Jukeboxes: Search & Destroy

We can be (jukebox) heroes...

1) The Jukebox at the Spice of Life in Cambridge Circus, Soho, round about 1987-8 - it didn't used to be such a 'nice', gentrified country theme for the tourists pub. Everything from Specials, Clash and that ilk thru to the hits o' the day - Taja Seville's sublime 'Love is Contagious' for example.
I can't really remember any more specifics, but from my poor, alcohol ridden memory, I can categorically say that it had no duff tunes...EVAH! Oh, and it had Charley Pride's 'Crystal Chandelier's' which my mate used to put on at least twice a night to great amusement and drunken singalong.

2) Bowie - 'Young Americans', if memory serves...

I haven't found #1 but #2 was "No Side to Fall In" by the Raincoats.

The Jukebox at Melbourne's Tote hotel has Dwarves "Blood Guts &..." CD in it. With the cover on display and everything.

1) jukebox in the the pool hall of reed college is incredible. herb alpert to joy division; almost every song is good. some songs: beats to the rhyme by run dmc, transmission by joy division, lullaby of birdland by ella fitzgerald, and can you get to that by funkadelic to name a few.
2) When A Man Loves A Woman by Percy Sledge at the waffle house

we put some new order on in the dublin castle. i don't really do jukeboxes so that'll have to do

but, there is a bar in camden that on the window says "jukebox has everything from autechre to dusty springfield". which seems ok, till you look in and see that grinning hawhaws on public school day out (ooh, get him, class struggle boy!)

I can't stand jukeboxes which try to be tasteful: YOU HAVE THOSE RECORDS AT HOME, DONT WASTE YOUR MONEY! All I want is a good genre mix, mostly compilations cos you get a better spread, as few of the really big cliche albums as possible (the songs people will want to play are on the comps anyway most likely), some very up-to-date stuff, and maybe a couple of surprises for the wicked jukebox fan to exploit.

I put money in jukeboxes a lot but there aren't really any in the London pubs I go to now so I can't remember what it was I put on.

jukeboxes should play shit music anyway. its only right. unless its hes on the phone or bohemian like you, which are jukebox songs

The best jukebox in the world used to be (I haven't been there in a year, so I don't know if it still is) was Sophie's on uuuhhhh... 5th St somewhere in Alphabet City? It was always good, good mix of classic indie and weird shit (the only jukebox in the world that ever had Neubauten on it) and then the guy that ran the place started making his own CDR compilations to go on it, and it got even better.

They had the version of Laser Guided Melodies that was divided into 4 suites, so you could hear the entire album for a buck.

I haven't found a good juke box in London yet, but I think the last song I programmed in ... oh, god, it's shameful. It was Tuesday night, we were very drunk, it was Hoxton, so we put on some Transvision Vamp. (Hey, it's STILL better than the Bleah Bleah Bleahs!)

Kate - EXACTLY this is what jukeboxes are for, putting on drunken whims that you'd never bother to even DOWNLOAD let alone buy. They're not for cockfarming Einsturzende Neubaten, whose records you will have at home if you care about them at all! (Not that I have anything against Neubaten, a decent band, but you know what I mean)

I am far more amused by the idea of some East Village hipster stumbling into Sophie's, who has never heard Neubauten in his life (because most of them haven't) and put it on to show off their indie hipness, and are rewarded with a most satisfying blast of noise.

A good jukebox should have a mix of stuff that you like and probably have at home so that you can feel comfortable, mixed in with ridiculous stuff that you'd never ever ever listen to while sober. Most juke boxes have the latter, (I can find the Eagles anywhere) but a REALLY good jukebox will have a good selection of the former as well.

So I stand by my Sophie's jukebox. It has what I REALLY want to listen to while drunk on it.

2) The jukeboxes in my Southern town are awful, and they don't even have classic country music on 'em anymore - just new top 40, new country, and 80s rock. So I think my last jukebox selection was at Larry's in Columbus, OH, and it was Miles Davis's "On the Corner/..." which at 20 minutes is your best bar entertainment value.

Haven't seen a really great jukebox in a long time, but a month or two ago I managed to get the box at the Polish National Home in Brooklyn to play "Marquee Moon." That was great.

For me it was the Owl Tree in San Francisco. Mostly oldies, but good oldies. They had a fair amount of Neil Diamond, which sounds great in a bar, and I remember hearing Sinatra at the Sands, where he goes off on these long monologues. Agreed that comps. are the way to go.

Yeah I suppose so Kate - I mean for me the comfortable stuff I play at home is the other half of the NOW album so I can't really talk.

Yeah, you like Abba so hush up! ;-)

I'm quite sure that Kellys has a wide selection of "Great Irish Classics" (many of them heard during World Cup time). I can't remember the last song I programmed into a juker, but I do know to be careful when randomly picking a song as part of a 'mini-task' as my unwitting selection of Terence Trent D'Arby in the Blue Posts got me a nomination to leave the Trig Brother pub.

