Dive Bar Jukebox: Harpoon Eddie's Summer Flashback

"Inside my future life, what I see just makes me cry."

Welcome back to Dive Bar Jukebox, where every Friday bartenders, writers, chefs, musicians, and a cast of cool characters answer the question: If we were hanging out together at a bar and I put ten credits on the jukebox, what songs would you punch in and why? The answers reveal thoughts on their favorite dive bars along with a hand-picked, annotated playlist for your weekend listening pleasure.

Let’s Go Away for Awhile

Harpoon Eddie’s at dusk. (Photo: Courtesy Harpoon Eddie’s)

In this special-edition DBJ playlist, I’m breaking out the mix-tapes of my youth for a Harpoon Eddie’s Flashback. In last summer’s dispatch, “A Harpoon Eddie’s Homecoming,” I wrote about my summers working behind the bar at Harpoon Eddie’s, a seasonal Central New York beach bar located on the eastern shore of Oneida Lake in Sylvan Beach, New York.

(Photo: Courtesy Harpoon Eddie’s)

The music at the bar leaned toward classic rock (sometimes it was simply tuned to a local radio station) with a mix of Jimmy Buffet-inspired island getaway jams. At one point during my time there they installed a multi-disc CD player and when I worked the day shift I would load up the cartridges with some of my CDs and program a couple hours worth of alternative picks (both in the genre of music and as a balm to the usual overplayed classics).

This was during the summers of my college years (1988-1991) so I turned to some of my new wave favorites (many of which are still in my personal heavy rotation today). The guests didn’t seem to mind too much. I’d even get the occasional nod of approval from cooler post-grad guys hanging out at the bar when a track like “See a Little Light” came on. But controlling the music comes with great responsibility and on occasion Rick, the owner, would walk in and grimace at hearing an unfamiliar song and in his gruff but lovable way tell me to put the regular music back on. “This isn’t your goddamn dorm room, Brad, come on…” (Love you, Rick!)

So here’s a double-album playlist of the music you might have heard during one of my shifts at Harpoon Eddie’s many lost summers ago. I hope you’ll give it a spin this weekend and have a Rum Runner on me.