and there is only one in this neck of the woods, there isn't a jukebox.

Music is conspicuous by its absence for most of the year.

Each New Year's Eve, at the massive pi$$ up the pub hosts (ticket only, cardiac threatening "buffet" at 11-ish, fancy dress encouraged, ear-defenders advised) a bloke turns up at around 9pm with a laptop and a humungous PA system. He then proceeds to play either "Stars on 45" for 2 hours and 59 minutes, followed by a "live" Big Ben bong countdown, or he plays that "Alice? Who the feck is Alice?" record every other song, and the crowd, inebriated to the point of delerium, find it excruciatingly funny every time.

Were there to be a jukebox, I'd want it to only contain Nine Inch Nails tracks, and a selection from Lou's "Metal Machine Music", because it would serve the heathen buggers right.

God, it's years since I fed a juke box. Yup, they are a rare finding. Seems to me that many pubs have a remotely filled i-pod on shuffle, without my choices ever coming up. My fondest juke boxian moments, tho', are Portsmouth/Mike Oldfield and Sebastian, b side of an early Cockney rebel single. By jumping on the floor (Hallo, the Royal George, George St, Lambeth, long since knocked down)you could make the former last for ever. And the wonderful moment, in a Southend pub, scarf tied around my head, having just left school, and put the latter on, probably twice or thrice in a row, drawing the locals to say, in disdain, 'ippies.... (We weren't, of course, sadly)

We're pretty well served for jukeboxes where we are. I think there are two modern 'online' boxes (no idea how these work - they just have 'Online' plastered all over them), one cd jukebox and a few of the terrible '2 tracks for a quid' video jukebox conversation killers.

When I was younger (so much younger than today), the jukebox used to get £3 or £4 of my student grant on every visit to the pub. These days though I tend to use a jukebox much more aggressively... I only really feed it if someone else has put something on which annoys me, and therefore I tend to pick revenge tracks which will annoy the person who irritated me. A recent visit resulted in me picking a mix of Daisy Chainsaw, The Wedding Present, Metallica, Led Zeppelin and Jilted John (!) I then sit back and try to spot the idiot who put their money in before me, thinking "Serves you right!"... It's so satisfying!

...of competitive smug bastards, each attempting to out-revenge the other.
Sounds right up my street.
There is a pub I have mentioned here before, the Ceol Castle, erstwhile home of live music. Before being allowed thru to the back bar, the front bar would fill up with the 10 or 11 souls awaiting Little Johnny England, E2K, Jackie Leven or Willard Clark Conspiracy, to name a few. There was there a marvellous jukebox, full, as befiting a pub in deepest irish brum, of country'n'irish. You could certainly get a few "what the feck's that" type expressions by alternating Johnny Cash oldies with the WolfeTones. A place probably not to advertise one's choice, however?!

My heart lept when I saw this topic!

Was in a pub on Saturday in my old home town of Maidenhead and they had a jukebox which seemed to be connected to the itunes libary meaning you could basically pick anything. To me that's just too much choice - it's much more fun to work within some enforced barriers. This still didn't stop some prick (most likely a student) putting on 'Mr Blobby' at some point.

I used to deilght in the fact that the Swan in Liverpool had Sister Ray by the Velvets which always went down well on a Friday night. Best of all was the old jukebox in the Pilgrim which featured an individual 'station' on each table which only played seven inch singles and their b sides.

a remote control for pub Jukes, just think of the fun us smug competitive bar stewards could have.

When that student twerp puts on Mr Blobby, you could hack in and end the thing after 15 seconds. When Oasis get selected for the umpteenth time, you could force the machine to play Vashti Bunyan instead.

On another nostalgic note for Jukes of old, I remember the Commercial Inn on the Barbican in Plymouth, which would do you two plays for a shilling (that's 5p, whipper-snappers) and had both "The Court of the Crimson King" from the mighty King Crimson, and Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love" among its 7 inch platters.

There were several great titles available that had never graced the UK charts; import copies of singles would probably have been sourced from members of Her Maj's Armed Forces, who were legion in the area, with Plymouth Citadel (barracks) just up the road.

If we hadn't blitzed them into vinyl swarf by repeated playings on countless Saturday nights, some of those discs would now be fetching small fortunes on eBay. They gave their lives so that we might drink in a suitably prog-filled atmosphere, heady with the aroma of damp army-surplus greatcoats, cheap patchouli oil, Courage Best bitter and Number Six tabs.

There was a pretty terrible pub in St. Albans called the Cricketers (now an Indian restaurant...) which, in an attempt to entice the working man to unload some of his hard earned, started putting on strippers on Friday lunchtime, and game young things would dance to the juke box whilst divesting themselves. I should clarify at this point that I didn't witness this "entertainment" - though a mate and I did wander up purely for investigative purposes and couldn't get near the door, nevermind inside. Anyway, St. Albans Council, buried in complaints from local upstanding residents, tried to stop it on the basis that they had no entertainment licence, which at that time was required for more than two performers. The pub's defence was that two strippers dancing to the jukebox doesn't actually require a licence - the Council's case was based on the fact that the jukebox was also a performer. It actually went to court, and the council lost - the juke box is definately not a performer!

