Music

Earlier this month, Robert Plant walked into Camden’s Fifty Five Bar and waged sudden war on the jukebox. Radiohead, he decided, were ‘rhyming crap’. Next up, Red Hot Chili Peppers were dismissed as ‘nursery rhyme’. Only when a track by Captain Beefheart was unearthed to order was ‘Wrinkly Robert’ (© the Sun) finally appeased. His plight, though, drew attention to something not often pondered in the age of the iPod and the DJ bar – that is, the mysterious and delicate art of jukebox programming. If anyone can enlighten us, it’s Liela Moss, frontwoman with darkly seductive garage rockers The Duke Spirit, who was selecting the music for her family’s London boozers long before she started making her own. Feature continues

‘There has to be music for early doors and music for serious conversations,’ she explains. ‘Then you need music for hangovers, music for lazy afternoons and music for round about the time you’re starting to tell people things you shouldn’t. And of course there’s got to be music for dancing.’

If you’ve been to The Prince George in Dalston, The Shakespeare in Stoke Newington, The Approach in Bethnal Green or any other of the 12 London boozers run by the Moss family, then you’ll have benefited from the frontwoman’s impeccable and eclectic music taste: jukebox classics like the Stones, The Beatles and Stevie Wonder sit alongside ESG and Patti Smith, The Velvettes and Lupe Fiasco, or the Soul Jazz compilations she picks up from Sounds Of The Universe in Soho.

Moss, whose band’s second album, ‘Neptune’, is released on February 4, got her musical education from the jukebox in The Prince George when she stayed with her dad over the summer holidays. When she grew up and the family took on more pubs, he asked her to look after the jukeboxes for him.

‘I’ll go out and buy a couple of hundred quid's worth of CDs,’ she explains. ‘Then I have to type all the track names on to little cards. The other day I bought “50,000 Fall Fans Can’t Be Wrong”. Then I realised: there’re a lot of fucking songs on that album. I was typing this endless list thinking: Is this what rock stars do?’ Curiously, Moss isn’t averse to the advent of digital jukeboxes: sterile things which can allow punters access to 2 million tracks via a broadband connection. But that doesn’t mean to say Moss is unromantic.

‘My dad’s always going on about this gadget that’s supposed to count how many plays each record has got,’ she laughs. ‘I’m like, “Dad, stop!” This is not about milking the playlist. That would completely ruin the magic. I just love the democracy of it, and the way an atmosphere can suddenly change. You get a sort of sonic mirror of how different people are feeling. Pubs are a home for people who don’t want to be alone with their thoughts, whether it’s because they want to share them or because they’re crushingly depressing, and jukeboxes play a massive part in that.’

Last Saturday, the Spirit participated in Jukebox Sessions, The Social’s venture in which new albums get their first public airing on the venue’s jukebox. Recorded at Rancho de Luna in Joshua Tree – a ‘funny little house in the desert’ so cramped they had to put mics in the washing machine to get echoey drum sounds, and so infested that Moss had to beware of dislodging black widows while playing the harmonium – ‘Neptune’ is brash and sensual, full of brooding intensity and broad, deep riffs. But which track stands most chance of winning over Robert Plant?

‘I feel like going round the pubs now and taking all the Led Zeppelin off my jukeboxes,’ says Moss in response to the Fifty Five Bar incident. ‘But I reckon he might like a track called "This Ship Was Built To Last". As you get old, your ears focus on lower bass notes. If you whistle at an old person they won’t be able to hear you – it’s true, we tried it recently with an elderly family member. That track’s got lots of lolloping rhythms and low-slung beats, so at the very least the old man would be able to hear it right.’

‘Neptune’ is released on You Are Here on February 4. The Duke Spirit play Ginglik on January 31 and HMV Oxford Circus on February 4.