubbing days) and in 2002 handed in my notice. I left the shop. I had been there 11 years.

I still keep in touch with many of the staff - some are still my best friends.