All Faces Weekend

Last night’s Faces Jukebox Takeover at the Landmark in Milwaukee was a runaway success. I arrived a bit late in the evening, so I had anticipated waiting an hour or two before my songs would start coming out of the queue - but I only had to wait about 10 minutes, which was a pleasant surprise.

The next hour and a half was filled with The Faces and music we’d consider tangentially related…which is key to a good jukebox takeover. Here’s why:

Many of the jukeboxes you’ll encounter today are the digital sort - touch screen with a downloaded library of music and the option to download more songs from the network if they aren’t already available. Downloading songs costs you more credits than playing the already downloaded stuff, of course, and you also get the “play mine first” option for, like, 5 extra credits. Depending on the bar, the “play mine first” option may work out - however, be advised that your song then goes into the queue of EVERYONE’s “play mine first” songs, so it’s never a gaurantee that your track is coming on next. If there is a looooong “play mine first” queue, the chances that your non-“play mine first” selections will show up before your “play mine first” track may even increase.

At first this seems like a lie, right? After all, you paid for the “play mine first” thing and someone’s regular old one-credit tune shouldn’t show up before it. But, these digital jukeboxes like to shuffle things up a bit, and they hate having a bunch of songs by the same artist played right in a row. (Your All Faces Weekend hosts have learned this lesson the hard way through various random Saturday night attempts at a Rolling Stones jukebox takeover.)

What the jukebox does is play a couple of your tracks by one artist, and then reaches back in the queue and calls up a song or two by a different artist (or artists) directly behind your songs in line. So you could pump in $20 worth of, say, Stones and that jackass who picked out Dave Matthew’s Band half an hour after you paid for your selections will get to hear his stuff right in the middle of your all-Glimmer set list. As a result, everyone in the bar ends up with ants marching between Some Girls and Ruby Tuesday. (Gross.)

As far as I can tell, however, the jukebox has a short memory. It doesn’t go back in the queue and seek out the biggest variety of artists, just the closest artist name that is demonstrably different from the one currently queued up.

So, in order to ensure that the Faces Jukebox Takeover was not interrupted by, say, Creed (because it is known that there is some regular at the Landmark who will unabashedly pump the jukebox full of Creed), you need to diversify your selections, but keep them related to your primary artist.

First instance, after queuing up 4 Faces tracks, I dropped in “Maggie May” off a Rod Stewart solo collection. After picking out another three Faces tracks, I chose two Stones tracks relative to the Faces (“It’s All Over Now,” which they were known to cover, and “Beast of Burden” which has Keef and Ronnie Wood really shining together as guitarists). I believe I queued up 15 Faces songs total, with an extra two Rod Stewart and four Rolling Stones (I can’t help myself).

As a result, whenever the jukebox wanted to break up my Faces set, it reached back and grabbed the first non-Faces artist…which was Rod Stewart. After returning to the Faces for a few tracks, it reached back and grabbed some Stones. Wash, rinse, repeat. It was a perfectly executed digital jukebox takeover.

Now, this is obviously moot if you’re hitting up an old school jukebox that actually has a Faces album in its collection. Then you just queue up every song on the album and let ‘er ride. But those jukeboxes are, sadly, less and less common these days. So we make due with the digital ones, and learn to game the system when we can.

Oh, and don’t even bother trying to queue up the same version of the same song twice. It apparently reads that and practically throws it away. *sigh* I never did get to hear that second run through “Ooh La La” last night.

PS: If you have intimate knowledge of the digital jukebox selection algorithms, please let us know! We’re just basing this strategy off of years of practical experience and wasted five dollar bills.

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All Faces Weekend is a loosely-assembled celebration of England’s premiere boogie-rock band. Follow the AFW action here, read our unofficial manifesto or submit something.