by philipchevron Sat Jun 27, 2009 3:34 pm
Smerker wrote:Boss, on the Radiators album there's a blinder of a track called Johnny Jukebox. I've read you used to call yourself that, so is the song about yourself or someone else or just imaginary? Or have I missed the point and it's actually about the plight of native americans...
None of the above/all of the above. Johnny Juke(box) is the central character in the Radiators' second album
Ghostown, the teenage kid who takes the midnight walk through Dublin with the ghosts of the Faithful Departed, the priests, poets, patriots and prostitutes of early 20th century Dublin. Hitting their number(s) on the jukebox supposedly summons up the ghost characters.
When I myself became a London immigrant in 1977, I was fascinated by the central role the jukebox played in North and South London immigrant-Irish pub life. The machine would always be stacked with Irish records, country records and country 'n' Irish records I would almost never have heard or consciously listened to back home in Dublin. They appeared to resonate in a different way, take on deeper, more lonesome meanings to people. It's an aspect of London-Irish pub life Shane later explicitly alluded to, 8 years later, in "A Pair Of Brown Eyes" when he referenced the great Irish country stars Ray [Lynam] and Philomena [Begley] and their biggest jukebox hit, the ubiquitous "My Elusive Dreams" [and snuck in, in passing, the words "[and on the] jukebox Johnny [sang]."
When I later worked in Rock On record shop in Camden, we used to have a number of West Indian regulars - one of them, a bus conductor, frequently left a bus full of passengers outside as he thumbed his way through our singles crates. Invariably, the West Indians had as much interest in the records of Jim Reeves as they did in the old RnB and Blue Beat singles, and I realised that country music singles, as heard in bars, were something of a universal cultural comfort blanket for immigrants.
My own all-time great jukebox single was Ned Miller's "From A Jack To A King", which always sounded fantastic on a good old fashioned jukebox with a really great bottomy sound. If you deconstruct the chord sequence of "Johnny Jukebox", ignoring the melody-line itself, you'll find it's a punked-up, doo-wopped-up variation on "From A Jack To A King".
For a short while, I used Johnny Juke as a sometime pseudonym, partly to help build the
Ghostown mythology and partly because it was briefly useful to me. I dropped the conceit when I realised it was unhelpfully redolent of Ziggy Stardust - a bit too meta-rock for my purposes. But it has tended to stick - on the comeback album Horslips did a few years ago (
Rollback) there is a special thanks credit to the guy.
[quote="Smerker"]Boss, on the Radiators album there's a blinder of a track called Johnny Jukebox. I've read you used to call yourself that, so is the song about yourself or someone else or just imaginary? Or have I missed the point and it's actually about the plight of native americans...[/quote]
None of the above/all of the above. Johnny Juke(box) is the central character in the Radiators' second album [i]Ghostown[/i], the teenage kid who takes the midnight walk through Dublin with the ghosts of the Faithful Departed, the priests, poets, patriots and prostitutes of early 20th century Dublin. Hitting their number(s) on the jukebox supposedly summons up the ghost characters.
When I myself became a London immigrant in 1977, I was fascinated by the central role the jukebox played in North and South London immigrant-Irish pub life. The machine would always be stacked with Irish records, country records and country 'n' Irish records I would almost never have heard or consciously listened to back home in Dublin. They appeared to resonate in a different way, take on deeper, more lonesome meanings to people. It's an aspect of London-Irish pub life Shane later explicitly alluded to, 8 years later, in "A Pair Of Brown Eyes" when he referenced the great Irish country stars Ray [Lynam] and Philomena [Begley] and their biggest jukebox hit, the ubiquitous "My Elusive Dreams" [and snuck in, in passing, the words "[and on the] jukebox Johnny [sang]."
When I later worked in Rock On record shop in Camden, we used to have a number of West Indian regulars - one of them, a bus conductor, frequently left a bus full of passengers outside as he thumbed his way through our singles crates. Invariably, the West Indians had as much interest in the records of Jim Reeves as they did in the old RnB and Blue Beat singles, and I realised that country music singles, as heard in bars, were something of a universal cultural comfort blanket for immigrants.
My own all-time great jukebox single was Ned Miller's "From A Jack To A King", which always sounded fantastic on a good old fashioned jukebox with a really great bottomy sound. If you deconstruct the chord sequence of "Johnny Jukebox", ignoring the melody-line itself, you'll find it's a punked-up, doo-wopped-up variation on "From A Jack To A King".
For a short while, I used Johnny Juke as a sometime pseudonym, partly to help build the [i]Ghostown[/i] mythology and partly because it was briefly useful to me. I dropped the conceit when I realised it was unhelpfully redolent of Ziggy Stardust - a bit too meta-rock for my purposes. But it has tended to stick - on the comeback album Horslips did a few years ago ([i]Rollback[/i]) there is a special thanks credit to the guy.
