Rise of the Jukebox Vandals

Time was when a jukebox was just a big stereo, filled with a pile of 45s or CDs. You stick your 20p in, make your choice from a selection consisting of Rod Stewart, The Beatles and some weird compilation of Seventies Rock (the kind that gets heavily advertised on TV in the week before Father's Day) and that was it. Music plays, no one has a good time.


However, over the last decade, jukebox technology, fuelled by the internet, has evolved rapidly into an all together different beast. These days the digital jukebox is more likely to be hooked up to the internet, offering an almost unlimited range of tracks to choose from and thereby providing the perfect opportunity for sociopathic misanthropes to strike out at society.


I can't imagine what would drive someone to highjack a jukebox in order to facilitate antisocial behaviour, or what sort of socially-damaged individual would find enjoyment in such an activity, but here's a selection of fun things to try out next time you're in the pub and you've run out of stuff to talk about.

Brute Force
Obviously, if you want to just upset everyone in the pub, it's perfectly easy to just stick five quid in the thing and set Spice Up Your Life running twenty times, but this is far too unsubtle.

As an act of vandalism, it's the equivalent of replacing every word on the History of The United States Wikipedia page with the word "Shitfuck" repeated eight thousand times. It's briefly hilarious, but there's just no satisfaction in it. It lacks finesse.

Just as a Wikipedia admin will quickly revert the page back to it's original state and ban your IP, so too will the jukebox be turned off and you'll likely get glassed if you spam it with crap music.

True Playaz
A much better technique for causing grief is to queue up endless drum and bass on the jukebox, because no one likes drum and bass music. As a bonus, if you close your eyes you can pretend that your local pub is actually The End.

Festive Cheer
This one only works if it's the height of summer, but why not create a nice festive atmosphere by putting all the Xmas songs on at once?

Descent Into Madness
The most effective form of jukebox vandalism also requires the most patience, but if you get it right it's certainly the most rewarding.

Correct track selection is essential for this to work. Pick something with a big stupid chorus or obvious intro. My weapon of choice is Dire Straits - Walk Of Life, but something like Cher - If I Could Turn Back Time or Jackson 5 - ABC can be equally effective.

Queue up your battle track, then five other random songs, then your selected track again, followed by another four tracks, then your selected track, then another three and so on and so forth until you get down to just your song. Then line it up a few more times for good measure.

In this way, everyone gets to hear Dire Straits repeated endlessly without actually realising it, and you get the satisfaction of pissing seven quid away in exchange for the knowledge that everyone in the pub will have Walk Of Life stuck in their heads the next day.

Hope you're happy with yourself.