Utopian Jukebox.

So, I’m going to break the litmus test and talk solely from anecdote. But no-one has to read this entry so I won’t feel so bad about it.

I think the pub jukebox is the utopian object par excellence. I mean it embodies all the tension that goes into the formation of utopia and its inevitable (Black Mass?) fall into dystopia.

The jukebox exists as a means to egocentric projection over a social system: it offers us a way to drag up those lost moments of the past that we hold dearly (Guns n Roses, for me, which may negate the royal we I use in this entry) so as to project them over those who inhabit the Townie at 3am of a Saturday morning. We program our desire into the machine – a political act if ever there was one – and so teleology presents itself: we are now progressing towards Paradise (City).

However, the utopian desire becomes all consuming and our ambitions callous: we realize that o-so-totalitarian button beneath the machine that only the bouncer knew of hitherto (like buying arms off the U.S., I guess). With this we sabotage the desires of others who are, now, adversaries: we don’t want to listen to Pearl Jam, to That Godawful Umbrella Song, or to Bon Jovi. We press the button (there’s something Cold War about this, I think) and the dreams of others’ come to a swift and unceremonious end.

Then our three songs come on, Welcome to the Jungle, Paradise City, and November Rain. Some patrons get into it – screaming at the tops of their lungs, our Leninist vanguard – while others look unimpressed. These others are, effectively, in the aural gulag our utopia has created: the musical slums.



I want to keep running with this into a jukebox war but, alas, THESIS and I’ve likely lost whatever cred I had with this post.