Johnny Juke

[James]

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...

[philipchevron]

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.

[Clash Cadillac]

I am always amazed at the far reaching influence Jim Reeves cultivated.

Now I must look through my 45 stockpile and see if I can find that Ned Miller release.

[philipchevron]

I am always amazed at the far reaching influence Jim Reeves cultivated.

Now I must look through my 45 stockpile and see if I can find that Ned Miller release.

Not only was Reeves himself a major star in Ireland - especially after his death - but a guy called Larry Cunningham made a lifetime career out of sounding like him and supplemented his Reeves covers with his own County-specific repertoire - "Lovely Leitrim", "Among The Wicklow Hills" etc. Larry took the precaution of holding down a second career as a grocer, a wise move as, the only time I saw him perform live, he sang consistently flat.

The Reeves crossover into the South London West Indian culture may have come about because the Brixton-Irish tradition of shebeens - illicit houseparties, basically - was quickly taken up by the local West Indians, themselves no strangers to rent parties, block parties etc. It seems inconceivable that they did not also share each others music.

[kmurray105]

Love reading your backstories, Philip. You should write a book.

[moose]

Thats a great read Phil and i concur with KM, you should write a book/autobiog....