Posted on 07/11/2020 7:19:53 AM PDT by SamAdams76
I was driving with a younger relative this morning and had on the Sirius/XM 70's station in which Casey Kasem was counting down the Top 40 from the week of 7/12/75.
One of the songs in the countdown was "Please Mr. Please" by Olivia Newton-John in which she urges a fellow bar-fly not to play a certain song on the bar-room jukebox as it reminded her of an old love.
So as she repeatedly sings the verse "Please, Mr., please, don't play B-17", my young relative eventually pipes up to ask me what she means by "B-17". Is it the name of a song that was popular back then?
I then explained that there used to be a contraption called a jukebox that had several stacks of records in them that were usually placed in bars and casual restaurants at the time in which people could drop in a quarter and play three songs of their choice. Each song was numbered accordingly to order of the stack that it was placed in. So "B-17" would be the 17th record in the second stack. So if that record was selected, it would be mechanically pulled out of the stack and dropped into the queue (of records to be played).
It was actually a marvelous display of technology for the times. There was something magical about dropping a quarter, selecting your song and then listening to them play for the entire crowd.
Of course, all of that seems absolutely primitive to the younger generations, who have immediate access to millions of songs on their phone devices.
She had such a sweet voice.
American Graffiti
Of course we all knew almost every person's voice each time they spoke to the DJ on the air. That sort of thing made Junior High almost fun.
How about, “roll down the window” too?
Lol. Thats right!
As long as he didn’t try to milk the bull by the hind teat! THAT would have been a painful experience for your friend.
I don’t miss some of the old tech, but I do miss a world where not everything beeps.
Wow, I lived around the corner from there mid-90s! Church St Terraces apts. Wonder if they existed still.
First thing Saturday Morning was Pull all the tubes out of the Black AN White TV. Head down to the corner store and test each tube to fine the bad ones. Buy the tubes , go home , install the tubes and adjust the test screen. Had to then wait until a certain time for the stations to start broadcasting. Hope the tubes would last for the rest of the week. Had a Bendix TV 8 or 10 inch screen I think.
Ahhh, you should see my husbands vinyl collection! We lost a good bit because of a flood some 19 years ago. We were so distraught when it happened that we pitched everything, even though the vinyl itself couldve been cleaned up. Instead we licked our wounds, and moved on.
When our kids were old enough to go to college, we discovered a used vinyl store not far from one of the campuses. The kids had grown up listening to our old vinyl, so they were always in love with it the same way we were.
After rediscovering that vinyl was on its way back, we bought each of our kids their own turntables and sound systems. They all have built up their own collections of old and new vinyl. We also bought used albums of almost every single one of the albums we lost in the flood.
My husband is a sound system hobbyist, and he has set up speakers all throughout our home, so that we can play the vinyl and the sound is in nearly every room. Its so wonderful!
We are happy that our now grown children (ages 29 -34) are enjoying the old analog along with the digital formats. Long live vinyl!
My only problem, was connecting her {Olivia Newton John} to any military (whether as a member, married to, etc) what so every. I couldn't come up with anything. I'm guessing that would be a good thing. LOL!
I was at a Kingston Trip concert a few years back. One of the Trio described a jukebox this way.
For you younger members of the audience a jukebox was a really big Ipod.
Regards
alfa6 ;<]
Only instead of a thousand songs in your pocket, you had 40 songs at your local bar.
LOLs!
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