Bring Your Parents Records - Sunday 7th December

So this Sunday I was invited along to the latest venture from the kids from Broccoli Music, Bring Your Parents' Records.  A co-promotion with Jonny Awsum - PR guru and all-round lovely lovely man - who they found running the night in his front room, the night normally has its home in Bar Vinyl, Camden.  For their Xmas bash, however, they had upped sticks all of 10 yards to nextdoor's Zen Sai bar.

The night is a great idea.  You bring a load of dusty old vinyl along (mine had the benefit of a bit of scratching for that 'true' record sound), hopefully half-inched from your loving mother and father, and stick it on the bar's one - yes, count it, one - record deck, one track at a time.  The set-up flatters all levels of DJing proficiency, though the gaps between tracks does tend to get longer as the 4-hour happy hour (don't tell Gordon) takes hold of the crowd, and the random nature of most parental LP collections allows for some...interesting setlists.  

I have to say one of the best things about the night, though, is that it genuinely rewards the fun rather than the obscure - play Postman Pat and you get cheered, play ELO and you'll be lauded to the rafters, play anything too hip and you'll be laughed off the decks, as one girl found within two minutes of sticking some pounding dance nonsense on at the start of her set.  There WAS a little too much Bob Marley on display, but it WAS a Sunday...

I had the privilige of kicking proceedings off at 3pm, being a Sunday the bar was already undulating gently if not jumping, and I treated them to (as far as the Coronas will let me remember):

J Walk - Another Lover

Jummy Ruffin - What Becomes of the Broken Hearted
Grandmaster Melle Mel and the Furious Five - Pump me Up

Rufus Thomas - Walking the Dog
Sparks - Thank God it's Not Christmas

Led Zeppelin - Good Times Bad Times

Duran Duran - Planet Earth

Jesus Christ Superstar (1974) - Overture

ripper!

Jx