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Ten tracks from my most memorable jukebox-related events
You could argue that my first ‘jukebox’ selector moment was when I was just two, at a record shop in Worcester, where an otherwise inquisitive me was silenced when the person behind the counter put on The Beginning of the End’s Funky Nassau. I’ve been into music ever since.
It’s possibly why I gravitate to the jukebox, in whatever form it may take.
I fondly remember one at what was once known as The Milk Bar in the Shropshire market town of Ludlow. It’s where the local college lived. In 1989 it was the Market Cafe, and was without doubt the main hangout for students. Alongside the worn and torn vinyl booth seating, aluminium tables and cracked Lino floor of this lowly-populated countryside town lived a massive Fifties jukebox with a ranging style of music. Incredibly, amongst the singles was Special Ed’s Club Scene.
A year later I was at Shrewsbury Sixth Form which had an equally huge jukebox in its canteen area. I forget how many times I chucked a coin in just to hear Silver Bullet’s 20 Seconds to Comply as I ate my sandwiches.
In the same year I started to venture into local pubs in my hometown (another small – actually even smaller – market town), on the Shropshire/Worcestershire border. On the Worcestershire side there was The Bridge. On the Shropshire side lived The Swan, which expanded its offerings by converting its cellar into a low-ceilinged wine bar with a small dance floor, a pool table and a modern wall-mounted jukebox of CDs. Mondays became free pool night. Wednesday free jukebox night. Amongst the many hundreds of albums to choose from was De La Soul’s 3 Feet High and Rising. On free pool night my friend Tom and I happily paid whatever it was per play to hear Plug Tunin’ and Pot Holes in My Lawn. On free jukebox night we’d see how many times we could play De La Orgee before it got skipped or we got thrown out.
Possibly more annoying for others was a particular visit to the small Welsh village of Govilon, located between Llanfoist and Gilwern on the outskirts of Abergavenny some six years prior. The name of the pub fails me, but I remembering my younger brother Ryan and just-turned-10-me being there with my dad and uncle Steve. While the elders sat at the bar, us two boys took over the pool room, which was further decorated with a dart board, a pinball machine, and a jukebox. Ryan and I had been kindly given a stack of coins to keep ourselves entertained. Some of it went into the pool table. Most, to my brother’s annoyance, fed the music maker.
I remember returning to the bar to replenish our games room kitty.
“Here you go, but can you please put something else on?” The jukebox in question fed into all the rooms of this multi-spaced pub (remember those days), every one of them that given post Sunday lunchtime subject to Jump by Van Halen – 10 times in a row.
In 1991 I had left home, and had set up home in a small village called St Michaels – just shy of Tenbury Wells, next door to the local vet. My girlfriend was working in a care home, four hedges, two fields, a brook in between, and a woodland, away. There she worked with a number of full and part-time staff, one of which was George. She returned one evening with a bright white plastic case, the size and weight of an encyclopaedia. Inside was a gathering of professionally shot profile photos, along with four demo cassettes, and a printed discography of his work – for George was a songwriter and performer (always with his trademark black donkey jacket) who’d made a bit of money writing a couple of Christmas number ones for Cliff Richard. He was now looking for an agent, which he thought he’d found in a room full of old people after chatting with my girlfriend over a cup of tea. As I’d just organised an event with work from Goldie and Massive Attack’s 3D, he thought I was a perfect fit.
I never did become his agent, but went on to spend an increasing amount of time in Mr Dobell’s company, mostly to meet someone or another to further his music career, getting there in his bright orange Mini Metro (if I remember the colour correctly) usually in a pub, one of which was The Castle Inn, in Richard’s Castle.
Here, every Friday evening, at the start of the Nineties, at around 7 or 8-o-clock it was near impossible to get in. I think the same pub now has a regular of three and possibly opens at 5 and closes again at 7. How times change.
In fact it was so busy here back then that getting through the front door was just the start of your problems. Making it to the bar through a hanging fog of smoke and heightened chatter was another. So busy in fact that when arriving under my own steam to meet George it could take the entire evening to locate him ... it’s not a big place either. This was before the age of the mobile phone, so the only one way to call him was through the jukebox in the left-hand room, right next to the front door.
“Put ‘Old Tige’ on,” he’d say. “If I’m in I’ll come find you” And it worked, every single time.
But away from his jukebox phone, George was difficult to reach. He just found you. It’s the way it was back then. I quite liked it. His girlfriend certainly did not. One day she pin-pointed him (and I) outside The Tavern pub where the streets of Church and Market meet in my hometown of Tenbury, next to the ‘Round Market’ (just as it sounds: a round building of brick construction that acted as a produce market). So around this ‘roundabout’ she came that evening in her brand new Toyota MR2. She always appeared pissed off, no matter the circumstances, as if he’d promised to be home two weeks ago. It was clear she didn’t think much of me either... perhaps putting much of the blame for where he was, rather than with her, squarely with me. In fact I don’t think she ever said a word to me. She did, however, say an awful lot (visually anyway) to whomever watched Top of the Pops the July before, where she lent herself to a Timmy Mallet music video – wearing an “itsy bitsy yellow polkerdot bikini” – getting undressed, jumping out from behind a tree every now and then, and galavanting around a fake beach – which George told me was filmed in a single up-and-over car garage in North London.
They later went their separate ways, with George taking a shine to my girlfriend’s friend, a nurse by the name of Andrea. Though they danced around the concept of being with one another it never really happened. In 1997 Andrea signed up for the ITV British dating game show Blind Date – in which she was the ‘picker’– famously-unpleasantly talking down her date to Cilla to an audience of millions, on national TV.
I don’t know what became of Andrea but George went on to become a much-celebrated cricket journalist. In 1997, as Andrea appeared on Blind date, George ghost wrote Unguarded, the autobiography of former England and Warwickshire cricketer Jonathan Trott.
The last time I spoke to George was in the old Grade II-listed Northwick Cinema on Northwick Road in Worcester, which had just been reimagined as a music venue, after being boarded up since 1982. The Art Deco building now had a recording studio parked in the back. Here he invited me to a meeting in London later that very day with Feargal Sharkey. I thought it was a silly idea at the time, and declined. Maybe it was the thought of six hours on the M5/M42/M40 in that four-speed Metro. I wished I’d gone now. I also wish I’d stayed in touch, which is probably why I’ve raised a glass to him more than once at The Castle Inn over the years since.
Telling this story reminds me it’s probably been 20 years since I’ve done it. Where does the time go? More importantly, I wonder if the jukebox remains, and if George’s ring tone still lives within? I think I’ll pop in later and give him a call.
If you haven’t already joined me on my ‘journey into hip-hop’ podcast on Mixcloud, The Extended Version, you could start today back at episode 1 where I talk about my introduction to music, as well as the Govilon jukebox incident. The show itself charts my musical journey towards hip-hop. Each show documents a different year. At the time of writing we’re at 1987 I believe.
