I found out I can access the local bar's TouchTones from my house and my work. So on random evenings, I'll queue a song list up starting with Photograph (my calling card), then do a list of bizarre songs (Surfin' Bird, it's Not Unusual, a 20+ minute Sufjan Stevens song, Babymetal, etc), then close it out with Photograph again.
I'm going to give the bartender a Pavlovian response to hearing Nickelback
So, from experience, I don't think it likes it if you play a song too close to itself. I had a short Playlist once with two or three songs bookended with Photograph, and it dropped the second Photograph. So I'm hesitant to do the same song over and over. Maybe a song that has a whole bunch of different versions might work!
A lad I know was a regular in one of the pubs I used to frequent, which had a jukey that had the CD covers mapped in a 2x2 grid of a catalogue that rotated to show off what was in the box - generally 99 CD's worth, likely a limitation of the input display than any software constraint.
Rather than scroll through the jukey CD's, you could literally ask him a song and he'd give you the two digit CD number, and two digit track number from memory. It was impressive.
Or, you could put two quid in for 12 tracks or whatever, put on two bangers, and the other ten stupidly long November Rain style songs, or Christmas songs in July, by which point you'd have finished your drink and fucked off because the "skip song" control behind the bar had been gubbed for years - leaving your remaining ten songs to go on for hours, or to bring festive cheer to drinkers at half past three on a Monday afternoon in the summer.
Fun times - and very specific to a twenty or thirty year window in time, too.
Me too. I tease Vice here, but they did some incredible journalism and their collapse is entirely sad. The state of journalism in 2024 in general is distressing, to severely understate the matter
Guess who just got back today?
Them wild-eyed boys that had been away
Haven't changed, had much to say
But man, I still think them cats are crazy
They were askin' if you were around
How you was, where you could be found
I told 'em you were livin' downtown
Drivin' all the old men crazy
Honestly, considering the genre and the ambition and intent of the song, the lyrics are a notch above the competition at the time. Lynott wrote some really good lyrics at times and while this song is admittedly not the best example of his writing, at least it's got believable characters and setting. I'd rather hear a song about young working class Irish people and their life-affirming ways than what most other hard rock acts were writing about in the 70s and 80s.
When I was young, a buddy and I went into a bar we had driven by a bunch of times but never gone into. When we walked in, the redneck-looking guys inside all just stared at us - like very unwelcoming. I went over to the jukebox and put in a few quarters, selected something like "Sweet home Alabama," but then queued up all the very poppy songs that I was surprised to see on the list. Like "Dancing queen" and "Afternoon delight." Then we left.
And once the door closed, the bartender poured a free round and they all danced the evening away to ABBA. You spread a bit of warmth and love in this world, and you used disco to do it.
That jukebox in the corner blastin' out my favorite song
The nights are getting longer, it won't be long
Won't be long 'til summer comes
Now that the boys are here again
I just have to comment on how I truly hate that song. I can't even express in words why i hate it, but i do, enough to put that out there for you to see.