Bop Or Swap
Last Chance Saloon
Every Thursday @ 7 p.m.
There’s a fantasy that everyone with a deep love of music has.
You’re in a packed bar on a Thursday night. The music is fine, but you know with your taste, it could be better. You put your drink down, get up and hustle over to the jukebox. (It’s not one of those god-awful digital ones; we’re still old school.)
You slide a dollar in and pick your favorite song. It finally plays, blasting out of the speakers at perfect volume and cutting through the crowd.
Everyone stops and listens.
An applause rips through the crowd.
Phones go up in the air, Shazam'ing this perfect song you just played to a packed house.
I’m not the only one with this fantasy, right?
That’s some of the magic behind “Bop or Swap,” the weekly Thursday night ritual at Last Chance Saloon, a lovely dive on Michigan Avenue in Detroit’s Corktown neighborhood. It was inspired by another dive in Toronto called Communist’s Daughter, which may have pioneered the concept.
After just a couple of visits, it has become one of my favorite music events in the city that’s not a live concert or simply listening to a single DJ spin all night. It turns the whole bar into a musical democracy, with everyone getting an opportunity to participate, and it’s free to play. What’s not to love?
All you have to do is bring a couple of your favorite records and throw them into the pile, where they are randomly selected by the bartenders.
The record that gets picked gets a full A-side play… and then the moment of truth.
The bartender gets on a megaphone and asks the patrons how they’re feeling about it.
The crowd decides if your record is a certified BOP (that means we’re playing the whole B-side now), or it’s the dreaded SWAP (your record is rejected for the night; thanks for playing).
The last time I went, Brian Eno’s album “Before And After Science” was spinning. The album represents a final farewell to traditional album releases from Eno, who crossed the threshold into more experimental territory after it came out in 1977.
After the A-side wrapped up, it got a BOP (8 voted yes, 2 voted no by my count). A victory!
Shortly after, St. Louis rapper Nelly’s sophomore release “Nellyville” from 2002 came up for a vote. Are you getting a good idea of the musical variety on display here?
I personally voted no (rap from this era just sounds too stale today), but everyone else was into it. A win for whoever brought the record, and a loss for me.
That’s how a musical democracy at Last Chance Saloon works, folks! And I’m all for it.
