CC Club
Nick Ver Steegh
More Jukeboxing
Where they haven’t been replaced by charmless, trend-crunching tune-bots, jukeboxes say a lot about a place—nay, enhance the place. In Jukeboxing, Decider spends some quarters and punches some buttons at Twin Cities bars and venues. This edition takes a look at the jukebox at the CC Club.
The Box: The Rowe International Berkeley CD Wall Jukebox, with bolts of neon blue lightning caressing the shell like a sixth-grader’s Trapper Keeper. Rowe’s website says the Berkeley weighs 185 pounds, so don’t try to shake it if it eats your dollar. Rowe also says this model has “modem compatibility for data retrieval,” which means it’s probably blogging about you. (“rftol sum1 pr3ssd 69!1!!”)
Price: Midwest standard scale: $1 lets you lather your fries with 3 packets of hot Bowie sauce, $2 can get you 7 servings of Dead Kennedys, and $5 will let you carve the proverbial Christmas ham—one complete play of OK Computer plus half of Blood Mountain (that is, 18 songs).
Drinkin' Songs: Practically everything. This juke has both Pogues and Shane McGowan solo records, a double-disc Hank Williams, and perhaps best of all, the Rolling Stones’ “Dear Doctor”—(“Oh help me, please doctor, I'm damaged / There's a pain where there once was a heart… Can't ya please tear it out, and preserve it / Right there in that jar?”).
Nerd Jams: One hesitates to call Casualties fans “nerds,” so let’s go with the K.D. Lang & Tony Bennett duets album of Louis Armstrong standards. Play “That Lucky Old Sun (Just Rolls Around Heaven All Day)” at 1 a.m. on a Saturday night and you may be in contact with the sublime, but you are also a nerd.
Mixes: Really only two: Billboard Rock Hits 1959, and a single-disc Motown. This is an album-driven juke, picked by the Club’s tattooed bartenders—probably from across-the-street Treehouse Records’ used bin.
Locals: Many, and proudly featured. Among others are Atmosphere, The Replacements, P.O.S., Romantica, First Avenue: The Bootlegs Vol. 1, and a compilation, No Hold Back All Attack, of Twin Cities hardcore punk bands—the Triple Rock in a box.
For Bar Time: A passing bartender approved Decider’s choice of a few Roky Erickson tracks with a thumbs-up: “Another Aliens fan? I put that one in.”
