karaoke

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Karaoke: Why the Heart of Rock & Roll is Still Beating

I love authentic Japanese karaoke machines that are made in China.

Last Saturday at my wife’s Christmas work party, they had karaoke going on down in the basement. I really had no intentions on participating, but when I realized that it rated the performance based on timing and pitch, I cut in line to be next. Putting my money where my mouth was from the first installment (http://wp.me/pxqBU-9u), I chose to sing “The Heart of Rock & Roll” by Huey Lewis and the News”.

It’s simply common sense that a karaoke machine advanced enough to grade a singer’s performance would also have decent quality music tracks. But the blips and bleeps of a Gameboy would have been better and easier to follow. All I could hear was a keyboard and fake drums. Not to mention the lyrics were a little off. The lyrics prompter said “now the old boy may be a bit off rhythm” instead of “may be barely breathing”.

I got a “67” out of 100.

The guy after me sang “Lean on Me”. Instead of “I’m right up the road, I’ll share your load”, the prompter read, “I’m a friend that’s kind of thorough”. I love authentic Japanese karaoke machines made in China.

Something that kept me distracted and laughing was the background images on the screen. I’m used to just white words over a blue screen. This one had actual video footage of completely random and unrelated things.

I just loved watching a mother duck and her ducklings eat bread crumbs at a park while my wife sang “Crazy” by Patsy Cline. And seeing an aquarium full of exotic and butt-ugly fish swim around while my wife’s boss sang “Jingle Bells”. And my favorite: While a 9 year-old boy sang “Eye of the Tiger”, we all watched footage of a lonely Japanese girl looking mopey at various venues: restaurants, lakes, and subways.

There’s just no wrong way to do karaoke. Because there’s not a right way.

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Karaoke is Funny: I’m Turning Japanese, I Really Think So

For the last 10 years, I believed the urban legend that “karaoke” is Japanese for “tone deaf”. I wanted that to be true. Because that would be funny. Instead the word just means “empty orchestra”. Thanks Wikipedia, for bursting my bubble.

I am hardly ever exposed to social events that include karaoke. But in the back of my mind, I am constantly juggling around songs that would be good ones in case I suddenly had to participate in a karaoke contest. There is an art to choosing a good karaoke song.

 

The point of singing karaoke is not to show off a person’s singing talent, but instead their ability to entertain. There should be a rule that no serious songs can be sung while participating in karaoke. No Celine Dion. Nothing by Whitney Houston. And definitely not “Bridge over Troubled Water” by Simon & Garfunkel. Too sappy and too difficult to pull off for an amateur.

It’s okay for a person to sing horribly if they know they are not an awesome vocalist. But when a person thinks they’re pretty decent and actually tries to sing well, but then falls flat on several parts of a Josh Groban song, or hits the notes too sharply and loudly, “clipping the mic”, that kills the mood.

That can make things awkward, causing the audience to hope that the next performer will perform an obviously stupid song like “I Wish” by one-hit wonder Skee-Lo (“I wish I was a little bit taller, I wish I was a baller…) or “Peaches” by The Presidents of the United States of America (“Millions of peaches, peaches for me…”).

 

An ideal karaoke song also should be one in which the singer can incorporate stupid dance moves during the lead guitar solo and fade-out. I am set on “Dancing in the Dark” by Bruce Springsteen. Or “That’s All” by Genesis. Or maybe best of all, “The Heart of Rock & Roll” by Huey Lewis and the News. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZFqA8JJQj0

Surely I couldn’t go wrong with those songs. Because I couldn’t go right. And that’s what truly defines karaoke.