All Together Now

Moving

2008-12-03T15:50:00.002-05:00

If you've just found this site, the party's moved to a new location, Brian Raftery: Don't Stop Believin': How Karaoke Conquered the World and Changed My Life. And by "party" I mean occasional blog posts and blatant self-promotion.

Ted Leo karaoke setlist

2008-11-24T16:07:00.004-05:00

As per Brooklynvegan, here's the setlist for the indie-rock karaoke event this Wednesday in Brooklyn:

OUTFIELD - Your Love
PRINCE - Kiss
THE WHO - My Generation
KELLEY CLARKSON - Since You Been Gone
STOOGES - Search and Destroy
RAMONES - Blitzkrieg Bop
MISFITS - Where Eagles Dare
BILLY IDOL - Dancin' With Myself
AC/DC - Dirty Deeds
CURE - Just Like Heaven
CLASH - Rock the Casbah
DAVID BOWIE AND QUEEN - Under Pressure
JOY DIVISION - Transmission
YEAH YEAH YEAHS - Maps
SAINTS - Stranded
ARETHA FRANKLIN - Respect
BLONDIE - Dreaming
THE BOSS - Dancin' in the Dark
THE BOSS - Born in the USA
STIFF LITTLE FINGERS - Suspect Device
MINOR THREAT - Minor Threat
CREDENCE - Fortunate Son
AMERIE - One Thing
STEELY DAN - Reelin' in the Years
SANTOGOLD - LES Artistes
THE KINGSMEN - Louie Louie

What, no Chisel?

Andy Dick is a Very Nice Man

2008-11-20T19:48:00.003-05:00

He is! A few days ago, while flipping through a circa-1990 issue of Spin, I found this print ad for Pioneer's Laser Karaoke machines (I'm in the advance stages of hypernostalgia, during which I get more excited about old magazines than new magazines). Noting the resemblance to a certain star of The Andy Dick Show, I emailed Andy's website to find out whether or not it was him; a few hours later, he called to tell me that, indeed, this ad was one of his very first paid gigs, for which he received a mere $500.

The lessons here: 1) Every celeb has a long-forgotten karaoke past; and 2) if you've ever sent a drunken email to Andy Dick's website about how much you loved NewsRadio, he probably read it.

A Truth That's Hard As Steel

2008-11-13T20:25:00.002-05:00

Violence is never funny. Unless, of course, it's spurred on by a karaoke rendition of Dio's "Holy Diver." And committed by a drunk guy named Drinkwine.

"My Thin Sides" is Sidesplitting (Zing!)

2008-11-13T20:00:00.002-05:00

Army Navy's debut album is one of my top 10 favorite records of the year; Paul Scheer is one of my top 10 favorite members of Human Giant. Never did I imagine I'd get the chance to see them together at a karaoke bar.

Shake the Sheets

2008-11-11T14:03:00.004-05:00

One of the appendices in Don't Stop Believin' is a wishlist of 30 songs I've always wanted to sing at karaoke, and yet could never find. Coming in at No. 12 is Ted Leo + the Pharamacist's "Where Have All The Rude Boys Gone?", one of my favorite tracks from the past five years. So imagine my surprise when I saw this announcement regarding New York magazine's upcoming indie-rock karaoke night:

Considering Leo's well-established cover-song credentials—and Andrew WK's ability to yell "party" over and over again—it's probably worth camping out at Studio B the night before, so you don't miss the sign-up sheet.

Karaoke 2.0

2008-11-10T11:54:00.002-05:00

Time magazine's Josh Quittner endorses online karaoke as a mid-meltdown cost-saver.

McCain Staffers Knock On Heaven's Door

2008-11-10T11:34:00.005-05:00

Deep within Newsweek's engrossing, 2,972-page (approx.) chronicle of this year's presidential campaigns is an account of McCain advisers Mark Salter and Steve Schmidt blowing off steam after the second presidential debate, in which their candidate wandered around the stage and made references to overhead projectors:

After the town-hall debate, Salter and Schmidt reunited with a dozen or so members of the traveling press corps at a karaoke bar in Nashville. It had been months since the duo had had a night out with reporters. Salter, who had sung in a band in college, was cajoled into singing a few tunes. Before long, and after a drink or two, he was into it. Under pressure from the reporters, Schmidt joined him for a chorus of Johnny Cash's "Folsom Prison Blues." Schmidt even sang "Rocky Mountain High," to squeals from the increasingly inebriated reporters. But then he went off and sat quietly. Schmidt looked worn out, his burly body weighed by stress and the woes of the campaign, his relentless stare dimmed by exhaustion. He ignored political questions and talked quietly about his family. Salter, on the other hand, had found his groove. Standing in the middle of the bar, dressed in his ubiquitous corduroy jacket, he bellowed "More Dylan!" until he had belted out every Bob Dylan song the bar had. Reporters sang loud, drunken backup and tried to get Salter to join them in boy-band dance moves. It was the first time anyone had seen Salter look as if he was having fun in a long time.

