17 hours ago
Lincolnshire DJ Adam Wareham takes music lovers back in time
An antique dealer with a love of old records is taking music-lovers back in time with his nostalgic DJ Adam Wareham regularly performs by playing records that were popular during the early to mid 20th Century on two vintage in period clothing next to his DJ set-up and vintage HMV memorabilia, Mr Wareham said he was at odds with today's world of digital interest began in 2014 when he bought a gramophone at a fair, tidied it up and sold it on. Since then, it has become his obsession.
"I thought it was so nice that I went straight out to source some more gramophones," he said."It's kind of taken over the whole house. It's a bit of an obsession, if I'm honest."It's a step back into the past. It might have been their mother's favourite song or their father's favourite song, or they might have heard it on an old film. People just love the kind of the vintage vibe of it all."Unlike most digitalised DJ set-ups these days, Mr Wareham spins 78RPM shellac records on a turntable at weddings and at 78 revolutions per minute, the records were made from shellac until the late 1940s, when vinyl replaced performances are very visual, alternating between his wind-up twin deck with a 1915 traditional Swiss horn gramophone waiting in the wings."We use two of them because when I'm setting up one, that one's playing and then when that one stops I'm straight back on this one, so it's the traditional sort of twin deck set-up."
The showpiece horn is an important part of his show."There aren't that many of them left, really. A lot of them have gone abroad," he modern DJs, he has no volume control on it and relies on the old trick of literally "putting a sock in it" to adjust sound levels."People quite often think that I'm faking it when I wind it up like this and they think that there's an electrical point somewhere."It's just working off a clock spring", he Wareham said 1940s tunes were most popular, but he also plays rock and roll and is pleased there are other people who share his added: "You get a lot out of it. Even if just one person comes up to you at a gig and thanks you."They come up and say 'thank you for keeping the music alive'."Listen to highlights from Lincolnshire on BBC Sounds, watch the latest episode of Look North or tell us about a story you think we should be covering here.
