IT CAN USUALLY be found in the darkest corner—standing like a loner with its back to the wall. It’s not the first thing you see when you enter a bar, but it’s probably the first thing you’ll hear. More than just decoration or a piece of furniture, a jukebox can be the defining characteristic of a bar—arguably as important, if not more so, than the drinks themselves. A spot with a good jukebox is memorable. People are loyal to a good jukebox. For just a pocketful of change, any drunkard can be DJ for the night, as long as he or she keeps feeding quarters into the slot.
“CDs in a jukebox should reflect the personality of a bar,” says Jason Youngers, owner of SE 34th’s Side Street Tavern.
For the bar’s 11-year existence, Side Street has maintained one of the city’s most regularly rotated jukes, featuring the latest Beach House and A$AP Ferg records, Beyoncé’s Lemonade, and, inexplicably, Burt Bacharach’s greatest hits.
“If I go to a bar in Gresham, I want it to be filled with Alan Jackson,” Youngers says. “And if I go to a punk bar, there’d better be punk.”
Jukeboxes first came into popularity in the mid-20th century, loaded with the latest 45 RPM records. Since three-quarters of all records produced in America at that time were delivered straight to jukeboxes, often the only way to catch the latest hit single was to visit the local pub or diner. Vinyl records were replaced by compact discs in the latter half of the century, and what the jukebox lost in sound quality, it gained in song selection. While diminished in popularity, jukeboxes nonetheless remained an important fixture in the new millennium—though most are relegated to dive bars and pizza joints.
These days, the old, CD-flipping jukebox is a relic, much like CDs themselves. As 78s were replaced with 45s, which were in turn replaced with CDs, the internet has steadily displaced CD jukeboxes with bright, digital interfaces, making the entire music world available with just the touch of a finger. In Portland, however, there remain a handful of holdouts, unwilling to let go of their classic jukeboxes—a decision that goes beyond sentimental reasons. When a bar’s owner and staff load up a jukebox with music, they are effectively defining the bar’s character.
The Nest Lounge on SE Belmont has dedicated half their jukebox to local artists, from Red Fang to Dead Moon, while the other half reads like a tour of pop music history, with Foo Fighters’ debut album alongside Entertainment Weekly’s Greatest Hits 1976.
“When we first got the machine, it was straight out of 1993,” says Amy, a bartender at the Nest. “Everything in there was either Matchbox 20 or the Goo Goo Dolls.”
She was tasked with replacing the music on the jukebox, one disc at a time, but many CDs that came with the jukebox have remained, much to her and others’ consternation.
“There’s always the person who puts on Johnny Cash’s ‘Hurt,’ and I always fast-forward it. No one wants to hear that song while they’re in a bar, trying to have fun.”