McCain, alas, wasn't in attendance, meaning the Nashville crowd missed out on his hilarious Beach Boys parody.

How He Did It [Newsweek]

T-Pain's "Karaoke" Video

2008-11-10T11:30:00.002-05:00

One part Duets, one part "Yankee Rose."

First chapter now online

2008-11-06T11:10:00.003-05:00

Thanks to the overzealous digital scanners at Google, the first chapter of Don't Stop Believin' is now online. This chapter is more memoir-focused than the rest of the book, but it does include references to public-access puppetry, skeevy central-Pennsylvania sports bars, and Temple of the Dog's "Hunger Strike."

Facebook group

2008-11-05T17:57:00.000-05:00

It's up here.

When You Believe

2008-10-29T16:24:00.005-04:00

Holy crap, remember when I used to update this site once a week or so? Ooof. I have a few good excuses for my absence, as I've spent the past few months: 1) hanging out with "Weird Al" Yankovic and a local subway-poster vandal; 2) developing a new website, which should be up in a few weeks or so; and 3) finishing the book, which will be in stores by mid-December or so. It's now called Don't Stop Believin': How Karaoke Conquered the World and Changed My Life, and it features your truly on the cover (not my idea, I swear!)

More information TK, including a link to the new site.

On The Occasion of My 18th or 19th Nervous Breakdown

2008-04-11T17:33:00.006-04:00

I promised myself that I wouldn't update this blog until I finished the book (which is slowly nearing completion, thank googely-moogely). This has driven me a bit crazy, as there have been already been several excellent-to-outstanding songs this year, and I have no forum in which to write quick, weightless blurbs about their potential public-singability (my karaoke-wishlist for 2008 so far includes Erykah Badu, No Age and, of course, Jordin Sparks). But I did want to take a quick moment to plug Like A Rolling Stone: The Strange Life of A Tribute Band, a new book by my friend Steve Kurutz. Strange Life is a non-fiction account of the ups and downs of Sticky Fingers, a Rolling Stones tribute band that Steve has been following for years. It's a smartly written and reported book—like a long-form New Yorker piece, but with Ron Wood references. I can't recommend it enough. Steve's site is here, and the book is available for purchase here.

All Together, Just Not Now

2007-11-30T14:27:00.000-05:00

For my loyal audience of three: I am knee-deep in the book-writing hoopla, so I won't be able to update this site until next year. Until then, here is an exciting "first look" sneak-peek at my recent karaoke jaunt to Japan:

It's not going to incite Crystal Skull levels of advance buzz, of course, but I will finally get some of that coveted Monchhichi-related traffic.

Karaoke Wishlist: October 2007

2007-09-29T13:27:00.000-04:00

1. Shudder To Think, "Red House" STT was one of the first self-consciously "weird" bands I listened to—a high-pitched, inscrutable bunch of art-rockers whose songs were subject to random time changes, and that seemed to accidentally fall into place (considering how far into Steve Miller Band I was when I first heard Shudder, such traits counted as revelatory). Several of the band members recently reunited for a few songs in Manhattan, and "Red House" was the highlight—the way Craig Wedren's voice turns to a plea during the "[she's] someone/I want/bad" bit toward the end is affectingly urgent (the linked clip is from the group's major-label era; I think the original recording of the song is still the best).

2. Aly & AJ, "Like Woah" As danceable as, say, Daft Punk, and almost just as robotic.

3. ABBA, "The Visitors" Having only really been familiar with ABBA's hits—all 137 of them—I've been finding all kinds of great songs on the Complete Studio Recordings box set, including this paranoid, hiding-under-the-desk near-hit. The lyrics are pretty bleak for a disco track ("These walls have witnessed all the anguish of humiliation") and the keyboard line could have been hijacked by Madonna if "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!" hadn't worked out so well.

