I think I will leave it to a less irritated night to talk about The Three Compasses – a recently refurbed boozer on Hornsey High Street. Suffice to say that whilst I was in a foul mood the good selection of beers and general conviviality of the place seemed to outweigh some obviously problems (anywhere that has three guest ales and the regular ale as Timothy Taylors Landlord and Deuchars IPA can’t be all bad). Certainly worth more than two fancyapint stars anyway.
It also had a jukebox, which is nice to see in this day and age. Of course it was one of those new fangled web jukeboxes which claims to have every song ever recorded on it, or at least two million songs whichever is greater*. We’ve discussed these jukers before, and that in providing too much choice, they provide no choice at all. I remember at a trade fair seeing it be demoed and just find the whole browsing aspect less than useful. This model also had a two tier payment scale: 50p Play It Now or 25p Put It In The Queue. Statistical modeling has not been able to see how this feature works in practice.
Last night I saw the landlord access the box after the pub quiz. He was setting the background music up, the tracks to be played if punters had not loaded the box. And up popped a screen with epithets like “Early Friday Warm up Music (House)”, “Midweek Chart Bubblers (Download)” and what was finally picked: “Female Oriented Light Easy Listening (London)”. Regional Demographics are killing jukeboxes!
(First three songs from this playlist were Independent Woman (Part I), Get The Party Started and Sweet Dreams My LA-X by the way).
*Could not find the Poor People Of Paris by Winifred Atwell, so it must try harder.