Music in pubs is a mixed pleasure though isn't it.

How I remember the Star Inn in St. Just, Cornwall, where a mate and I spent a drunken afternoon playing pool and listening to the jukebox - I recall "Layla" (full length version) was very popular, and oddly enough "Brown eyes blue" by Crystal Gayle which I still like to this day.

But only yesterday I visited one of my regular drinking holes where the new management have installed speakers and are playing canned music - which I loath with a vengeance, the polar opposite of my affection for the old jukebox! Heaven and Hell!

is the hideous TV(s)-mounted-on-the-wall infection which took hold in the 1980s.

There used to be a fine boozer called The Shakespeare in Totterdown in Bristol, and for several years it was my local. The landlord, "Mad Ern" had a couple of DJ decks set up, and a 7inch single collection to die for. After a few snifters, Ern would emerge from behind the bar, the Jukebox (which was already pretty good) would get its plug pulled, Ern would fire up the decks and we'd be blown off our seats by a selection of his favourite soul, R'n'B or reggae classics.

One day, the owners (Ern was a tenant landlord) decided to spend some cash doing the pub up. All the tat, er, memorabilia, that Ern had accumulated (7 inch single sleeves, photos, newspaper articles, cigarette cards etc etc) was removed from the walls, up went those screen printed mirrors with 1920s adverts on them, and a TV set appeared wall-mounted in every corner of the bar.

It was now impossible to have a conversation; the flickering image would grab your eye wherever you sat. You could either look up directly into a screen, or see one reflected in a bloody mirror. Your drinking buddies would have a vacant thousand-yard stare as they ogled, mesmerised, at the drivel on screen above your head. All was not well in The Shakespeare, and something had to give.

Ern had had enough. The TVs went, the memorabilia returned. The decks were spun again, and the drinkers of Totterdown breathed a sigh of relief.

We moved away at around the time of the peasants revolt, so I have no idea what The Shakespeare is like these days, or even if it still exists with that name, but it has left me with a lifelong hatred of TVs in pubs, and a lifelong fondness for eccentric misfits like Ern. The world needs more landlords like Ern, in more pubs like The Shakespeare.

Don't you just hate it though when somebody puts more than one track on in a row by the same artist. This isn't right is it?
Aside to this, one of my locals in Scarborough used to have a great juke box with lots of Dylan on it. Although I never put any Dylan on I grew to love his music whilst also learning how to drink. Sadly this pub is now a former shadow of its glorious self. "The Times They Are Changing " (for the worse)

why is it that, on some of these modern Jukeboxes, with fifty thousand tracks on CD available, you can bung in a quid, make your careful, artfully chosen selection of tunes, play four or five games of pool, sup a healthy five or six pints, go the lav twice and it's only then, THEN, as you shove your arms through the sleeves of your jacket, pushing the pub door open with a foot on your way to a club or a kebab, that you hear your first selection start to blare out over the speakers....

Don't know about The Mitre, VV, as I'd long gone by then, but I spent many a 6d in the wall-mounted juke box in Exeter's Clock Tower Cafe in the 60's, as well as the classic one in the El Zamba. EP's were the favourites for your money's worth, such as The Beatles' Long Tall Sally.
Choosing cool B sides was the real trick. For Miss Caulker (Animals), High Time Baby (Spencer Davis), Steeled Blues (Yardbirds). You could always tell a female selection when Gary Puckett' s 'Young Girl' or 'Jesamine' came on. (Nowadays it'd be a Guilty Pleasures fan). Kicking the juke box was always a viable option then. The other long-gone treat was buying ex-juke singles with the middles missing, often found in a newsagents in those days.

a real dying bastion of English pub heritage.

My local in Chester is Ye Olde Cottage in Brook Street, and it is my local due to the fact that whilst in their one night I realised that it has the best jukebox for miles around. Proper one too, although CD, and full of everything wierd and wonderful.

Currently my 5 for a £1 consists

Black Dog - Led Zep
Volare - Dean Martin
Do Me A Favour - Arctic Monkeys
Back in Black - ACDC
Like A Rolling Stone - Bob Dylan

The landlord even takes requests for when "the jukey bloke" is in.

Also serves a beautiful cask Cains too, and has open fires in the winter.

It's like old rocker Heaven.

