i love a good juke joint. a place that you can go in and leaf through the selections to find some classics. some pearl jam ten, some old beasties, a little johnny cash. the essentials. but with al gore and his invention of the internet, it was only a matter of time before someone hooked a jukebox up to the internet where people could pay to download songs for everyone to hear. kind of nice to have that kind of catalog at your fingertips, but it also opens you up to anyone’s taste. which isn’t always good.
a few weeks ago i joined a bowling league. good times on a thursday night. its a lot of us twenty to thirty somethings just tossing back a few beers and chucking the bowling ball down the lane in between. just a nice night of the week to blow off some steam. but then it starts…
one man’s mission to torture the masses with his poor taste in music. actually, they were middle of the road songs. songs that if they came on the radio, you might not change it, but by no means do they make your top 25 on your ipod. and its also that he plays the same songs every week. not just that, but he plays “sultans of swing” by dire straights four times a night. i wish i was kidding. the level of douchebaggery associated with such a move is immeasureable.
people like this guy do not understand that not everyone shares the amusement with such situations. the thing about jukeboxes is that they are in public. where strangers usually intermingle. that being the case, not everyone knows everybody. so not everyone knows that you are maybe trying to be funny. or that not everyone knows of your tone deafness. or not everyone knows that you are missing the gene for good taste. or not everyone knows that you live in your own little world.
i was once in a bar where someone thought that it was funny to play every song by michael jackson that was downloadable on the jukebox. when i was in fifth grade, i would have been overjoyed. sitting there with my thriller trading cards and screaming out a “who!” along with the king of pop. but then he turned white and his life became a multi-million dollar after school special and i was no longer in awe of his musical catalog.
so let’s treat this unorganized and questionably retarded diatribe as a public service announcement. when you drop the quarter in the machine, look around the room and realize your audience.