Where is your favourite jukebox? Tell us at the bottom of this article
The point of a jukebox isn’t simply to hear a song you love when you’re out in
a bar or a café: it is to make everyone else in the place listen to the damn
thing, too – whether they want to or not. That’s also the point of Jukebox,
the new album by the Georgia-born singer Chan Marshall, aka Cat Power. Her
album includes cover versions of Hank Williams’s Ramblin’ Man,
Billie Holiday’s Don’t Explain and Kander and Ebb’s New
York, New York, all classic songs decades old and therefore probably not
on the radar of the average young pop fan.
She descibes it as “a way to bring back some old songs to young people”,
adding: “They’re really starving to hear music that means something.” The
hidden message behind Jukeboxis that not only does Chan Marshall love
these songs, we must love them too. And that’s what the jukebox is all
about.
But the jukebox is having a hard time of it. The digital revolution has
allowed for anyone with a broadband connection to have access to the entire
recorded history of music, and the isolating experience of listening to a
song on your iPod has replaced the far more sociable one of crowding round a
beautiful Wurlitzer or Rock-Ola with Greco-Roman stylings and flashing
lights and tapping your fingers on its chrome trim.
The jukebox, named after black American juke (dancing) joints and which
evolved from coin-slot phonographs, came into being in 1910 with the mass
production of 78 records. But it was in the Fifties and Sixties, after the
introduction of the 45 record in 1949, that the jukebox came into its own.
Back then records were expensive, American imports were hard to find and the
best way of hearing the latest hit by Elvis Presley or Bob Dylan was to put
a coin in the slot of the jukebox at your local coffee bar.
More than this, a jukebox was a place where teenage dramas of love and
heartbreak were played out to the whirr and click of a 45 slotting under a
stylus.
With the 1980s came the CD jukebox – a machine that apologetically took up a
small space on a wall rather than brashly dominating the room as the
original jukeboxes did. But the machines hung on in there until the 1990s.
The rise of dance music culture meant that the idea of a democratic choice
of music in a public place went out of the window. Then came the death
knell: the iPod. What use is a jukebox to anyone with an MP3 player and a
broadband connection has the entire history of recorded music at their
fingertips?
With any revolution, however, comes a counter-revolution. For all their
user-friendly appeal, iPods do not exactly bring people together in the way
that jukeboxes do. And the novelty of watching a po-faced DJ lose his temper
after a drunken member of a hen party asks if he or she can play Abba’s Dancing
Queen is wearing off, too. The first sign that changes were afoot came
when the Hawley Arms, the Camden pub frequented by Amy Winehouse for much of
2007, discovered that its jukebox was as much of a draw as its selection of
fine wines and ales.
“I got one after I came across a pub with a jukebox in East London and spent
the next hour pumping it with money to hear Marvin Gaye songs,” says Alan
Day, owner of the Hawley Arms. “At the same time I realised that DJs in pubs
were a bit irrelevant when the technology of an iPod meant that having a
great collection of music is no big deal any more. It was time to put the
music back in the hands of the people going into the pub for a drink, rather
than the ones working there.”
Yet, as Day discovered, jukebox users have a frustrating tendency to play it
safe. “It’s always the same old records that get played,” he sighs, with the
weariness of a man forced to listen to Baggy Trousers by Madness
three times in a row.
“We put in really cool records by artists like Love and Gram Parsons and we
may as well not have bothered. Everyone just goes back to Too Much Too
Youngby the Specials and Valerie by the Zutons. But the jukebox
is always popular – you can tell by the amount of stiletto dents in the
floorboards around it.”
Given the Hawley’s famous customer base, are there not a few punters who are
more discerning in their choices? “I don’t want to namedrop, but Amy
[Winehouse] always put on good tunes. She knew where the volume control was
and she would always crank it up to play a great old soul song that most
people hadn’t heard of. We would have to say her: ‘Good call, Amy, but it’s
two in the afternoon . . .’ ” In the Hawley Arms, and its sister pub the
Wilmington in Farringdon, Day has opted for CD jukeboxes. These lack the
charm of the 45-playing originals, but he argues that in an age when the
average music fan has 8,000 songs on his iPod a selection of 100 45s just
won’t cut it.
