Jukebox Heart – The Program Guide Page
Jukebox Heart began as a single mix of a collection of songs gathered around a theme. These appeared on a very sporadic basis, and in order to fill in the gaps, I began introducing single tracks selected from whatever music I happened to be listening to at the time. After a while, I began to notice patterns in the music, and organized everything into the ever-expanding list of categories you are now confronted with each time you visit Jukebox Heart.
This page will help you navigate these categories and other features in Jukebox Heart. Each category description in the list below has a link to its category in Jukebox Heart, and clicking on the link will present all blog entries in that category. You even get to preview some of the upcoming Jukebox Heart categories, still in the planning stages; just scroll to the bottom half of this page.
Each blog entry presented has a subject line. The subject line contains the name of the category followed by a colon and the title for the specific entry. Example: “Disco Sucks!: Hosanna” This specifies the category is “Disco Sucks!” and that the topic for that specific entry is “Hosanna”. Here’s where it can get confusing. Since there can be overlap among categories, each entry may be associated with multiple categories. The entry will appear in the archive list for every category to which it is linked. So it shouldn’t be surprising that if you click on the Hard Copy category, you get an entry with “Bizarro Cover Versions” in the Subject Line. Hard Copy is simply a secondary category to which I linked that particular entry. Capeesh? Email me if you need more help.
Below is the master list of all the categories presently available and under construction in Jukebox Heart. I’m always entertaining ideas for new categories, so send me suggestions. Don’t be shy. But don’t be offended if I don’t implement them either. This is, after all, a personal expression, and if I don’t align with it, it wont translate into goodness in Jukebox Heart.
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The Podcast: This is the category that launched Jukebox Heart. With few exceptions, it’s a live, CD-length mix captured to an mp3 file(s). Each is centered around a theme, and kept to a length that is downloable and burnable to CD for your portable enjoyment. |
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As Recorded Live: This category presents your favorite bands, as recorded live. Different from the Live Transmission category, which documents our presence at an actual event, these blog entries take tracks from the bands’ live archives. |
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Big Ten Inch: This page unapologetically presents a 78 RPM record culled from the vault, in all its glorious surface noise. These tracks will almost always be blues or doo wop. But there are some surprise exceptions. |
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Bizarro Cover Versions: This page brings you really strange cover versions of songs you are already familiar with. But they were never like this… |
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Cassettera: Cassettera focuses on musicians who made use of the grass-roots independent cassette network during the 1980s and 90s. And now again, with the resurgence of their popularity. This is about labels that existed either as cassette-only labels, or labels who put a lot of effort into their cassettes. By definition, this is all obscure, impossible to find and the recording fidelity varies all over the place. But that’s all part of the charm. |
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Compilations: Compilations are interesting beasts in that the really successful ones succeed as a complete album but are comprised of a sum of often radically different elements. The Compilation Track category selects a track from one of the compilations I happen to be listening to at the moment. Compilations almost always get trashed in the press because they generally present such a wide array of music that no single reviewer likes more than a fraction of what is presented. I like these compilations precisely for that reason. |
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Disco Sucks!: This category’s title was inspired by a familiar chant that took me by surprise when I left NYC for Boston in the fall of 1978. Disco was a way of life in Brooklyn, and, apparently, much less important to the rest of the general population at the time. Even moreso, the power and ubiquity of the genre combined with the fear of rock ‘n roll’s displacement engendered unprecedented resentment, hence the startling epithet. Discophobia. This category, then, celebrates Disco and presents single legendary tracks. And Puka shells. And Qiana nylon. And Velour Leisure suits – in rust and baby blue. And Platform shoes. And oh, the lingering scent of Aramis… |
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Divas of Jukebox Heart: Oh, how we love them, our ladies of the torch. But watch it, she can only take so much. Each Divas of Jukebox Heart track will have you smoking, drinking and crying, lamenting over him/her/both, a love supreme gone horribly amiss… If you’re still unsure, check out my Diva Primer Page. All will be told there… |
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Download Now: With so many netlabels on line offering so much free music, this category is for music whose only format is free legal download. |
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Featured Artist: This is where Jukebox Heart digs a bit deeper. We take the work of one artist and present four tracks. |
