Podcast / Jukebox Zeroes

Where your idols come to die.

Jukebox Zeroes is a music podcast hosted by Lilz Martin and Patrick S. Barry, two Massachusetts-based musicians with a strange fascination for bad music, and by their own account, are wholly unqualified to conduct criticism of albums that have been infinitely more successful than they could ever hope to achieve.

Each episode has them and a guest give a retrospective look into albums that have either been historically-critically panned, or are considered controversial within an artist's discography. At the end of each episode, they decide if the album of the episode is deserving of being called a "worst of all time" album. Expect lots of references specific only to New Englanders, and many, many asides, impressions, and surreal humor.

The podcast is hosted on the Zero Science podcast network, and Lilz and Patrick are frequent hosts and guests on their other podcasts. Old Men Yell at Cloud is a sister podcast of sorts that started around the same time also hosted by Patrick, as well as frequent guests Christopher G. Brown and Jim Schultz, in which the three talk about albums they actually like. Sophomore Slumps is a conceptual spinoff of JBZ about famously disappointing second albums, hosted by two-time JBZ guest Mikaela Thorn and featuring Lilz and Patrick individually in separate episodes. JBZ’s Youtube channel also hosts Hell Is A Musical, where Lilz watches good and bad musical movies with Scott Kurland.

See also Pantheon’s Make It Stop and the indie Why I Hate This Album, among others.

This podcast provides examples of:

• Abusive Parent: "Christmas Music Roundup: Caucasian Disappointment Edition" have Lilz and Patrick exaggerate Murry Wilson's Stage Dad tendencies by having him force his sons' band do their New Year's song before making them to dance to the Good Ship Lollipop at gunpoint.
• Apologises a Lot: Lilz and Patrick repeatedly insist that they're sorry even outside of the apology section in the Fashionably Late episode, thanks to the sheer agonizing suckage of the album in question.
• Bias Steamroller: Lilz fully admitted her strong hatred for Aerosmith in the Nine Lives episode, and lampshaded the fact that the episode was likely going to be her sulking while everyone else discussed various production aspects and the like.
• Breather Episode: The Talk Show episode is not only one of the sillier ones on the show (what with the goofy ramblings about boxes, monkeys, sleigh bells and the like), it comes off as a welcome breath of fresh air for Lilz and Pat following their look at Nostalgia Critic's The Wall and the psychological pain it put the duo through (granted, they could've only gone uphill from that point).
• Butt-Monkey: There's a collection of various artists that they like to rip on any chance they have:
  • Ed Kowalczyk of Live or any similar Post-Grunge singer.
  • Ray Wilson
  • Fred Durst
  • Corey Feldman
  • Lilz likes to dig on Rivers Cuomo for "still writing about wanting to pick up teen girls"
  • Sufjan Stevens for "being a weenie"
  • Producer Robert Stigwood in the Odessa episode, wherein the band starts playing silly pranks on him and Lilz makes him sound like Droopy.
• Catchphrase: Lilz likes to let out a bemused "Oh, boy" whenever something particularly bad is on the horizon.
• Christmas Episode: The duo have covered three episodes worth of Christmas music, with the third episode being framed around Partick being visited by three (eventually four) spirits ala A Christmas Carol. Somehow, Huey, Dewey and Louie became the ghosts of Christmas Present and spend most of their appearance waiting for an Uber after their visit.
• Darker and Edgier:
  • The Madcap Laughs trades much of the usual snark and mockery for a largely serious and somber talk about mental health and the depressing story of Syd Barrett. Lilz even decides to skip the "worst of all time" question since that's clearly not what the episode is about.
  • Nostalgia Critic's The Wall is probably the darkest episode of the podcast so far. It leaves Lilz, Patrick and guest host Jenna Sokalski legitimately furious, with Lilz even going so far as to declare it the worst album they've ever reviewed on the show. Patrick is beside himself with rage after learning about the Channel Awesome controversy, and Jenna, a huge fan of The Wall, is outright insulted by it.
  • Glitter is another particularly heavy episode, since it goes all in on frank discussions on the media landscape of the 2000s and the harmful consequences thereof for Mariah Carey. Lilz even issues Content Warnings when they're about to head into particularly gruesome parts of her story.
• Everybody Has Lots of Sex: During the review of The Monkees's Pool It, a Running Gag features Peter Tork^note Lilz reading out of a TV Guide, and announcing that everyone and everything "gets horny" as he reads the show descriptions.
• Formula-Breaking Episode:
  • A few episodes will eschew the standard album review and instead focus on certain genres instead. With Christmas Songs, Christian Rock, songs by professional athletes, and Nu Metal all getting their own spotlight episodes. There's also the "AllMusic.com Bottom of the Barrel Roundup" episode, which featured the likes of Joe Pesci, The Countdown Singers and other, lesser names.
  • The episode focused on Woodstock is not only one of the longest episodes at over 2 hours, it completely switches focus from reviewing music to providing a cliffnotes version of the various incarnations of Woodstock.
  • The episode covering the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band musical film could be considered a Hell is a Musical episode without Scott Kurland, as it becomes less a review of the soundtrack (consisting of mostly pretty bad Beatles covers) and more a bewildered look at and plot synopsis of the film itself.
• Freak Out:
  • David Bowie's terrible cover of "God Only Knows" made Lilz fly into a fit of suicidal rage in the Tonight episode.
  • She also had a pretty big one upon hearing "We Wanted Change" in the Angelic 2 The Core episode.
    Lilz: WHY? WHY? WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY? SO MUCH WHY! Why is there a soft-shoe jazz number?! Why is it produced lo-fi all of a sudden?! Why is Feldman's delivery ANY OF THAT?!
  • Patrick had a pretty big meltdown due to the fact that Ed Kowalczyk of Live was one of the guest singers on No Talking, Just Head.
• The Fundamentalist: Scott's take on Pat Boone in the review for In A Metal Mood: No More Mr. Nice Guy is played up as such. All while pretending his wife is still alive and totally not cleaned and stuffed in the corner and possibly dabbling in Black Magic on the side.
• Heroic BSoD: Occasionally happens when they have to cover a musician that they have a huge amount of respect for.
  • The biggest case was Patrick during the Scream episode, as he is a huge Soundgarden fan and even admitted at the end that this album made him lose respect for his childhood hero.
  • Sometimes whole albums can cause this for both of them. Notable albums which caused them a great deal of suffering was Results May Vary, Angelic 2 The Core, The Path of Totality, and Nostalgia Critic's The Wall.
• Hope Spot: The first part of the Angelic to the Core double review has Lilz, Pat and Scott express relief that the record is over and done with...only to be informed that there's an entire second disc waiting for them.

