I'm here to DJ. I'm here every Friday night DJing. There are bands every week, too - but in the Guinness haze, frantically clawing through my record box, I rarely take much notice of the live music. When the bands are on, I'm loo-ing, or smoking my last ever fag, or sorting...
Sometimes I get sucked in despite my other responsibilities. Tonight was just such a night. First, however, some colour.
It's early November and things are very quiet. This is partly due to people tightening their belts before Christmas, and those belts seem to be a notch tighter this year than, even, last. I'm also beginning to fear it's partly due to my vinyl-only 'policy'.
See, after 15 years of DJing, using a welter of different formats - CDs, laptops, iPods, wax cylinder, mini disc (once) - I have decided that a boxful of records is best.
Somewhere along the line, I've convinced myself that the quick gratification of a punter's request, followed by a click on a laptop, and then a blast of compressed audio through the speakers, is a cheapening of the music we all worship. I've deluded myself that the young hipsters who frequent our weekend bar would rather hear something ace on a record, regardless of its age, than a tinny digital bauble from Two Door Cinema Club.
But it would appear that I'm wrong.
And I'm anxiously wondering whether the expanses of empty wooden floor are due to my dogma when something quite remarkable happens.
See, whatever sound is emanating from he stage, from the two women with the smiles that'd charm a Satanist out of his black robes and into a floral onesy, is bringing joy to my heart - despite my not inconsiderable worry head.
They're called Baby Brave & the Love Bites. The Love Bites feature a couple of familiar Wrexham faces. The Baby Brave part of this equation, joyous without being remotely shin-able (my favourite move on the 5-a-side pitch), have been doing open mics in north Wales and Chester for a couple of years.
Hitherto they tended to park their smiles and hand dances on the wrong side of the line marked 'quirky', but tonight that line is hardly visible; it's nought more than a sun glare, retina burn of a line in my addled memory.
Despite the rain that's been falling outside for days, drowning arks and gunning for the Blade Runner world record, Baby Brave & the Love Bites bring sunshine into our hearts and our heads. There are elements of girl pop...well, of course there are: we have girls, and this is pop music... but some of the tropes of that genre are present, if not entirely correct.
There is Supremes-like dancing (although it's mostly top-half moves, more self-effacing than exhibitionist); there are Ronettes-like harmonies (but it's not wall of sound, more a patchwork quilt of twinkles and aceness) and there are melodies you could happily hang your heartbreaks on.
This - in light of the numerous Belle Stars and Pipettes who have preceded them - could sound a little 15th generation cassette copy, or mucky-fingered Fifty Shades of Gravy library edition, if it wasn't for the fact that BB & the LBs get it a little bit wrong. It's affectionate and affirming not xerox and detoxed.
It's not pastiche, it's a love letter to girl pop, to French pop, to all the things we called pop music before the digital R&B jackboots came and pulverised everything, and there are bristling sonics at the forest edge that make me think mostly of a bands like The Slits, or First Aid Kit.
They do a version of April March's Chick Habit that has me jitterbugging at the urinal... this move is not recommended. Especially for women.
Then they finish.
And I'm left to DJ to the abyss.
Despite everything, when a band like Baby Brave & the Love Bites aren't available, I still think the best way to fill the void is with music on records. Ones and zeroes never add up to much.
