Along with pickled pig's feet and a steady supply of Slim Jims, a good jukebox is a prime element for any great bar. But, like dinosaurs, jukeboxes are a vanishing breed. Unlike digital jukes, iPods or DJs, jukeboxes require love, care and maintenance, as well as -- among the truly great ones -- some thought.

Until recently, Poison Girl had a killer jukebox, but it went down and owner Scott Walcott hasn't been able to get a mechanic familiar with his type of machinery, so it's currently on hiatus. Last year Under the Volcano's dollar-swallower shorted out and caught fire, so there are perils that most civilians wouldn't necessarily consider.

But with that in mind, here are eight local jukeboxes that only make the party better.

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Photos by Marco Torres

Stone River Boys

Houston International Festival
Downtown Houston
April 22, 2012

With a slight north breeze keeping festival-goers from broiling under a cloudless sky, Sunday's iFest turned into a perfect laid-back Houston day of rest and entertainment excess. It didn't hurt that the music lineup was both diverse and stellar, that there were virtually no lines and that things ran with an almost informal efficiency that is so typical of the Bayou City.

We started the day with Austin's Stone River Boys and the hundred or so souls mostly scrunched under the big live oak tree which offered the only shade -- shade and sunscreen being in high demand.

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Delicate Cutters

We received the new Delicate Cutters 2011 album Some Creatures on the same day that we received the new Dead Fingers album from one of our favorite labels, Big Legal Mess, the offshoot successor to Fat Possum. Too bad for Dead Fingers.

The oeuvre of both bands is a mix of folksy indie rock from much the same musical realm as local favorites Literary Greats. But where Dead Fingers sounds contrived, over-thought and lyrically trite (and their vocals made us want to buy stock in companies that manufacture ear plugs), Some Creatures is quite listenable and interesting.

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Out of some of the most proudest moments of my five-year tenure here at the Houston Press - interviewing Rob Halford, talking to an agitated Chuck Berry on a couch backstage after a gig, shaking hands with Charlie Sheen - one of the best days ever was finding a Christmas card in the mail from Insane Clown Posse's Psychopathic Records about a year ago.

Just days after being bathed in Faygo at Warehouse Live during a December 2010 ICP gig, we got a card in the mail from Farmington Hill, Michigan with a tiny Hatchet Man Santa on the cover. It was a rather conservative card, save for the hatchet-wielding maniac for sure.

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Grammy-nominated singer Ledisi is currently on her first nationwide tour in support of her sixth album Pieces of Me. The tour has already sold out venues in New York, Philadelphia and Washington, DC.; and she pulls into Houston Thursday. "I feel great about this tour we have been selling out shows and I'm really having fun with it," she told Rocks Off.

The New Orleans native has always had a love for R&B and hip-hop music and has been performing since she was a child. Before embarking on her solo career, Ledisi helped form the group Anibade, but the struggle of trying to get them signed motivated her to create the LeSun Records label with along with fellow R&B singer Sundra Manning.

She released two albums on the label including her 2000 debut Soulsinger: The Revival. But, after only moderate success, she took a five-year hiatus and considered leaving the music business. "I was just tired and exhausted of the rejection from major labels and I had serious doubts about my career," she said. "During my break from music, I hid out in Broadway and my mother was the person who motivated me to stay in the music business."

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Photos courtesy of Miller Outdoor Theatre Advisory Board

Brave Combo

Accordion Kings & Queens Festival
Miller Outdoor Theatre
June 4, 2011

Timing can be everything. And it only took about ten seconds standing in the wings 20 feet from Clifton Chenier's former guitarist Lil Buck Sinegal and the rest of Corey Ledet's zydeco band as they kicked off their portion of Saturday's Accordion Kings & Queens festival to realize that these guys had just opened a can of Deep South Louisiana badass, and that something very special was about to go down.

It was also immediately apparent that Clifton Chenier's Houston-born baby, zydeco, had met New Orleans' Congo Square head on in a massive groove collision somewhere near Breaux Bridge and that all was right with the world.

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Rocks Off conducted an unusual interview this week. We say "interview," when perhaps a better word is "exchange."

Recently we have been tinkering with the composition of our interviews, in the hopes of avoiding boilerplate questions like "Who are your influences?" in favor of something, we hope, will give our readers a better idea about what makes our subjects tick. It seemed to work pretty well, if a little disjointedly, when we asked the Black Lips for a personal garage-rock cheat sheet.

So we thought we'd give it another whirl when Oklahoma rockabilly filly Wanda Jackson's PR team offered us an interview. Jackson, 73, has had plenty of ink spilled on her since she released her latest album, The Party Ain't Over (Nonesuch/Third Man), earlier this year. And why not?

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To sate the born-again masses, Rebecca Black's "Friday" has been given a Christ-filled overhaul courtesy of young singer Sadie B, complete with church-championing lyrics and the handy lesson that Monday comes after church.

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Photos by Groovehouse

Stryper at House of Blues, December 2009

Stryper, the world's coolest and heaviest '80s Christian heavy metal band of the '80s, comes to Scout Bar Monday night, touring behind last month's covers LP, The Covering. It's an appropriately shiny and heavy disc of covers from artists like Black Sabbath, Van Halen, Sweet, Iron Maiden and Led Zeppelin.

Known for their "yellow and black attack" for the colors of their stage clothes, the band is easily the most iconic Christian band still going, and no doubt holds a place in the greater sphere of metal as one of the best-dressed, even if they praise the Lord and not the man downstairs.

If it wasn't for founding brothers Michael and Robert Sweet, a lot of kids who grew up in the church wouldn't have been bitten by the metal bug and would still be playing praise and worship-style music.

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Allison Wagoner

Marcos Witt has won four Latin Grammys, written 10 books, and has more than a million fans on Facebook. Considering he's also a Houstonian, we were confused as to why we'd never heard anything about him.

After some investigative work, we discovered that his niche is obscure, one that we didn't know much about: The world of the Latin-American Christian-music industry.

While it may be obscure, it's not lacking. 14,000 people filled Lakewood Church this past Friday night for a sold-out concert commemorating Witt's 25-year musical career.

In addition to making music, Witt is also the senior pastor of Lakewood's Hispanic ministry, leading the second-largest Hispanic congregation in the United States.

Before he arrived at his post-concert breakfast Saturday at the Renaissance Hotel, Rocks Off sat around and chatted with his associates and press people, trying to use our collegiate Spanish education to the best of our ability.

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