Some vinyl-nerds start meeting each Monday in the back room of a pub - the Forensic Record Society (FRS). They each bring 3 records that are carefully listened to and not commented on. Mike is obsessed with the length of tracks.
The first-person PoV narrator is unnamed. He's the sidekick of focaliser and old friend James. In the first 9 pages there's "Outside the window the sky was darkening", "The sight of it made me smile to myself", "Outside, the night sky", "Outside it was snowing", "It was purple in colour" - so many infelicities that it must be deliberate. There's also "he was clearly shocked by my words" which I shall use as a good use of adverbs - without "clearly", the phase would look like a PoV-switch.
Another meeting - "Confessional Record Society" (CRS) - starts on Tuesdays, where each record is accompanied by the owner's confession. A little bar is started in the back room, with Alice as the barmaid. Keith, a newcomer, turns up with LPs. Should this be allowed? The narrator thinks "It was plain that the society needed to adapt in order to survive". There are murmurs of complaint that "there's different rules for different people". Keith tells the narrator that he'd been excluded from the other meeting because he'd delivered the wrong type of confession.
Beer becomes a mode of communication - buying pints for others, etc. Alice is nice to everybody except the narrator. She tells him that he doesn't really like music.
James sends Mike to a CRS evening. It's busy, with many women. People go in one at a time. Philip runs it,, helped by 2 men called Andrew. Though James considers their own meeting a purer, higher form, he experiments with the format on the narrator.
A white-labelled demo record appears. Alice's voice? Women wearing "I confessed" T-shirts try to recruit them. James thinks they require a stream of new recruits to compensate for their weak beliefs. Barry hints that the narrator don't like music. But how can he know? Alice thinks that they're all emotionally retarded.
Keith confesses to playing a record that he'd taken home by accident. He's suspended for a fortnight. James stops people quoting from records as a way to get around the "no commenting" rule. The narrator worries that the society will die because of internal strife, or that it will collapse under its own rules, or be taken over by other societies. When Keith joins the CRS, James wants to ban him permanently. The CRS begins to charge £5 per session. The pub begins to charge the FRS for use of the room, so James has to introduce a membership fee.
Another group - The Perceptive Record Society - starts meeting at the pub. It's a splinter group. Rather than expelling the deserters, James hopes that the new group will lose steam. The narrator goes to one of their meeting as an envoy, playing an LP - "Also Sprach Zarathustra". The members are speechless, rather like at the FRS.
When the narrator goes to James' house, he's out, and barefoot Alice answers the door. Philip hires a big Public Hall. A meeting leads to mass hysteria. Philip soon is chased by the tax man and the group dissolves. Another group, the New Forensic Record Society starts at the pub. There's a new, friendlier barmaid, Sandy. The landlord buy a rare copy of Alice's demo and puts it in a glass cabinet behind the bar - a piece of history. The narrator thinks of writing up the FRS.
No chapter breaks. Many song titles are mentioned, with many opportunities for allusions and jokes. The Detectorists comes to mind, the world in miniature.
Other reviews
- Toby Litt (As soon as you form any kind of “us”, Mills suggests, a “them” will form in response. In this, The Forensic Records Society is like Animal Farm but with blokes for pigs, and much better songs)
- stuckinabook
