Terry Pratchett - Turntables of the Night

Look, constable, what I don't understand is, surely hewouldn't be into blues? Because that was Wayne's life foryou. A blues single. I mean, if people were music, Waynewould be like one of those scratchy old numbers, youknow, re-recorded about a hundred times from theoriginal phonograph cylinder or whatever, with someold guy with a name like Deaf Orange Robinson standingknee-deep in the Mississippi and moaning through hisnose.

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

What? Yeah. That's my van, with Hellfire Discopainted on it. Wayne can't drive, you see. He's justnot interested in anything like that. I remember whenI got my first car and we went on holiday, and I did thedriving and, okay, also the repairing, and Wayne workedthe radio trying to keep the pirate stations tuned in. Hedidn't really care where we went as long as it was on highground 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, Ithink. I don't think I want to drive a car again. I'd keepwondering who'd suddenly turn up in the passengerseat . .

Sorry. So. Yeah. The disco. Well, the deal was that Isupplied the van, we split the cost of the gear, and Waynesupplied the records. It was really my idea. I mean, itseemed a pretty good bet. Wayne lives with his mum butthey're down to two rooms now because of his recordcollection. Lots of people collect records, but I reckonWayne really wants - wanted - to own every one that wasever made. His idea of a fun outing was going to some oldstore in some old town and rummaging through thestock and coming out with something by someone witha name like Sid Sputnik and the Spacemen, but the thingwas, the funny thing was, you'd get back to his room andhe'd go to a shelf and push all the record aside andthere'd be this neat brown envelope with the name anddate on it and everything - waiting.

Or he'd get me to drive him all the way to Preston orsomewhere to find some guy who's a self-employedplumber now but maybe back in 1961 called himselfRonnie Sequin and made it to number 152 in the charts,just to see if he'd got a spare copy of his one record whichwas really so naff you couldn't even find it in thespecialist stores.

Wayne was the kind of collector who couldn't bear ahole in his collection It was almost religious, really. Hecould out-talk John Peel in any case, but the records hereally knew about were the ones he hadn't got. He'd waityears to get some practically demo disc from a punkgroup who probably died of safety-pin tetanus, but bythe time he got his hands on it he'd be able to reciteeverything down to the name of the cleaning ladywho scrubbed out the studio afterwards. Like I said, acollector.

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

Well, basically just about everything which Waynehadn't got - looks, clothes, common sense, some kindof idea about electric wiring and the ability to rabbit onlike a prat. But at the time we didn't look at it like that, soI flogged the Capri and bought the van and got it nearlyprofessionally re-sprayed. You can only see the wordsMidland Electricity Board on it if you know where tolook. I wanted it to look like the van in the 'A-Team',except where theirs can jump four cars and still hare offdown the road mine has trouble with drain covers.

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

We bought a load of amplifiers and stuff off Ian Curtisover in Wyrecliff because he was getting married andTracey wanted him at home of a night, bunged somecards in newsagents' windows, and waited.

Well, people didn't exactly fall over themselves to giveus gigs on account of people not really catching on toWayne's style. You don't have to be a verbal genius to bea jock, people just expect you to say, 'Hey!' and 'Wow!'and 'Get down and boogie' and stuff. It doesn't actuallymatter if you sound like a pillock, it helps them feelsuperior. What they don't want, when they're all gettingdrunk after the wedding or whatever, is for someone tostand there with his eyes flashing worse than the lightssaying things like, 'There's a rather interesting storyattached to this record.'

Funny thing, though, is that after a while we started toget popular in a weird word-of-mouth kind of way. Whatstarted it, I reckon, was my sister Beryl's wedding anniversary.She's older than me, you understand. It turnedout that Wayne had brought along just about everyrecord ever pressed for about a year before they gotmarried. Not just the top ten, either. The guests wereall around the same age and pretty soon the room was sofull of nostalgia you could hardly move. Wayne just hotwiredall their ignitions and took them for a joyride downMemory Motorway.

After that we started getting dates from what youmight call the more older types, you know, not exactlykids but bits haven't started falling off yet. We were a sortof speciality disco. At the breaks people would come upto him to chat about this great number they recalled fromway back or whenever and it would turn out that Waynewould always have it in the van. If they'd heard of it, he'dhave it. Chances are he'd have it even if they hadn'theard of it. Because you could say this about Wayne, hewas a true collector - he didn't worry whether the stuffwas actually good or not. It just had to exist.

He didn't put it like that, of course. He'd say there wasalways something unique about every record. You mightthink that this is a lot of crap, but here was a man who'dgot just about everything ever made over the last fortyyears and he really believed there was something specialabout each one. He loved them. He sat up there allthrough the night, in his room lined with brown envelopes,and played them one by one. Records that had beenforgotten even by the people who made them. I'll swearhe loved them all.

Yes, all right. But you've got to know about him tounderstand what happened next.

We were booked for this Hallowe'en Dance. You couldtell it was Hallowe'en because of all the little bastardsrunning around the streets shouting, 'Trickle treat,' andthreatening you with milk bottles.

He'd sorted out lots of 'Monster Mash' type records. Helooked pretty awful, but I didn't think much of it at thetime. I mean, he always looked awful. It was his normallook. It came from spending years indoors listening torecords plus he had this bad heart and asthma andeverything.

The dance was at ... okay, you know all that. AHallowe'en dance to raise money for a church hall.Wayne said that was a big joke, but he didn't say why.I expect it was some clever reason. He was always good atthat sort of thing, you know, knowing little details thatother people didn't know; it used to get him hit a lot atschool, except when I was around. He was the kind ofskinny boy who had his glasses held together withElastoplast. I don't think I ever saw him raise a fingerto anybody only that time when Greebo Greaves broke arecord Wayne had brought to some school disco and fourof us had to pull Wayne off him and prise the iron bar outof his fingers and there was the police and an ambulanceand everything.

Anyway.

I let Wayne set everything up, which was one bigmistake but he wanted to do it, and I went and satdown by what they called the bar, ie, a couple of trestletables with a cloth on it.

No, I didn't drink anything. Well, maybe one cup ofthe punch, and that was all fruit juice. All right, two cups.But I know what I heard, and I'm absolutely certainabout what I saw.

I think.

You get the same old bunch at these kinds of gigs.There's the organiser, and a few members of the committee,some lads from the village who'd sort of drifted inbecause there wasn't much on the box except snooker.Everyone wore a mask but hadn't made an effort with therest of the clothes so it looked as though Frankenstein andCo had all gone shopping in Marks and Sparks. There wereScouts' posters on the wall and those special kinds ofvillage hall radiators that suck the heat in. It smelled oftennis shoes. Just to sort of set the seal on it as one of thehotspots of the world there was a little mirror ball spinningup the rafters. Half the little mirrors had fallen off.