Dan Morris: Simpler times with good old Bessie

She belonged to a watering hole I used to frequent. Truth be told, it's one I still do, though it’s pretty unrecognisable from the glory days of old.

The Pub With No Name (at least for the purposes of today) was a temple of skulduggery, schemes and dreams – a pirate’s paradise of no mistaking.

Legends were forged, boys became men, and promises of fortune and fame were both made and torn in two. Happy hours were just that and more, after hours lasted ’til dawn, and conducting the soundtrack to the whole exquisite enterprise was Bessie.

She was unlike any woman I’d ever met. Not quite a lady (she had a hell of an attitude) and she didn’t have a lot of patience (you needed just the right touch, and many a boy had let her down). But she was cheeky, enticing, and when she was in the mood, she sure could sing…

Then again, you’d expect nothing less from a jukebox.

Laugh all you want, but it was with Bessie that I had one of my earliest (and certainly longest) love affairs.

I never bothered to check on her brand name, but she was wall-mounted with a frame only a couple of bus stops north of chipboard, and she gave off a wonderfully seedy and almost phosphorescent glow.

Stale finger prints and beer stains adorned her well-worn controls, and her perspex window looked like it had gone at least a few rounds with both the pub cat and the nails of at least two decades worth of bar girls.

But in Bessie’s breast beat the heart of an Amazon warrior princess – sculpted and shaped by the character of the few-but-wonderful records at her core.

You see Bessie was born in a time soon to be forgotten forever – when the internet was merely a stroppy infant, and far from being in the palms of the hands of the masses, it had yet failed to permeate everyday technology.

Consequently, Bessie was a classic jukebox – the ones that ran using real albums, rather than the web-connected ten-million-tracks-at-the-touch-of-a-button sort you find today.

Because of this, and the landlord’s stubborn refusal to update or rotate any of the records within her, Bessie’s back catalogue was well-known.

I used to pride myself on being able to enter the numbers for my 20 favourite selections blindfolded – and was considered a rookie at this particular game.

Whenever a great night, fist-fight, or dancing in the moonlight happened at the Pub With No Name, Bessie was always there – setting the mood and tone of the evening, and sprinkling stardust on whatever cheeky goings-on were taking place before her.

Like all the best things in life, Bessie was not forever for this world. Though I hadn’t thought about her for a long time until only a week ago.

In conversation with some of the family here at Weekend Towers, I enquired as to the offerings from the plethora of film and TV now available via the net that had recently caught their eye.

Responses were many and varied, but pointed me towards a few gems I felt sure I would enjoy when I next had the chance to rest my weary posterior in front of the so-called ‘idiot box’ (a term itself that is moronic, but we’ll come to that another time).

When I thought about it though, it seemed strange that I had felt the need to seek out recommendations for my viewing pleasure. I subscribe to nearly every streaming service known to man – surely I could find something to watch of my own accord?

I realised that the problem was not the vast amount of choice that internet TV had provided, but rather the opposite – there was just too much of it.

Don’t get me wrong, streaming services are a wonderful resource, and rarely do I settle these days for the offerings of the free-to-view or traditional terrestrial channels. But I realised that what had prompted the need for a bit of a steer from my friends and colleagues was the fact that said streaming services had offered me such a wide range of options that I had recently been wasting at least half an hour a night deciding what to actually bloody watch.

Sure, the clever telly can make recommendations based on viewing patterns, but these are seldom spot-on.

Laughably, the wealth of TV choice had exhausted me, and I had subconsciously retreated to the safety and ease of recommendations from like-minded cohorts.

Later that night – and standing in front of a brand-spanking-new gazillion-song internet jukebox – I faced a similar problem, and I smiled and thought of Bessie.

A relic of a less complex age, her offerings were modest and few. But they were familiar, and in their limited number, more easily united people in their love for them. With only a handful of songs to choose from and learn, it’s easy to get everyone singing along. And when everyone sings along together (indeed literally and metaphorically), you get a cheeky glimpse at something that’s more than the sum of its parts. You get a glimpse at a collective soul.

Whether it be film, TV, music or information, the web has given a lot of the world access to a wealth of wonderful stuff. I certainly wouldn’t be without it.

But when it comes to entertainment, I sometimes can’t help but miss the days when because there was less choice, people perhaps more easily connected en masse over the offerings that were available.

God bless ya Bessie. Simpler times, but very happy days.