One of the best things about going to bars is conversation, which is why, except in airports, I no longer bring books to them. It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that every friendship I have made as an adult has been either initiated or sealed in a public establishment that serves intoxicating beverages. Bars are also the places where one tends to have the best conversations with strangers.
Besides the pleasures of good talk, and, of course, drink itself, what I like most about going to bars is listening to music, whether it is live or recorded. This is not an enjoyment that is guaranteed, however, and there are a number of reasons I sometimes despair of it.
The first is that pop music goes down best with tobacco. Smoking bans have pushed many of us in the Washington metropolitan area into spending more time than we would like in so-called "cigar lounges," where the drinks are overpriced and most of the clientele do not mind the fact that there is no music at all. While it would be ideal to have all three at once, on balance, it will usually seem worthwhile to make do with smoking outside in order to have music with one’s drinks.
There are some bars in which the radio is played, about which the less said, the better. Then there are others that use playlists, which are nearly as bad. The best way to listen to recorded music in a bar is from a jukebox. The advent of the digital jukebox, which gives us access to nearly anything that has appeared on a major recording label in this country in the last 60 years, should be a blessing. But in my experience with Washington bars, we would be doing just as well with around 200 recordings, less than one-tenth the capacity of Gibson’s recent version of the famous Wurlitzer.
Most of these songs fit into certain broad categories. There are the overplayed classic rock staples, some of which—"Hotel California," "Stairway to Heaven," "Sweet Home Alabama"—I would be very happy never hearing again, along with the turn-of-the-millennium butt rock that I wish I had never heard at all. There is also what I think of as frat-boy reggae: the same five or six Bob Marley and Sublime songs that repeat again and again. If I stay at a bar for several hours, there are a handful of things I am bound to hear more than once, including the popular singalongs "Wish You Were Here," "American Pie," and, especially, "Wagon Wheel." The pre-fabricated nostalgia and bogus wistfulness on display whenever one of these recordings plays in a bar is almost enough to make one accept Adorno’s criticisms of pop music as false consciousness and retreat into free jazz and art music. Then there are the unclassifiable oddities—"Hey There Delilah," one of the five or so worst singles of the last decade, comes to mind—that have also become mainstays.
The jukebox is appealing for the same reason that it is frustrating. I have a hand in what is going to be played, and so does everyone else. Other people’s bad taste is sometimes insurmountable: there is no arguing with Bon Jovi fans or those who think anyone needs to hear "The Anthem" or "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" ever again. But, as every former high-school-aged Dinosaur Jr. fan knows, the people with the worst taste usually have the best social skills, which is why there is no excuse for playing, say, "Let the Bodies Hit the Floor." As a choice for the casual entertainment of one’s fellows, this borders on the sociopathic, if not the psychotic. Nor should any of us extend patience to people who think they are being clever by playing novelty tunes like "Barbie Girl" or "Nookie" or Eiffel 65’s "Blue."
It is important not to expect too much. Bars are not record stores, and hoping that someone at your neighborhood watering hole will introduce you to that amazing Cornish brother-and-sister shoegaze duo who made two 7 "s before folding amid peculiar circumstances circa 1987 is as silly, in an equal but opposite sense, as thinking that you are the first person to play "Wanted Dead or Alive." Two weeks ago at a sports bar I watched a man pick, in this order, "Stay With Me," the live version of "Ridin’ the Storm Out," "Up on Cripple Creek," and "Levon." None of these will blow minds and at least one of them is likely to turn the noses of a certain kind of Pitchfork reader. But they are representative of what a person who has had a few drinks and is trying to think on his feet might come up with—and as choices go they are not at all bad.