4. Ben Weasel and His Iron String Quartet, "Summer's Always Gone Too Soon"
The former lead singer of Screeching Weasel—and the man who helped put the phlegm into snot-punk vocals—has a pretty terrific, pretty terribly overlooked new album; almost all of the songs are sing-along-worthy, but "Soon" is the highlight, and the open lyrics remind me of karaoke: "Someone is singing a song far away/as if they want everyone else joining in."

5. Britney Spears, "Gimme More" Spears has been doing her sex-kitten act since 1999, and it hasn't aged too well (maybe that has something to do with the fact that, in cat years, she now has the purr of a 49-year-old). That said, "More" is pretty much all production, and the hook is just short and simple enough to work—though how could it not, considering that they bring it back in every ten seconds or so.

Karaoke Wishlist: September 2007

2007-09-14T15:25:00.000-04:00

1) Bone Thugs-n-Harmony, "Flowmotion" Even a scratchy YouTube sound clip can't take away from the sheer bonkers-ness of this song, which sounds like a local-news theme straight out of the Rapture (the biblical event, not the band). I would pay $100 to see someone try to sing along with verses 3, 7 and 14-16.

2) Bruce Springsteen, "Livin' In The Future" Despite its terrible title, Bruce Springsteen's Magic is my favorite Boss record in twenty years or so, mostly because it's so heavy on the power-pop; if it weren't for the sax solo, you'd swear he made it with the Heartbreakers, not the E Street Band. "Future" is a barroom sing-along—complete with a "nah nah nah" outro—and it brings to mind the glory days of you-know-what-song.

3) The Monkees, "What Am I Doing Hangin' Around?" I rediscovered this country-pop beaut while listening to the newly remastered Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, Ltd.; along with "Porpoise Song," it's possibly my favorite non-hit Monkees track, and further proof of their luck with hired-gun songwriters (the original is by Michael Martin Murphey, but it works much better with a more upbeat tempo and the Jones-Nesmith-Dolenz-Tork harmonies).

4) Junior Senior - Itch U Can't Scratch I know, I know: In music-blog time, this song is like 100 years old or something. But come on—it's still great, and it's not like any of their recent bonus-disc tracks were karaoke-worthy.

5) M.I.A. - "Paper Planes" I like the idea of Joe Strummer—sitting up in heaven, lighting matches off Che Guevara's boot—trying to figure out how the hell he and Wreckx-N-Effect wound up in the same song.

Hear His Call

2007-09-12T06:25:00.001-04:00

One last KWC-related post: When I covered the event last year for Wired magazine, one Finnish performer stood out from the very beginning. From my notes at the time...

From finland: Ari Koivunen, long black t-shirt and jeans, long blonde hair; white ballcap. looks like a 14-year-old; has no stage presence—just stands there. Sings scorpions’ “ Still Loving You” crowd goes crazy when he hits the high notes and finnish flags start flying; an older couple slow dances in front of the stage

Ari didn't win that year's KWC competition, but a few months later, he wound up winning the Finnish version of American Idol, where he once again performed the Scorpions tune (he also sang "Piano Man," though I can't find that clip on YouTube):

Koivunen's debut album, Fuel For The Fire, topped the Finnish charts when it was released May 30th, and it's still in the top 10; the hit single, "Hear My Call," is a big power-metal anthem, and proof that karaoke can be a good career move—at least in Finland.

Oops

2007-09-12T05:50:00.001-04:00

Some of the Bangkok posts got accidentally published and then un-published, due to my basic misunderstandings of Thai-language Google software. Anyhoo, they're up now.

Bangkok, Day Four (Or Something Like That): Where Is The Love?

2007-09-09T06:54:00.000-04:00

The post-KWC festivities went wayyyyyy long last night—all the way into the morning, in fact. The reveling once again took place in the hotel lobby, where we drank and sang and talked until dawn. When the restaurant opened at 6 a.m., our fellow guests didn’t know what hit ‘em; suffice to say that anybody hoping for a nice, relaxed early-morning vacation breakfast was instead treated to the sight of a man singing a cappella near the buffet table.

After a late-morning nap, I headed over to MBK, which is one of several competing overstuffed shopping malls in the city. I’d heard they had karaoke rooms, and was hoping to find “One Night In Bangkok,” which I still haven’t been able to locate here (though one of my newfound friends of Sweden was gracious enough to play a few notes for me on the piano last night). Unfortunately, the MBK song selection was limited, so I wound up belting out the Black Eyed Peas’ “Where Is The Love?”, a song that I barely know and/or like. