By the time I was born, the glory days of the jukebox were long gone. There was one in our small town at a mom-and-pop seafood restaurant, but it was about as racy as the Ms. Pac-Man game that blipped invitingly from the other corner.

Still, I begged quarters from parents and grandparents to feed the hunk of neon and chrome. Punching in numbers with greasy fingers, I’d watch, rapt, as ’45s shuffled and the mechanical arm lifted my choice to the turntable. After a few moments of delicious crackling, the first strains of Laura Branigan’s "Gloria" would boom out in mono, and my classic rock-loving parents would stop shucking oysters to groan loudly. "Again?"

At 6 years old, that kind of control is priceless. I may not have played Sinatra, Elvis or Patsy Cline, the de facto triumvirate of Jukebox culture, but I understood the device’s power. Everyone listened as my crappy selection pumped from the speakers. With a quarter, I owned the room for three minutes.

From the turn of the century, you could find an early form of the jukebox in most corner taverns, an arcade novelty that worked on pennies and piped tinny strains through a tube held to the ear. But the invention of the electric amplifier in 1927 recreated the jukebox as a subversive phenomenon – a cheap mode of entertainment for prohibition-era speakeasies and a forum for the early race music and rock-a-billy that became rock and roll. Early Wurlitzers and Rock-olas, hiding in the corners of shady roadhouses in the Mississippi Delta, introduced whites to R & B and blacks to Carl Perkins.

By the late ’70s and early ’80s, jukeboxes had died as music’s alternative medium. We didn’t need to go to the malt shop to hear the new sound. We had MTV. The jukeboxes lingering in a few bars and family restaurants were no longer indicative of local tastes and talents. Their facades waxed nostalgic for ’50s architecture, but manufacturers stuffed the insides with the same disposable tracks that were heard on the radio.

Still, even the lamest jukebox beckons us, especially when drinking. After a few beers, we’ll indulge happily, if guiltily, in dated metal and country standards. An afternoon at Slinky’s on Chimes Street feels like musical Russian roulette: Led Zeppelin, Ozzy, Cheap Trick, Queensryche. It’s that quirky unpredictability, fed by crowd participation, that lends the jukebox bar its charm. A DJ may create a constant vibe, but a jukebox’s erratic play list can define a bar’s clientele.