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Flex Your Head!: Flexidics, soundsheets – those quintessential freebies in magazines up until the end of the century or so. We love to collect those. They are so fragile and crappy, but they are rare and fabulous nonetheless. The company EVA TONE had a monopoly on those records in the US, but non-US flexi’s are especially exotic to collectors because they are missing the EVA TONE logo. How many are in YOUR collection?? |
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FM Broadcasts: In addition to the Press To Play feature (see below), once in awhile, Jukebox Heart will post an archival FM broadcast in the blog. That photo at left is of Brian Cleary and me, taken in 2004. Brian hosted “The Delta Factor” show for many years, and is in the band The Movies and has lots of other musical stuff going on. I followed his show every week for several years. |
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Hard Copy: This category features those cherished freebies given away with our favorite magazines and books. |
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Incredibly Strange Records: Inspired by the book of a similar name, these are chosen for their viability as probable soundtracks to Incredibly Strange Films. |
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Juice Box Heart: Partly a spoof on Jukebox Heart, but still a legitimate category, Juice Box Heart gives you the best, the cutest and the most freakin’ bizarre children’s records…evah. I know it seems like a stretch for a category, but, trust me, after a few entries, you will agree. |
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Jukebox Saturday Night: I’m just old and jaded, so don’t mind me, but the Beatles did NOT invent rock music. Blues , R&B and doo wop. Essential listening for the true rock lover. The Jukebox Saturday Night category selects a sweet doo wop song, almost always presented in its original, very collectible format. Sometimes, we even make a long party mix, too… |
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Label Spotlight: This is where we celebrate those divine independent labels. |
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Live Transmission: After a good night out, Jukebox Heart will document the events as witnessed from the foot of the stage. |
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Lost 45s: The cherished 45 RPM record celebrates its 60th anniversary in 2010. Completely overcome by events in technology, the 45 lives on as an icon to American culture cutting across lines perhaps moreso than any other piece of Americana history. Remaining now only as a kitsch promotional item among major labels and as a boutique niche market item for collectors of alternative music, the 45 remains a staple of listening for many die hard music fans. This category pays homage to the 45 RPM record. The track presented is a 45 just aching to be…rediscovered? |
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Moonlight Radio: Moonlight Radio is the predecessor of Jukebox Heart, and this category will feature some of the archival full length mixes we did in that incarnation. |
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My Imaginary Friend: Friends of Jukebox Heart get to pick the content and write about it in the accompanying entry. You can’t be first, but you can be next! |
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PKG: The PKG category focuses on musicians who believe that meaningful, elaborate and beautiful packaging are equally important as their sound. |
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Queer Street: Jazz on Jukebox Heart: Jazz on the edges of the word. It’s kinda like that… The category takes its name from the title of an old Count Basie tune. |
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Screamers: This category is reserved to present something that literally made me scream the first time I heard it. They may defy categorization, and your mileage may vary, but, trust me, it’s fun… |
| Silence: This category is where I write about stuff that doesn’t make it to the podcasts. There is no media associated with this category, hence its name… | |
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Special Reports: This category for things that merit deeper investigation or have an interesting back story. |
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The Modern Method: The Modern Method presents a selection of twentieth century composer music – stochastically selected, of course. This category is for modern academic music, since, conceptually, so much of it flows down into our beloved popular avant garde. It’s good to keep a scholarly eye on these things… |
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The Moonlight Lounge: This music is known by so many different names, you’d never know it all points back to the same stuff. Space Age Bachelor Pad Music, lounge music, whatever. Kick your feet up, relax and forget the labels. The Moonlight Lounge will make you thirst for exotic cocktails and boomerang coffee tables. *wink* |
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Threshold: The Threshold category features songs that changed the world, forever — or so we thought. We stood at the turning point… These are songs which have significant personal meaning to me, which were present at any of a variety of important moments. You’re mileage may vary, of course, but these selections form the canon of the music we hold so dear. |
