The Jukebox Mentality

A Brief Reminisce in History

Before CDs and digital music were discovered, there first used to be vinyl records, then cassette tapes. In those days, cassettes were fighting for survival against vinyl records and for a long time, the latter seemed to be winning. If you wanted to listen to music, you either used a record player or a cassette player. It was for this reason that in the late 70s and early 80s, 3-in-1 machines – combining radio, record, and cassette player – became popular.

When I was a young boy, there were about 3 or 4 pubs in our village shopping centre. One of these pubs had a serious edge over the others. It had a jukebox. Now, I know more than half of you reading this article do not know what a jukebox is (or was).

Well, a juke box was a machine that was constructed in the form of a big cabinet and placed in a special corner of a pub. It had an integrated automatic vinyl record player and a full library of the latest (then) music records. It also had a very powerful speaker and it was enough to have a bunch of patrons dancing the night away (this was before Mututho came along). It also used to have beautiful multi-coloured lights which flashed with the playing music.

A jukebox was a good machine to have because it encouraged people to drink at the pub in which it was placed. However, there was a catch to the jukebox – It could not play unless you inserted a shilling into it before selecting a song from the catalogue. It was therefore possible for the jukebox in our village pub to go for days or even weeks without playing a single song for the simple reason that no one could afford the required shilling to play one.

The Jukebox Personality

I used to have a colleague who you could know when he was broke just by observing him from a distance. He would be depressed and refuse to work, which was noticeable because he was a manual worker. He would go and sit in a corner of the garden with his head on his shoulder and sulk for hours. We used to remark that he behaves like a jukebox. He could only sing and light up if you put a shilling in him. I have since met many other “jukebox people” and come to realise that my friend was not an isolated case.

Money – The New Priority in Life

People have always looked for money. Lately however, they seem to want it for completely different reasons than just spending it. They want it for the sole purpose of having a ‘fat wallet’. It is no longer a matter of saving or raising money to buy or pay for something. Priorities have changed. Targets in life are not appliances, cars, or expensive holidays; they are to attain a particular figure in the amount of money one has. It is no longer about what is parked in your driveway but rather, what is packed into your bank balance.

Non-hormonal Mood Swings

We all know that people’s moods are, to a large extent, controlled by one or other hormone. It is therefore possible for those close to a person to persevere these mood swings because they are expected and completely understandable. There is however a new kind of mood swing that is not caused by hormones. This unique mood swing is caused by money (or lack thereof). It is the kind that my colleague (mentioned above) used to suffer from. It is affecting so many people until it has become the new normal.

The Mother of Corruption

The unreasonable desire for even more money is oiling the wheels of corruption. This insatiable need to have more cannot be financed through legal or ethical means. It can only be funded through corrupt deals. It is the reason one person can amass more money than neither he nor his descendants can spend for the next several hundred years. He needs money, not to spend but, to feel like a human being.

The New Measure of Success

I have always found the word ‘success’ extremely difficult to define. I think it means different things to different people. The dictionary meaning has become obsolete. In the past, we thought of successful people as those who had achieved all that they had set out to do in life. This might have meant taking their kids through college or putting up their dream house. This has now changed and, success in the eyes of many people means the ability to amass as much money by whichever means possible without getting caught. A ‘successful’ person today is literally a ‘Human Jukebox’ who can only be bright and loud if you insert a few (or many) coins into his ‘slots’.