"Punk Rock Sideshow" 

You can blame Al Gore for the dearth of quality punk rock in the jukeboxes of America. Not because of his li'l censor-happy P.M.R.C. wife (who's done plenty of damage, no doubt), but because Al had to go and invent the internet. What a bum! Even dives with great jukes are phasing out their custom mixes in favor of those hateful touch-screen Toxic Boxes — machines which only prove that, if you let MTV-nursed children choose the tunes, you'll end up with the triumph of Top 40 swill and Now That's What I Call Music volumes one to infinity. The solution? Ditch the juke and enlist deejays instead. At Punk Rock Sideshow, DJ Tragic and the Duchess of Hazard pluck nothing but gems from their deep collection of punk and hardcore records, guaranteeing that every few minutes you'll interrupt your conversation to say, "Hey, I love this song!" and then thump out the drumbeat on the bar railing. Its age-defying mix of old-school winners ranging from the Adolescents to Youth of Today — not to mention the vintage skate videos projected on the walls — makes Punk Rock Sideshow a rejeuvenating cocoon of Golden Age punk nuggets, with plenty of modern awesomeness & future classics from the '90s and '00s as well. As if that weren't enough, is there anything more ridiculous than drinking a whisky while singing along with Minor Threat's sobriety anthem "Straight Edge"? And some people think trucker caps are the pinnacle of irony! Punk Rock Jukebox schools hipsters in the truth. For free. Every Monday night. It's better than that useless B.F.A. any day.

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— By John Graham

Website: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Punk-Rock-Sideshow/117102914995818

Price: free