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Touch Timeline: One of the most enduring and intrguing independent labels of the day, Touch is also one of the most important to me as well. This is an attempt to chart the timeline of Touch over that of my own life without pissing anyone off. Impossible you say… |
OTHER JUKEBOX HEART FEATURES |
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Raveclips: Raveclips are videos selected for inclusion in the Jukebox Heart blog. Those four little squares near the top of the page are links which, when clicked, open a separate window to a video for you to view. Each video is taken either from the Youtube archives or has been uploaded to my own Youtube favorites if not otherwise available. These are updated each time a new full length podcast is made available. |
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Press To Play: This is a vintage radio program culled from boxloads of tapes, cdrs and other files convered to mp3 and included here for mor music for you! THis is only accessible from the Jukebox Heart site, so it’s another reason to visit the site regularly. This is updated each time a new full length podcast is made available. |
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JUKEBOX HEART RELATED PAGES |
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Christmas on the Rocks: Have a bluesy, jazzy Christmas. All these original Christmas classics, all on 78. Clicking on an image in the page will automatically launch a new window with images, information about the recording, and music that plays automatically on load. All you need a high speed connection and current browser. At christmas time, Jukebox Heart adds a Christas category, and makes this link available in the Link list. |
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12 Fabulous Days of Christmas: One totally fabulous track for each of the Twelve Days of Christmas. Clicking on an image in the page will automatically launch a new window with images, informtion about the recording, and music that plays automatically on load. All you need a high speed connection and current browser. At christmas time, Jukebox Heart adds a Christas category, and makes this link available in the Link list. |
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8 Hogarth Road: Anniversary tribute to 4AD records. Featuring tracks from singles of the first two years of the labels output. This page was introduced at January of 2005, for the 25th anniversary. Even though the AD we knew is long gone, at each major anniversary (such as 2010!) Jukebx Heart will aunch a 4AD category and have this page in the Link list. |
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A Bitter Suite: Backing up our Bitch Diva category, these are not your typical divas – no Babs or Billie or Judy or Liza. Rather, these are, for the most part, the women scorned, the hoofers climbed over by the likes of Joan Crawford, the never-would-be’s, the Valentines that never came. These songs go for the jugular with a crippled, vulnerable warble, a single broken note, or a gravelly, throaty melody suggesting the passage of years and the consumption of many things illicit – all for the sake of a love gone bad. All of these are presented in their original format – surface noise be damned – for that extra touch of historical sincerity. |
PLANNED JUKEBOX HEART CATEGORIES |
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DOKUMENT: And another upcoming category, DOKUMENT takes its name from an obscure Boston post-industrial band and documents various forms of related musical insanity hidden in the woodwork. Mad geniuses and kooks abound. Mostly, its just a lot of loud noise… |
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Speak: Here’s where we stop the music let the wo/man speak… Watch this space! |
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Is it an LP? or a Single? : The ten-inch record. This format a personal favorite of mine, because no one knows exactly what to make of them. Somewhat of a novelty, they catch the eye in record shops because of their unique display challenge; not since the 78 RPM record was in wide distribution have there been any retail shelving designed to display these items. So, why a specific category? Well…why not? Coming soon… |
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That Seventies’ track!: The 1970’s was a turning point for music in a lot of ways. Not since rock was born twenty years earlier had there been the kind of re-org that occurred when punk rock emerged in the middle of the decade, and that set the stage for a major shift in the way music was recorded, produced, manufacured, distributed and sold. THAT SEVENTIES TRACK is meant to present the songs on the wrong side of the punk rock tracks, with a tongue planted firmly in our cheeks. Watch this space! |
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Another Obsolete Medium: This category will by necessity be short lived. Sony, the only company authorized to manufacture produced minidiscs, announced in 2006 they will no longer be manufacturing this format. Well, d’uh. Can you say Betamax? It’s a closed architecture; you’d thinky they’d have learned their lesson. Too bad, too, because I love this medium…the best of both worlds between optical and magnetic. Only a handful of independent labels managed to put out minidisc releases, so let’s see how far we can take this… Watch this space! |
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Ultimate Analog: This category will focus on those glorious handmade objects of our esteem, low-run editions of cassettes, lathe-cut records, and perhaps other more modern homespun editions. This is where the love is. |