In the White Room, the Music Comes First

Lights down, phones away. Seventeen of us sit in the White Room in near-silence while Marc Bolan's glam rock moves through a pair of $20,000 TETRA speakers. It is T. Rex night at Wellington Gastropub's record club and their 103rd listening session. Each sound is delivered with such crispness and clarity that the silence between notes lands like the quiet after a cracking whip. Bolan's guitar feels inches away, not fifty years gone. The music breathes. All our heads bob in unison.

Devotion to the listening club runs deep. Spots are limited and sessions frequently have waiting lists. The man beside me found the club at session fifty. The woman across from me has been coming since session two. Her favourite was the one she chose the artist for, Patti Smith, the poet turned Godmother of punk rock. During the intermission, Julian holds court with details of Bolan's career, his untimely death after a car accident in 1977, and how David Bowie supported Marc's son until he was old enough to claim his father's estate. Also in attendance is Adrian Butts, the Ottawa-based craftsman behind TETRA speakers. Shane Waldron, owner of the gastropub, found Adrian the way most of us find things — a Google search that turned up a craftsman working right here in Ottawa. Adrian is quick to credit the music and the White Room's acoustics for what makes the club special, but Shane offers a correction: "the speakers provide a platform for the music to really be heard." Adrian nods in agreement, content with letting others speak for the quality of his work.