Groove is in the heart

He can’t wait to see what surprises lie inside for both him and the owners who are looking to sell unwanted or collectable albums.

Mark, 48, is one of the owners of family-run Keswick Collectables in the town’s St John’s Street.

He’s been a record dealer for more than 20 years and the store has recently increased the floorspace it dedicates to vinyl sales and displays.

Mark says it is due to the resurgence of the format, particularly among a new generation of music fans.

“Record sales have just gone up and up, particularly over the last five years,” he said.

“We’re getting an awful lot more younger people coming in who’ve been given record players for Christmas. It is lovely and makes me so happy to see their faces coming in and taking a look.

“I know when I was a kid what innocent pleasure there was in buying a record and taking it home to play and that is happening again now.

“Seeing kids of 13, 14, 15 coming in and talking about what they like, it’s great.”

He added: “What I also love about my job is that I do not know what is going to walk through the door. When people walk in with a box or a plastic bag it’s like being a kid on Christmas Eve. You simply do not know what is going to be in there.

“Sometimes you can be talking £300-£500 an album so it means a plastic bag could contain £1,000 or £2,000 worth of records. That’s the exception but it can happen.”

Mark has also reunited one man with an album he lost more than 40 years ago.

“He was on holiday in Keswick when he popped in with his son. He was telling me about this record he’d lost at a party years ago while his son was looking through the records. 

"He was shocked to hear that a copy would sell for £100 and then his son said he had to look at the copy he’d found because it had its writing on the back. I can’t remember the title but I know it was filed under X, Y or Z,” said Mark.

“So many albums have stories behind them.”

Mark once bought a rare copy of Vertigo’s Dr Z album for £200, selling it on for four times as much. He later discovered that it later was sold on for £4,500.

But the 48-year-old says most records “are not worth a bean”.

“Some things are no longer in fashion. Nowadays that’s things like country and western, classical, easy listening,” he said.

“What has recently plummeted in value is rock and rock, people like Elvis. I think that’s mostly because the younger generation who are getting into the music scene are into the likes of The Beatles, The Kinks, Stones. Today’s modern bands are inspired by them too, so those who were inspired by the rock and roll of the fifties are getting older and there are simply not as many of them around any more.

“Progressive rock is always popular on vinyl,” he added. “And five years ago I couldn’t sell eighties music, now everyone can’t get enough of it.”

Mark says CDs have lost their appeal with the mass market in today’s world of streaming music online.

“You don’t get the same attachment to a CD as you do with an album on vinyl,” he said.

“With an album you can pick it up, read it cover to cover, enjoy the ones that come with posters, lyric sheets, and pictures. A CD is something you maybe grab to put in the car, but that’s about it. Sales have plummeted.”

Latest industry figures reveal that demand for vinyl continues to soar - with predictions that 2016 could see sales reach a new 30-year high.

LP sales for the year are already heading towards the 3m-plus mark after just the first quarter, the UK's record labels' body forecasts.

The best part of 640,000 albums were bought during the first three months of this year by music fans.

A growing number were snapped up by younger people, those who were not brought up with the original format.

The Official Charts has told the BPI that a total of 637,056 LPs were bought between January and March - an increase of more than 60 per cent on the same period a year ago.

The biggest-selling title was David Bowie’s Blackstar.

In just three months to the end of March Blackstar sold nearly twice as many copies on LP as the top vinyl seller for all 2015 – Adele’s 25, which achieved its sales in just a few weeks before Christmas after its release last November.

David Bowie - who died in January following a battle with cancer - also posthumously accounted for three of the top 10 LPs in the first quarter, with a fourth at number 11 in the Official Vinyl Charts.

There were also four David Bowie recordings in the top-10 best-selling singles of the quarter, including Golden Years topping the list and Space Oddity third.

Vinyl’s share of the country's album market also nearly doubled to 3.9 per cent over the first three months of 2016, up from 2.1 per cent over the same period twelve months ago.

This pattern follows a similar rate of growth of 64 per cent for all of 2015, when LP sales climbed for an eighth successive year to 2.1 million units – a 21 year high.

If the trend continues this year, the BPI says that LP sales will smash through the three million milestone and could even top 3.5 million - a figure that most likely hasn't been seen since the end of the 1980s.

The resurgence of vinyl is proving so popular that supermarket giant Sainsbury’s announced last month that it was going to stock records in 171 of its stores for the first time since the 1980s.

Rival Tesco made a similar move in December.

Records are also on the shelves at HMV stores, including the specialist retailer’s branch in Workington.

Independent electrical retailer Peter Tyson, which has branches in Carlisle and Workington, has also seen a revolution in turntable sales.

Peter Tyson hopes to boost its hi-fi and music provision further when its Carlisle stores are brought under one roof in the city later this year.

The firm is relocating its Carlisle operations to Shaddongate as it marks its 50th anniversary.

Matthew Tyson, one of four directors of the family firm, said: “The increase in our turntable sales in the last five years is probably around 25-30 per cent.

Matthew Tyson “We’ve never stopped supporting vinyl and what we’re seeing now is that more and more people have turntables in their living rooms and are enjoying, keeping and listening to vinyl.

“The mass market has discovered the format again, vinyl has become cool, and we know it is still the best quality for sound and the nicest format for music.

“The iPad generation have come through and are now in their 20s and 30s. They are looking for things to keep and love and enjoy, that’s where they’re finding vinyl again.”

Alan and Libby Thomson run The Music Box in Botchergate, Carlisle, and boast a collection of more than 20,000 records.

They attract interest from dealers and collectors from across the world.

“We’ve seen it get busier and busier over the last few months in particular,” said Alan, 57, of Cotehill.

“A lot of it is coming from younger people who are finding out about music.

“We were approached by a company recently who will be selling new albums later in the year and are looking for outlets. It’s something we’re in discussions about.”

A new worldwide phenomenon has helped boost the popularity of vinyl.

Record Store Day, which started in the US back in 2008, was celebrated by traders on Saturday and is organised by the Entertainment Retail Association.

There are only a handful of independent records stores remaining in Cumbria but the revival of vinyl could see numbers rise.

A new record store is set to open in Carlisle’s Abbey Street after plans were passed by the city council last December.

The application lodged by Dacre man James Brown stated that the store would sell new and used records along with vintage record players.

He said: “The vinyl LP has always been a way to actually listen to music in a way that connects more realistically to the original vision of what the artist intended when recording.

“I think the resurgence has been growing steadily over the last five years or so with a younger generation once again searching for something more real and finding artists that actually release an album on vinyl along with a download code so the listener gets the best of both worlds.”