  Scott: ...What??

  Lilz: Oh my god...

  Patrick: What the fuck???

  All three: NOOOOOOOOOOOOO--

• Moody Trailer Cover Song: They pretend Trapt’s cover of Jewel’s “Who Will Save Your Soul” is this.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Any time a celebrity is brought up on the show, Lilz, Patrick or one of their guests will usually take on the role while exaggerating their personalities or putting them into bizarre situations.
• Not Even Bothering with the Accent: Lilz and Patrick occasionally do impressions of the Gallagher brothers during the Be Here Now episode with comical Cockney accents. They admit that they don't know how to imitate a Manc accent, so they resorted to doing impressions of them in "silly Monty Python voices" instead.
• Oh, Crap!: The end of the first Angelic 2 The Core episode when they realise that there's a SECOND disc they have to review.
• Old Shame: Both Lilz and Patrick both admit to having embarrassing Nu-Metal phases in their adolescence. It was even the subject of an entire episode where they did a special Nu-Metal retrospective.
• Previously on…: Parodied at the start of Season 3, where last time on Jukebox Zeroes, Corey Feldman announced he was pregnant to the shock of the hosts. As the narrator brings us back to the story, they immediately retorted that he can't be pregnant.
• Put on a Bus: The Attila redux episode reveals Corey Feldman's used the royalties accrued from one of his songs' usage in a documentary and billboard adult contemporary chart success to acquire a house (and couch to bath himself in Cinnamon Toast Crunch) all to himself. He admits he may well never see Lilz or Pat again.
• Rage Breaking Point: Patrick reaches his in the Nostalgia Critic's The Wall review upon learning of the Channel Awesome controversy, particularly the JewWario incident. From that point on, he is in a much fouler, angrier mood for the rest of the episode.
• Running Gag:
  • "[They] should come on the podcast to review Love Beach with us!"
  • (usually after at least trying to impersonate accents of musicians they're covering, in a fake Scouse accent) "And I'm Paul McCartney and I'm here too!" "And scene!"
  • Dunkaroos.
  • Corey Feldman crashing on people's couches.
  • Playing a different movie clip during the Apologies at the start.
  • For the Talk Show episode, finding different ways to mispronounce frontman Dave Coutts' name.
• Running Gagged: Back in season 2 ^note specifically, lasting from the ...Calling All Stations... episode to the Union episode the duo liked to play a game of "Chicago, Whitney Houston, or Céline Dion", based on how the lobby of the apartment Patrick and his wife Gina lived in at the time seemingly only ever had three artists in rotation on the speakers. It was retired simply because Pat and Gina moved elsewhere.
• Shout-Out: Quoted This Very Wiki in the "AllMusic.com Bottom of the Barrel Special." Specifically, the Horrible/Music entry on the Countdown Singers.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
  • Lilz delivers a pretty scathing one at the end of the Angelic 2 The Core episode:
    Lilz: Normally this would be the part where we get to our final thoughts, but... really, is there any to be had? I mean, it's ironic that a recurring theme running throughout this record is Corey calling out and taking vengeance upon all the terrible naysayers, doubters and haters who told him that he had no talent when it came to music. If this record is any indication, then it's pretty clear that all those same people weren't just haters, but were probably just looking out for him to make sure he didn't humiliate himself with a great display of ineptitude. With Angelic 2 The Core, Corey Feldman has joined an