Vinyl Night

Wenhaston is a small Suffolk village that lies along the foot of a sandy ridge. Below the village there are old fields, hedges, marshes and woods. At least one local farm has gone over to catering for tourists and that is how we found ourselves in a cabin nearby.

On the edge of the village the Star Inn sits in a narrow wooded lane about 8 miles from the sea: too far from the coast to rely purely on tourists for it's survival. The landlord has to take care of the locals too.

The tourists want meals and a bit of atmosphere, while the locals probably want a good pint at a reasonable price and the chance to socialise with neighbours. What everyone wants is a warm welcome. Happily the Star seems to please everyone and we certainly had a couple of memorable evenings in there. Small hand-bills proclaimed a "Bring Your Own Vinyl Night" and we vowed to return and join in.

We have quite a good collection of vinyl albums at home, but they are not the sort of thing you take on holiday. Luckily we had a means to get them to us through Dan's carers who were travelling up to join us. Hanna ordered up her copy of Carole King's "Tapestry" and some Cat Stevens and I asked for the big brown gatefold double album "Deja Vu" by Crosby, Stills and Nash. Unfortunately the carers forgot to bring them, but the story didn't end there.

You can pick up vinyl records at a lot of charity shops and there are some really good ones in Southwold and in Aldeburgh, but we went one better by visiting "The Vinyl Frontier" in Westleton. Hanna and Dan waited in the car while I had the first look.  I fancied replacing long lost copies of singles such as "Sabre Dance" by Love Sculpture,  "America"  by the Nice, "Wheels on Fire" by Brian Auger and the Trinity or "On the Road Again" by Canned Heat.

This amazing musical emporium is situated in a garden shed along-side an innocent looking house in the main street. The owners literally led me up the garden path, bearing a big bunch of keys and beckoned me inside. It would have taken me a couple of hours to work over the collection properly, but by then I would be in big trouble within my family. Even when I concentrated on the boxes of "cheapies" I could not find what I was looking for so I plumped for a few classic singles: "She's Not There" by the Zombies, the Stones' "Ruby Tuesday" and Beatles' "Got to Get You Into My Life".  For Hanna I picked up albums by Simon and Garfunkel and James Taylor. The whole lot cost a tenner! I must go back to check-out the working American jukebox and so much more.


My Dad was a real audiophile. He worked as an electrical engineer but would also describe himself as a musician.  Jazz was his thing; the jazz of the 40s and 50s, and he liked it LOUD. Our next-door neighbours, the King family, complained about the noise all the time but he went ahead and built his own hi-fi system. Well before stereo arrived, he reconditioned an old gramophone unit; a beautifully veneered piece of furniture with a lid and a pair of opening doors. The deck, which was inset into the top, ran at multiple speeds which you controlled with a lever so you could speed up or slow down a track to suit your taste. If you wanted to play the speeds accurately you needed to calibrate it using a cardboard disk that you placed on the turntable. Concentric black and white "bar codes" were labelled 33 1/3, 45 and 78 rpm. As you ran the machine, the spinning bars would appear to stop and then spin backwards, like the waggon-wheels on old movies.  It was called a stroboscope.

I can't really remember the amplifier, but I think it was set vertically into the woodwork by the deck. It woulkd have had valves do must have been quite bulky. It had 3 "Radio-Spares" Bakelite knobs on a brass plate and these simply controlled volume, bass and treble. The speaker was the big deal.

The problem with big speakers is that they cause the cabinet to vibrate. You need a solid case that does not resonate, but in those days there was only wood, or plywood or steel and they all vibrated. The answer was to build the speaker into the corner of the room so that two walls of the "cabinet" were made of brick. The front side of the triangular cabinet was made of two sheets of plywood set about an inch apart and you filled the gap with sand to stop the boards from resonating. The plywood front had to be cut to fit your speakers and we had a huge "woofer" and a smaller "tweeter".  The bass was incredible but the rest of it sounded very trebly to me. There was no middle ground so I played the albums a bit slower. Thankfully the walls we used were not shared with the people next door, although it probably made little difference. I loved the big noise we made.

Actually, I think that they made records with a lot of bass and treble and no middle in those days because most people's systems were rubbish. In fact I think that, as home hi-fis improved, the quality of LPs improved too, but singles were still designed to be played on Juke Boxes and cheap gramophones.

Dan and Hanna in a pub. 

I remembered all this on the night of the gig because we heard amazing jazz and funk albums on an old analogue system while my 45s sounded cheap and metallic. Technically, 45s could sound better than album tracks but they don't.

The two young men running the show were very reverential about our records and loaded each track carefully. I heard a bass-heavy "dunk"........ and then silence: no hiss or rumble before the music began. The effect was electric; like hearing everything for the first time and I vowed to use my own turntable more. Aided by the beer, we were all having a great party by simply listening to old records played as they were meant to be: loud, but undistorted.

This was our 31st Wedding Anniversary and, just to round the evening off, Hanna nipped outside and bought me a pair of tight blue jeans from a rack of retro clothing displayed under a spotlight in the garden. An enterprising young lady called Jane had brought her business to the pub and this added to the fun and brought in the young crowd.  Hanna also bought a skirt for herself. (Yes, a skirt!) We are cool grandparents after all! (Note this Thea and Jake).

Now that I am home, I have crawled around in the loft for bits and bobs, including my brother's old mono PA system. I think I can replace the speakers to make it sing again. I also have an old mixer up there but I need a better deck than the domestic one that I have. Then I will be available for Retro-Nites in the local pubs!!

Seriously, this is a great way to get people of all ages to party. It is reminiscent of the days when we only owned a couple of treasured and worn albums each and a lot of kids didn't have a gramophone. We always took our albums to friends' houses after school. Why not come round to our house and bring your own vinyl! (Please phone ahead to make sure that Hanna is out first.)