I tend to be more put out by the modern cover band. One bar I used to visit fairly often has nearly everything to recommend it: the beer and food are very cheap, and the management has successfully navigated the state’s labyrinthine anti-smoking regulations. The cover bands I saw there have succeeded in keeping me away. What bizarre aesthetic principles are at work, what unfathomable social criteria are being appeased when a group plays Hootie and the Blowfish, "Cocaine," Kid Rock, "The Middle," "Black Magic Woman," "What’s My Age Again," "Brown-Eyed Girl," Better Than Ezra, and "Sweet Child O’Mine," all in bland simplified arrangements, in the course of a single set? It is like listening to the worst free-format radio station in the world, but much louder.
This is why, when it comes to live music, it is nearly always a good idea to stick with Irish pubs. At least there you will get something cohesive. With "Whiskey in the Jar," "The Wild Rover," and, if you are lucky, "And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda," it is hard to go wrong. At my favorite Irish pub, no one—least of all the regulars—is put out by the fact that one of the performers not only plays the same songs in the same order but also makes the same jokes every night he is there.
Jazz clubs have many of the same virtues. "Fly Me to the Moon" and "Stella by Starlight" are inexhaustible. Even the most generic series of straight-ahead readings is preferable to the idiotic miscellany of the pop cover band. Taking someone who is not a jazz fan to hear standards played well is, in fact, the best way to introduce him to America’s only indigenous art form. (The same is not true for the blues: venues where polo-shirted middle-aged white men with day jobs are allowed to play soullessly athletic renditions of Willie Dixon tunes on expensive equipment should be avoided at all costs.)
With karaoke one runs into many of the same problems one faces with cover bands and, indeed, with jukeboxes. The material tends to be all over the place while remaining entirely predictable, faults that are magnified because one is dealing with amateurs in the strictest sense of the word. Why is it that on any given night in any bar in every city in this country where there is karaoke at least one person feels the need to belt out "Love Shack," "I Love Rock ‘N’ Roll," and "Creep," respectively? Why, if the place is even slightly down market, is there always a man in a white t-shirt and carpenter jeans scowling his way through "Lose Yourself"?
I don’t mean to suggest that in my experience karaoke these days is all or even mostly bad. I can think of one bar where I have heard a version of "Friends in Low Places" that was, for my money, better than the original, or would have been if he had been backed by a live band; one woman, also a regular there, has made a specialty of Nirvana album tracks. You haven’t really heard "Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle" until you’ve heard this lady belt it at one in the morning on Saturday with her girlfriend beaming in the audience.
We could do with a few easily established ground rules for music in bars. The first and most straightforward is that, simply put, you should not select anything on the jukebox that would evoke despair in a normal person. "Fade to Black" has many virtues, but suitability for casual nighttime—to say nothing of early afternoon or midmorning—drinking is not one of them. Ditto novelty tunes and songs lasting longer than seven minutes (and even that is pushing it): "Ramble On" is an acceptable Led Zeppelin song for a bar; "Achilles Last Stand" is not.
Last, as a general rule, do not pick a song that you know is that artist’s most recognizable recording, even if it means choosing something with which you are unfamiliar or something by a different artist. For live acts, original songs should not be frowned upon, and covers should not be a hodgepodge of equally recognizable but otherwise disparate tunes from a variety of eras and subgenres. Tribute bands that want to play nothing but early-2000s pop-punk or pre-Load Metallica are preferable to those that attempt both.
When it comes to karaoke, a bit of soul searching is required. Ask yourself whether you have anything like the vocal range necessary to pull off that Whitney Houston classic and whether the world needs your rendition of it. Is there nothing else you’d like to sing, no song you’d do a better job with? The extraordinary thing about post-war pop music is its catholicity: excepting the truly tone-deaf, everyone is bound to do a decent job with something. Men who think they have very limited ranges somewhere in the middle can do wonders with Iggy Pop, for example, as I discovered for myself half a decade ago in central Japan.
I do not want to sound like a scold. There is no bar on earth where most of these strictures are observed. If the spirit moves you, play what you like. Just don’t be surprised if I leave when "Photograph" comes on.