Five Reasons to Hate Digital Jukeboxes

Photo by Dan Eggert.

1. A bar used to be defined by its jukebox. Fill it with the right mix, and you could be assured of a certain mood, with songs that would spur conversations. Of all the compliments you could receive in the bar business, one of the best was when someone went up to the jukebox and blurted “this jukebox rocks!” or even better, if you’re at another bar and hear someone say, “let’s go to x-bar, they’ve got a great jukebox!” [yes, it used to happen].

2. The bar no longer has control of its vibe. Back in the day, sure, your selection was limited, but that limited selection meant the bar had to put some effort into making the most of its 100 CDs. If the jukebox was loaded with “NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL MUSIC’ CDs,” you knew they didn’t really care about the music. The CDs in the jukebox helped you understand the subtle (or not-so-subtle) differences between the crowd at the Bayside versus the crowd at the AC Tap, Husby’s versus the Mink River Basin, or the Pen Pub versus Sonny’s. You couldn’t play country in some bars, couldn’t play hip-hop or death metal in others.

3. It has opened up the jukebox to everyone, and that’s not a good thing. Many who didn’t know much about music used to be too intimidated to go to the box and try to find obscure classics buried in an album, but now they can all find the crap they like and lay their torture down upon the rest of us. The digital jukeboxes define what is a “hot jam,” also known as “the worst song ever.”

4. It takes too long! An experienced jukebox DJ could plug $4 – 5 worth of music onto the playlist in a minute or two with the old limited, but carefully chosen, selection. Now, the drunken brat-fingered (Biwerism) among us stare mindlessly at the touch-screen for 10 – 20 minutes at a time.

5. Class Wars. $1 now buys you two songs, tops. That sucks. Digital jukeboxes are apparently designed by people who hate the poor. These newfangled jukeboxes leave the night’s musical slate increasingly to the spendy and their all-too-often awful tastes in music, lowering our national standards and subjecting the middle drinking class to torture.

One Reason to Love Them

An unexpected delight of digital jukeboxes? The search for the worst song possible. Try playing these four hip jams the next time the bar is jumpin’ and you too could be the most popular guy or gal in the room.

1. Wesley Willis, “Cut the Mullet”

2. Carl Lewis, “Break It Up”

3. Eddie Murphy, “Party All the Time”

4. Bruce Willis, “Secret Agent Man”

Tom Ciaccio contributed to this commentary. Myles Dannhausen Jr. was co-owner of Husby’s in Sister Bay from 1999 – 2003, where they didn’t play Dixie Chicks, where a customer once played the entire Metallica S&M double-album. It was removed the next day.