Turntables Of The Night (Terry Pratchett)

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Look, constable, what I don’t understand is, surely he wouldn't be into blues? Because that was Wayne’s life for you. A blues single. I mean, if people were music, Wayne would be like one of those scratchy old numbers, you know, re-recorded about a hundred times from the original phonograph cylinder or whatever, with some old guy with a name like Deaf Orange Robinson standing knee-deep in the Mississippi and moaning through his nose.

You’d think he'd be more into Heavy Metal or Meatloaf or someone. But I suppose he’s into everyone. Eventually.

What? Yeah. That’s my van, with Hellfire Disco painted on it. Wayne can't drive, you see. He’s just not interested in anything like that. I remember when I got my first car and we went on holiday, and I did the driving and, okay, also the repairing, and Wayne worked the radio trying to keep the pirate stations tuned in. He didn’t really care where we went as long as it was on high ground and he could get Caroline or London or whatever, I didn’t care where we went so long as we went.

I was always more into cars than music. Until now, I think. I don’t think I want to drive a car again. I’d keep wondering who’d suddenly turn up in the passenger seat . .

Sorry. So. Yeah. The disco. Well, the deal was that I supplied the van, we split the cost of the gear, and Wayne supplied the records. It was really my idea. I mean, it seemed a pretty good bet. Wayne lives with his mum but they’re down to two rooms now because of his record collection. Lots of people collect records, but I reckon Wayne really wants - wanted - to own every one that was ever made. His idea of a fun outing was going to some old store in some old town and rummaging through the stock and coming out with something by someone with a name like Sid Sputnik and the Spacemen, but the thing was, the funny thing was, you’d get back to his room and he’d go to a shelf and push all the record aside and there’d be this neat brown envelope with the name and date on it and everything - waiting.

Or he’d get me to drive him all the way to Preston or somewhere to find some guy who’s a self-employed plumber now but maybe back in 1961 called himself Ronnie Sequin and made it to number 152 in the charts, just to see if he’d got a spare copy of his one record which was really so naff you couldn't even find it in the specialist stores.

Wayne was the kind of collector who couldn’t bear a hole in his collection It was almost religious, really. He could out-talk John Peel in any case, but the records he really knew about were the ones he hadn’t got. He’d wait years to get some practically demo disc from a punk group who probably died of safety-pin tetanus, but by the time he got his hands on it he’d be able to recite everything down to the name of the cleaning lady who scrubbed out the studio afterwards. Like I said, a collector.

So I thought, what more do you need to run a disco?

Well, basically just about everything which Wayne hadn’t got - looks, clothes, common sense, some kind of idea about electric wiring and the ability to rabbit on like a prat. But at the time we didn’t look at it like that, so I flogged the Capri and bought the van and got it nearly professionally re-sprayed. You can only see the words Midland Electricity Board on it if you know where to look. I wanted it to look like the van in the ‘A-Team’, except where theirs can jump four cars and still hare off down the road mine has trouble with drain covers.

Yes, I’ve talked to the other officer about the tax and insurance and MOT. Sorry, sergeant. Don’t worry about it, I won’t be driving a car ever again. Never.

We bought a load of amplifiers and stuff off Ian Curtis over in Wyrecliff because he was getting married and Tracey wanted him at home of a night, bunged some cards in newsagents’ windows, and waited.

Well, people didn’t exactly fall over themselves to give us gigs on account of people not really catching on to Wayne’s style. You don’t have to be a verbal geni…

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  • 13. 5. 2023