The Sevens, a beer-and-wine tavern with an oak bar worn smooth by decades of drinkers, has two amenities that set it apart: a real cork dart board, and arguably one of the best jukeboxes east of the Mississippi River.
From early Bruce Springsteen and Patsy Cline to rare Rolling Stones tunes, the jukebox -- more than the darts or the dark wood benches -- sets a rollicking mood that pulls people through the door.
This spring, the tavern took a leap into the digital age with a new Internet-fueled jukebox that can access hundreds of thousands of songs.
"I love it," says James McCarthy, 39, a kitchen worker who feeds the wall-mounted machine US$25 a night to keep his toes tapping behind the bar. "You can go back and forth from hearing old Aerosmith to all of the sudden you'll hear C+C Music Factory to country-western."
At tens of thousands of bars and restaurants in the US, patrons can now listen to songs stored on hard drives or downloaded from remote servers. Some find the change a refreshing departure from the limited selection of records or CDs of old jukeboxes.
Others lament the transformation of an American icon.
They say the smaller collections of compact discs or 45s in traditional jukeboxes gave barrooms a distinct feel that gets washed away by the new technology's nearly unlimited choice and flashy screens reminiscent of video poker machines.
"I feel like you have the option to find more songs, but there's not as much personality," says Kate Nies, 26, who feeds her dollars to a traditional chrome CD jukebox in Charlie's Kitchen in Harvard Square in Cambridge.
Montreal-based TouchTunes Music has supplied 17,000 digital jukeboxes across the US -- and provides access to a digital library of a million songs through a dial-up or broadband Internet connection.
Nostalgia has its place, but today's music fans demand more, says John Taylor, president of San Francisco-based Ecast, which supplies the software and provides music for 7,500 jukeboxes entirely over broadband Internet connections.
"The 100-CD jukebox maps the old world," says Taylor, whose company sells 300 new Internet jukeboxes a month. "Our products meet what young people want today as far as choice."
Jukebox makers -- such as Rock-Ola -- build machines that house the Ecast technology, from sleek wall models to classics that look like something Arthur Fonzarelli would have elbowed on the sitcom Happy Days.
The contemporary Ecast models are like giant wall-mounted iPods, with high-resolution touch screens that flash with advertisements as customers use their fingers to troll for tunes. Inside each machine is a hard drive loaded with up to 300 albums and costing an average of US$0.50 per song, with owners setting their own prices.
For a few more credits, patrons connect to the Internet to download a track from Ecast's digital library from servers in Sunnyvale, California, that hold more than 18,000 albums. More quarters allow customers to jump their turn in line so their songs play next.
At the Sevens in Boston, McCarthy says that the diversity is the new jukebox's strength. He no longer hears Johnny Cash's Ring of Fire at least eight times a night, as he did with the old CD model.
The online catalog includes so many obscure tracks, McCarthy says he found something by the Pittsburgh symphony and two albums from the Ohio State Marching Band.
"I think you only need one Ohio State Marching Band," McCarthy says with a laugh. "I don't think too many people come in and say, `You know what, I really need to hear a good marching band.'"
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique