TheAgitator.com
Rant. Not About War.
Monday, March 24th, 2003So regular readers know that I love technology. It’s a common fetish amongst we libertarians (at least most of us). Gadgetry, medical breakthroughs, genetic meddling, bio-engineering — love it, all of it.
But even I have an inner-Luddite, a point at which I must draw a line and say, emphatically, enough!
And that line gets drawn clearly, distinctly on the near side of the Internet Jukebox.
For those of you unfamiliar, the Internet Jukebox is exactly what you probably think it is. It’s a “jukebox” in a bar that’s wired with a high-speed Internet connection. You put in your two bits, and you can then choose for all intents and purposes, from every song ever recorded and marketed by a reasonably sized record label.
I think it’s the worst thing to happen to bar and pub scene this side of Michael Bloomberg.
A jukebox is part of a bar’s identity, its code, its image. What songs a bar owner puts on his jukebox speak volumes about what he envisions for the atmosphere, ambianace, and clientelle of his business. Some of my favorite bars wouldn’t have been my favorite bars if not for the records they chose for the jukebox. Lucky Bar in D.C., for example, is a pretty mediocre bar, except that it has a wonderful jukebox chock full of old soul. Al Green, Stevie Wonder, Wilson Pickett, Sam Cooke — you know the drill.
My favorite bar in St. Louis was Blueberry Hill, a touristy joint with great burgers, and that offered the occasional St. Louis celebrity citing (usually Bob Costas). But what made the bar great was its extensive jukebox, renown throughougt the city not just for its breadth, but for its empeccable taste, even within a given genre or sub-genre. Blueberry Hill’s proprieters knew, for example, that when selecting an ambassador from 80′s hair metal, Slaughter’s “Stick It To Ya,” or Cinderella’s “Long Cold Winter” are both provocative, admirable choices; and that Faster Pussycat or White Lion, on the other hand, are shit. They knew that Kid n’ Play or Young MC are fine includes to represent late 80′s crossover rap, but that M.C. Hammer or Rob Base are cliche.
My favorite bar of all time is this intimate little dive in a town called Hancock, New York, just over the Pennsylvania state line. In my three summers as a summer sports camp counselor, it was the bar we all escaped to after long days of sunburn, tennis/basketball instruction, and futile attempts to keep the little bastards campers from intentionally urinating on one another.
I digress.
What I loved about that bar of course was the jukebox. Every night, after about two Genny Lites (I was on a camp counselor’s budget), we’d play Peter, Paul & Mary’s “Puff the Magic Dragon.” The locals hated us for it. But we did it anyway. There were other great tunes on that box — Nitty Gritty Dirtband’s “Fishin’ In the Dark” comes to mind. But I’ll always look back most fondly on those many rotations of “Puff.”
As a customer, half the fun of bar hopping is stumbling up to the jukebox at a given dive, and mining from the choices you’ve been given that unobvious gem, the song that everybody knows but nobody knows the name of, the obscure B-side or live track, or that deep cut that nobody listens to but is on an album everybody owns.
The Internet Jukebox does away with all of that. It is to pub ambiance what scat porn is to romance.
It is time to murder the Internet Jukebox.
two favorite jukeboxes….one at the Grill in Athens GA, which had a full complement of Mr Bungle. The second, the FlatIron in Atlanta, with all the Morphine you could ask for.
Why is everyone always bagging on Faster Pussycat? Dude, they rawwked!
Wow. Who pissed in your Wheaties? If you don’t like the jukebox, don’t patronize the bar.
Personally, I love the idea. You could create any mood or atmosphere you wanted. Puff included.
I agree. My favorite bar in Charlotte, NC is called The Break Room. The tables suck and they don’t serve food but the jukebox is phenominal.
I’m not a smoker, but I think the same goes for “Non-Smoking” bars. I think that the smoking bars should keep the jukeboxes and the nerds can go to the internet jukeboxed, non smoking bars.
Whiners that “just can’t stand the smell of the cig” or don’t like the music selection because there’s no “Tearin up my heart” by N’Sync in the jukebox are one of the same. If you don’t like a bar atmosphere, stay at home; listen to whatever you want in a smokefree environment.
A bar is a smoke filled room with bar stools, and that one drunk girl who can’t handle herself, and that guy who’s there every night but only speaks if you sit down and ask a question, and a jukebox that has been there since the day that place opened, and the bathroom with the clever slogans on the walls and etc, etc, etc.