At the pub Al and I used to go to in Leatherhead they got a new Irish landlady and a new selection of Irish CDs on the juker, and if the landlady saw you put money in she would come over and try to impose an Irish Quota! "30% Irish music or I bar you!" She was quite fearsome so it took a while to work out she was joking. We always put a Pogues track on anyway as a compromise.

The jukebox in College has Leftism and there's a few good dance tracks on the now albums. It also has trainspotting and Prince's greatest hits. Whatever is put on sounds good between the endless cycle of Sunday Bloody Sunday, Aslan songs, and mindless manufacrured pop dross. (hahahah the last one's just a joke, I wanted to sound like someone writing in to the music pages on teletext)

Whatever happened to REAL music in jukeboxes? These days it's all MINDLESS repetetive dance and ibiza anthems for mindless morons to dance mindlessly to. IT SAYS NOTHING TO ME ABOUT MY LIFE. (is this the worst oft quoted Smiths lyric ever, thanks Calum btw)

my favourite jukebox is the bar in the strathcona hotel, edmonton alberta canada (known as the strat). a rather comical "dive bar" in a dodgy hotel that inexplicably has been filling up with a scene- dropping mixture of punks, hipsters, musicians and biker-types every friday and saturday night for years and years.

it's just black sabbath, black sabbath, black sabbath! if we get in there and haven't heard black sabbath in an hour we start stuffing the jukebox full of money. usually it carries on throughout the night. for some reason every one who goes there accepts that it must happen during the course of a night. i'm also fond of playing atmosphere by joy division and temptation by new order (but nobody really listens ... trainspotting soundtracks are trans-continental jukebox staples, aren't they)

The Saturn Bar in New Orleans has a great Jukebox, it has tons of Patsy Cline 45's and Frankie Lane and all these 50's hits...the place is the ultiamte dive! Runner Up- The Library Bar on AVe A. in NYC...tons of great stuff and it always cranked to 11!

O'Connor's has a wunnerful jukebox full of rockabilly compilations and Big Joe Turner and best-of Hank Williams and Louis Prima and lots of other stuff I don't have and haven't listened to. Only problem is that they have it rigged up to the stereo behind the bar which plays like 5 seconds of something while the jukebox switches CDs, in some horribly misguided attempt to create a "seamless" musical blanket of sound which in reality is all the nice songs I've picked punctuated by 5 random seconds of indie rock between each song. Sooooo irritating.

Why don't they make a jukebox with two Cd players that fades the two songs into one another and obviate the gap completely? This is such an obvious way to go.

I can't decide which is more offensive, Indie Jukeboxes ('It has Pavement on it, guys! And look, we're in Williamsburg!' *not directed at Doug) or people who are anti-Indie Jukebox because IJs are too damn clever. As you can see, I'm somewhat conflicted on the issue.

The last song I programmed into a jukebox was "Someday" by Sugar Ray, which was immensely satisfying because the jukebox ran on some sort of analog medium and the Sugar Ray song was all pitch shifty and warped. But lest you think I'm being ironic, I sincerely, genuinely enjoyed my previous selection, "Dig In" by Lenny Kravitz. Oh God, too much ironical-fence-straddling. I'm off to get drunk. Silently.

Just finished helping my g-fren move to her new apt in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. She happens to be living across from a kickass new Italian restaurant, which is good enough, but below her building there's a newly-opened bar called Daddy's, and I think it has the best j-box I've evah seen. Off top of head: Slits' Cut, Mingus Ah- Um, Studio One DJ's and best-ofs from Hank Williams, Irma Thomas, Kitty Wells, Creedence Clearwater Revival (of course), Joy Division, New Order, and about 90 others I can't remember offhand. Plus two empty slots at the end. Very all over the place, a good number of v/a comps in different styles, obviously put together by someone who cares.

I mean, of course, that there are 90 other CDs I can't remember, not 90 best-ofs

2) "2000 light years from home" by the stones

The music on the jukebox in my local is divided twixt Metal + 60s- 80s/'classic' rock (Sabs/ACDC/Metallica + Floyd/Who/Stones/Doors) and chart/dancedancedance/IbizaGoMentaaal compilations. Plus a few stray indies.
To my chagrin they've taken off Portishead's 'Dummy' and replaced it with their second Dury-Blockheads comp: I'M NOT HAPPY.

My most regular selections are: Who's 'I Can't Explain'; Blur's 'Badhead'; Floyd's 'See Emily Play'; Britney's 'Slave 4 U' / 'Oops!... '; Bunnymen's 'The Cutter'; and my fave, which I play Every. Single. Time: Boston's 'More Than A Feeling'.

they got rid of my jukes