It’s always the sign of a great pub if they have a jukebox, isn’t it? I love to have a good browse through and see what oddities they’ve got…
So do you have a particular song that you’ll put on and if so why?
I’ll usually put on something by the Beastie’s or Talking Heads. Probably Intergalactic or Burning Down The House. Why? Instant mood brighteners! And after all these years I still can’t successfully rap along to Intergalactic without cracking up, much to my mates entertainment. I also have a memory of being a young teen walking past a pub garden one summers eve to hear Intergalactic blaring out over the speakers and thinking that looked like the place to go for a good pint.
What’s the weirdest track you’ve ever found on a jukebox?
Quite easily this:
Found on a jukebox in a local pool hall. I was in there on a deserted Saturday afternoon and thought the title was too amusing to resist. It didn’t disappoint in terms of weirdest - it’s sort of a spoken word track describing various Arsenal players playing different instruments. It only clocked in at just under four minutes but the joke wore thin quite quickly. The Scouse bar manager came over after it finished and threatened to kick us out if we had put on anymore ‘shite like the last one’…
Ever put on a track and it completely dampen the rooms atmosphere?
Thought it was the album track when selected and it had made no indication that it was in fact a live version. Again the bar staff weren’t best pleased neither were the Saturday night drinkers.
So is anyone going to a pub later that has a jukebox?
When I was a lad we had a Wurlitzer with 78s in it, fucking thing broke constantly and we were forever having some expert coming out to fix it. Fuck knows how much my dad must have spent on it. Looked good though.
Local, shabby, student and old man darts bar has a copy of Unknown Pleasures in amongst the 70s rock and dreadful Europop. Normally stick on New Dawn Fades.
Will always put Aphex Twin - To Cure a Weakling Child if it’s available. I’ll even pay extra to download it for the first time if that’s an option.
Did this while out for a workmate’s leaving drinks recently. One of the other guys started to get really agitated and upset by it: “what’s this shit? It’s doing my head in! Ahhh, I’m going to punch something if it doesn’t stop.” He eventually had to go outside for a smoke to calm down. Needless to say, I put it on again while he was gone.
The Mucky Pup always had a great free jukebox with all kinds of great stuff on, e.g. Jesus Lizard. Basically it was like a selection of the rock end of the ATP stuff.
It riles me a bit if you have to pay extra for certain tracks…
One place I go to has Too Long by Daft Punk at the standard price but you had to pay extra for All My Friends by LCD Soundsytem… Didn’t really compute!
My da used to fix them, back in the 90s when they were all CDs. Whenever they swapped a load out to be replaced by more up-to-date ones, my da would bring the old ones home.
I’ve still got hundreds of them, they were most of my music collection when I was a teenager. No tracklisting most of the time, so I used to just sit and play through them all (some CDs don’t have the artist or album name either, so you might listen to something for ages without even knowing who it was).
Then mp3s and all that came along and the world has been nothing but shit ever since.