Askin to remove a REAL jukebox is like askin for that girl to leave, or painting over the slogans every night so the patrons don’t have anything to read when they’re taking that first trip to the bathroom and finally have something to write back.
could not agree more, these things are a shame
BEST jukebox in DC: pharmacy bar.
I couldn’t agree more with you Radley. Jukeboxes make a bar! Nick’s at the Beach is a bar in Pacific Beach and the best part is the jukebox. People who hate rock music wouldn’t show their faces there. A few Brittany Spears tunes found their way on the box, but if it’s ever played, locals immediately go straight over and jam in a $20.00.
A reaction to your “Smoker guy” up just two spots from me. I love being in CA because you can’t smoke in bars. I know SMOKERS who agree. You don’t go home with burning lungs and your clothes don’t stink like a$$. It’s guys like that poster that make it necessary for law makers to enforce what should be natural: courtesy! Just my two cents though. I’ll go back to my bar filled with beautiful people who don’t smoke, AKA whimps! :)
SH
Oops, I mean WHINERS!
I know what you mean, but my love of technology requires a dissent here.
In my experience, most of the bars adopting the Internet Jukeboxes had no real atmosphere anyway, so the ability to play additional music is hardly a step down. (I mean, was The Big Hunt *ever* cool?) Besides, isn’t it the patrons who ultimately determine the ambience? Selection on jurassic-era jukeboxes generally reflects customers’ tastes rather than the other way around, right? So a biker bar won’t suddenly become a non-stop boy-band zone just because N-Sync’s on the menu.
Were you similarly concerned by the shift to CD jukeboxes — they led to much greater mustical diversity too.
Shane,
It’s easy to throw your clothes in the wa$h when you get out of a bar, I would hope you would do so anyway.
But unless the dems rule everything in your life as they do in CA, you shouldn’t let the government tell a SMOKER or NONSMOKER what legal activity should be allowed or unallowed in any private establishment.
My point was that it should be up to the *bar owner* if they want the high- tech internet jukebox, a non-smoking facility, barstools or lounge chairs, dim lights or colored, or to exclude anything non-discriminatory(of course not race, nationality, gender, etc).
If an overwhelming majority, like you and your friends, wanted a nonsmoking bar before the government took control, a wise bar owner would have created a non smoking bar and blew all the other chimneys out of the water. But because this didn’t happen, whiners, yes whiners, whined their way into the democratic heart to allow more government control over things we are able to handle ourselves.
Never even heard of these Internet Jukeboxes before today.
I think Cleveland didn’t even get connected to the Internet until sometime last week…
Agreed on internet jukeboxes, was just talking about that with some friends not too long ago, actually. Kills the sense of place, unless one person’s willing to man the box all night, which sorta defeats the purpose. For my money, pharmacy bar’s jukebox comes in a close, close second in the DC category to the Red Room bar at Black Cat. Best jukebox period goes to Siberia near the Port Authority in Manhattan.
I have to wholeheartedly disagree with your statement.
But I guess that’s because I hang out with the fool who puts 12 drum & bass and/or jungle songs on in a row at the Capital Lounge. The backlash among other patrons and staff is astounding.
Addendum– yeah, of course it should be up to the bar owner if he wants to install one of these things. I’m pretty sure Radley wasn’t implying otherwise. I mean, we can say we dislike something, offer an opinion on some trend, without implying that we want it banned, can’t we?
Julian- I was just conversing with Shane about the ban of cigarettes in certain bars and the relation of that to this. If a bar owner wants an internet jukebox, or a non-smoking establishment, that should be up to the bar.
But these issues should not be up to the state. An internet jukebox might be as annoying or harmful(depressing) to me as ciggarette smoke is to anyone else.
Radley – how about a contest to nominate the best jukebox amongst agitator readers. Nominees throw up the bar and the city along with 15 albums that they think represent why it is the best jukebox. You pick top five and let the readers decide. What do you say?
At last years US Grand Prix at the Indianapolis speedway, my friends and I went to a very rough dive bar called scotty’s. The place was filled with those type of people you see in the movie Road House, as well as some pretty ugly women. Nascar all over the walls and country playing on the juke box. To our surprise, it was an internet juke box and listed tons of anti-country material. Such as Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park, Eminem, 2 Live crew, and a whole lot of rap. We proceeded to load the juke box with money and to play just about everything that the locals never inteneded on hearing. It was some of the greatest entertainment I have ever had. Some of the looks we got from people probably should have killed us on the spot. Great fun, and a lot of laughs.