I work for a freight forwarding company and for a few years was importing Rock-Ola Jukeboxes from Los Angeles. These are the real McCoy and sell in the uk for around £4500 to £5000.00. I was offered one for £3500 brand new at cost or thereabouts - I declined the offer to my eternal regret as it would have made a handome piece of furniture for the house, possibly increased in value and would have given me endless hours of fun. Still I didnt want to incur the wrath of the good lady wife.
Anyway most of these jukeboxes are sold to FI drivers, tv and radio stars - must be the new status symbol.

Funny thing about Jukeboxes is that certain songs remind me of them - The Wanderer, Allman Bros Jessica, Dire Straits Sultans of Swing, Creedence Looking out my back door.I know the ipod does the same thing but the romance of the jukebox shouldnt be forgotten.

When a CD jukebox appeared in one local, The Ship in Byker, we thought we were quids in.
The landlady thought otherwise.
The selection was very random and included compilations that appeared on the local garage forecourt. Coupled with these, the only proper albums were Bat Out of Hell and Aqualung, both of which were played in full by the crusty old hippies who most definitely didn't have a home to go to.
Over at the Free Trade under the watchful eye of landlord Peter Auty, the vinyl was hand selected, most tracks r'n'b, blues and soul, the newest track being the Fall's cover of Ghost in my House.
The last track every night was Hit The Road Jack, played at top volume. It worked a treat.
Currently, the best juke box in Newcastle can be found in The Trent House, close to St James Park. It's free, so put your money away.

In 1995, I spent a few months on the dole before ironically working for the DSS for the next nine years, only to finally be made redundant by them! However, after cashing in our giros, on late Tuesday afternoons, after a strum on our guitars, my mates and myself woud stroll down to my local village pub The Nags Head. We become quite matey with the new landlord, who installed a vinyl juke after our complaints about the lack of music in the back room.What service! It was a great time, listening to Oasis b-sides and putting in new requests for vinyl every week. The height of Brit Pop too, it felt like the glory years. You just wouldn't get that kind of service these days would you?
By the way, does jazz work on juke box? I came across a pub on the outskirts of Shrewsbury last year which had a lot of jazz on it. There's also a pub in Chorlton, just outside Manchester which has quite a bit of Miles Davis on it. I like jazz, but thik it only works in the daytime in pubs.

in Warrington is my haunt, has an online jukebox (if that's the proper term) which I LOVE. It's a bit of a locals pub, but my mate and I are regulars and they indulge us. The times I've been able to play King Crimson's "Starless", followed by some Serge Gainsbourg, XTC or (hurrah!) some Throbbing Gristle whilst devouring a bag of Bacon Fries...mmm HEAVEN!

Re jukeboxes. When at college in the early 1980s, my favourite trick to round off a delightful evening in the Uni Bar was to approach the jukebox and select the less-popular flipside of certain popular 45s, safe in the knowledge that said side contained "experimental" or just plain unlistenable material. A splendid example was Siouxsie & The Banshees "Voices", which formed the B-side to their top pop hit "Hong Kong Garden". As the hardy will know, "Voices" could also have been named "Caterwauling For Atonal Voice And Guitar", duration about five minutes. Another goodie was Public Image's first single which had two minutes of squalling noise on the flip. Imagine the hilarity!! Well worth 10p a pop or however much it was.

Meanwhile. The estimable Bradley's Spanish Bar, in Hanway St W1, a back street just north of London's trendy Soho, has a decent jukebox chock full of 45s, with the required exposed mechanism and gaudy lightshow. At least, it did the last time I went in there.

By the way, how much is one of those restored 1940s jukeboxes which plays 78s? I Want One Of Those!!

back in the 1970s, a UK shilling piece (aka 5p) was EXACTLY the same size and weight as a Deutschmark coin?

This was a particularly useful fact if one visited what was then West Germany with a pocket or two full of the little beauties, as the exchange rate meant that a DM was worth about two and a half times as much as a shilling.

Given that NAAFI Jukeboxes ran on DMs, this meant that a veritable festival's worth of music could be heard in the bar for diddly squat investment.

Oh, and out of the streets in civvy Germany, all kinds of other machines ran on DM coins too...

I remember my first day at Sixth Form College. My friends and I plucked up the courage to enter the Common Room, where the coolest of the cool hung out.

We were all desperate to fit in with that crowd.

We spied the Juke Box in the corner. Here, we thought, was our opportunity to impress, with our selection of cult tunes that we could rock the common room with.

We gathered our coins and made our way to the Juke Box. I forget exactly, what tune we had planned to select. I do recall, however that the keypad on the Juke box had a particularly sensitive number '3' key. We pressed it a bit too hard, and the screen flashed up with '333'.

And what was track '333' on that particular Jukebox?

'It's Raining Men' by the weathergirls.

Never has a group of boys fled a common room so quickly.

It was a long time until we plucked up the courage to return.

Ah, I remember too the great Deutschmark and Shilling scam. I can remember collecting dozens of one 'bob' coins for visiting penfriends to take back. They worked a treat in cigarette and other vending machines!