elite-ish group of artists. A specific classification of incompetent artists wholly convinced of their own skill and genius and steadfastly refusing to recognise their own faults. He's fucking Florence Foster Jenkins, Uwe Boll, M. Night Shyamalan, Shooby Taylor and so many others. Do I think this is a "worst album of all time"? I'm not even sure if this qualifies as music so much as the deranged and desperate ramblings of someone feverishly clinging to the last vestiges of stardom and relevance, and just refusing to quietly fade into the most loudest and most garish night possible. It's not so much an album as it is a case study in existential horror.
    [beat]
    Ah, fuck it, we already wasted 95 minutes... WORST. OF. ALL. TIME!!!
  • The end of the Nostalgia Critic's The Wall episode has Lilz delivering another brutal one:
    Lilz: As for me, I hate this sorry excuse for a record. I hate it unflinchingly. I hate it remorselessly. It would be one thing if this were just an incompetently-made record, which, make no mistake, it absolutely is, but... its total lack of self-awareness, the absence of any sort of historical context, the inability, and, for that matter, apathy to do any sort of cursory research about this record in the hopes of actually making an interesting point, and the unadulterated nastiness and snideness informing the comedy that puts it well past a point of no return for me, even if you ignore all the shitty history behind Walker himself. Like... here's how much I detest and so thoroughly loathe this concept. Not only is The Nostalgia Critic's The Wall bad, not only is The Nostalgia Critic's The Wall "worst of all time" bad... I genuinely believe it's the absolute worst thing we've listened to in so many years of doing this podcast. I think it's worse than Results May Vary. I think it's worse than American Life. I think it's worse than Calling All Stations. This album made me rethink Angelic 2 The Core. Like, we were at least able to derive a modicum of entertainment and humor out of the sheer ridiculousness behind its lack in quality with that, and none of that is to be found here.
• Tagline: "Where Your Idols Come To Die" is the show's standard tagline, but the fourth season sees Lilz and Patrick introducing a new gag tagline in every episode:
  We're Stupid Jerks Now
  A Trench Full of Urine
  I'm So Mad At All Five of My Dads
  Straight From the Duck
  Please, It's Dumpsterton
  Tell Us More About the History of Clowns
  That's Fuckin'... That's Girls
  Give Santa Some Doom
  Road House
  They Took Away My Children and Now I Have Boxes
  Bob Zombie, Harold Manson and Ned Durst
  My Dear Ankle Stinky
  I'm Gonna Become Billy Ocean Now
  He's Positively Kroeg-y!
  Don't Forget To Eat Your School
  Now That's What I Call Market Basket
  Who Opened Up Stinkipedia?
  Let's Just Make Roads Out of Soup
• Take That!: For the Music from "The Elder" episode, Pat and guest Christopher G. Brown's impressions of George Lucas hanging out with Gene Simmons and being inspired by his apparently racist descriptions of people he's met to create characters like Jar-Jar and Watto.
• Theme Song: "Sunny Day" by Boston-based indie band Froggy and the Friendship.
• Way Past the Expiration Date: In the Calling All Stations episode, Patrick bought a ham from a Craigslist listing only for it to be rancid by the time he made them into sandwiches. At the end of the episode, their "guest" Soft Shoe Magoo^note not an actual guest, just represented by some ukulele noises with the odd shouting from Patrick spliced in at points ate one of the sandwiches and collapsed. The hosts spend the next few episodes trying to dispose of the body.

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