Every Sunday afternoon people arrive at The Swan With Two Necks, Bristol, with little boxes of 7 inch records which they play to each other.
On a recent rainy Sunday we sat in the glow of a couple of beers and listened to the warm crackle of vinyl on a turntable.
Motown. The Small Faces. Some psychedelic obscurity with a sitar weaving through it. A John Leyton single sloshing around in Joe Meek toilet reverb. And then lots of reggae heavy on the bass, like a lullaby.
Not one record was younger than us.
“You can’t go wrong with old records in a pub,” said Jess after a while. “They just seem to fit.”
Earlier that same day, at The Hare on the Hill, we’d watched the landlord track back and forth to select albums from the stack on and around the piano.
We were there long enough to hear the tail end of a jazz album, all of Crosby, Stills & Nash, and the first side of Forever Changes by Love.
We talked about Love – about Arthur Lee’s unusual voice, the way his vocals don’t quite land where you expect them to, and our shared sense that we ought to like the music more than we do.
We marvelled at the blend of the voices in CSN and, subconsciously, at the way they blended into the densely decorated walls and hidden corners of the pub.
The music filled gaps in the space and in our conversation.
Perhaps it’s that pubs are essentially analogue – especially those that serve cask ale. Beers from the wood, wooden fixtures, a whiff of arts and crafts about the bits of brass and cast iron table-bases.
The magic that people perceive in cask ale is similar to the magic they perceive in pub buildings which is similar to the magic they perceive in the sound of vinyl. A sense of connecting with something authentic.
They’re also essentially nostalgic. Most pubs are embassies of the past. Victorian buildings with plastic Watneys clocks, Bass on the bar, and packets of pork scratchings whose packets haven’t been redesigned since 1981.
It’s not unusual to find a pub with a stack of records in the corner or behind the bar. Albums that, if they were sold on Discogs, would not warrant a ‘Mint’ or ‘VG+’ rating.
Split sleeves, yellowing inner sleeves, with a whiff of stale beer and cigarette smoke about them.
They’re part of the décor – a physical evocation of the past – as much as they’re practical.
This resistance to modernity might be why video games in pubs didn’t take, or why a certain type of pub goer winces at the sight and sound of electronic gambling machines, touchscreen jukeboxes or, in CAMRA speak, “piped music”.
There’s been a lot of talk lately about the resurgence of hard copy media, in reaction against a decade dominated by streaming services.
And there is something about the physicality of a disc – a suggestion of ceremony.
The DJs at The Swan With Two Necks certainly seem like a priestly class, performing the old rituals, exhibiting holy relics of the 20th century as, all around, the 21st century begins to tower over the little old pub on the back street.