For other bar owners, though, only vinyl will do. My own musical education
included the jukebox at Bradley’s, a tiny bar in Central London where the
selection of crackly 45s seemed to go well with the Seventies Spanish
tourism posters and cheap red wine.
“We are open-minded in the records we choose,” says Rico Nagy, a barman at
Bradley’s, who finds new 45s to feed the jukebox every two weeks. “We have
anything from the Beatles to the Dead Kennedys, but we find that the same
songs tend to get played: at the moment it’s 20th Century Boy
by T-Rex and It Must Be Love by Madness.”
Rather like an autocratic democracy, traditional jukeboxes allow the staff of
a bar with its own sense of character to have a music policy through the
records or CDs with which they fill it. The Social, in Central London,
reinforces its punters’ self-worth as arbiters of taste by having a jukebox
that features promotional CDs yet to be released. The Boogaloo, a pub in
North London part-owned by Shane MacGowan, gets well-known musicians,
including Johnny Marr and Pete Doherty, to make the choices for them.
But a potentially dangerous new trend in US bars, sure to reach here soon,
relinquishes all musical control. Ecast is a network that provides
broadband-connected, touch-screen jukeboxes to bars and restaurants
throughout the United States. The advantage for the music industry is that
every time a song is played it is logged into a central system, allowing
record companies to find out instantly which tracks and artists are most
popular. The disadvantage is that the music played tends to be
overwhelmingly mainstream.
Lisa Triver, of Ecast, claims that its users “are typically the young
trendsetters responsible for getting artists up the charts”, but the
statistics tell a different story: it is hits by already established acts
such as Alicia Keys that are being played the most. And frankly, who wants
to spend all day staring at a computer screen, only to catch a cool beer
after work, then stare at a screen some more, particularly now that
advertisers are using the jukeboxes to bombard bar-goers with messages?
“The only way to chase after these folks is to chase after their life-styles,”
explains Jack Sullivan of the ad-buying agency Starcom. Is this really what
Joan Jett intended when, on her anthem I Love Rock’n’ Roll,
she entreated us to “put an other dime in the jukebox, baby”?
The jukebox is a thing of romance and beauty. One of the most memorable
moments in Lindsay Anderson’s public-school rebellion movie If . . .
comes when Travis (Malcom McDowell) swaggers into a roadside café, flicks a
coin in the jukebox and plays the Missa Luba, a sublime piece of
choral music sung by Congolese Catholics. And did Marlon Brando ever look
cooler than in 1953 in The Wild One, when he leans against a jukebox
and snaps his fingers to a jazzy tune that’s sure to send the town squares
running for cover?
Despite competition from karaoke bars, DJs and iPods, classic jukeboxes are
just about hanging in there. More often than not the best models are
privately owned (Paul McCartney has a 1950s Wurlitzer in his office), but
across Britain there is a handful of bars and pubs whose charm lies in
filling up a jukebox with great tunes and allowing their customers to choose
from them.
Cat Power’s selection on Jukebox isn’t ideal for a night out –
her version of Joni Mitchell’s Blueis unlikely to get the party
started – but she has nonetheless reminded us that jukeboxes are much-loved
artefacts that we should cherish before they vanish. To quote another famous
Joni Mitchell song, you don’t know what you’ve got ’till it’s gone.
Rock the joint – the hottest slots in Britain
Bradleys Spanish Bar, London W1
Peerless vinyl jukebox.
The Boogaloo, London N6
All 100 albums must be at least a decade old. Ten are picked out by owner
Shane MacGowan.
Nice’n’Sleazy Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow
Live music dive with a heroically indie jukebox.
Corbieres Half Moon Street, Manchester
Devotees claim it’s the best in the world.
Old Blue Last, London EC2
Self-regarding but unarguably good.
Mucky Pup, London N1
Specialises in out-there, avant rock. Well, someone has to.
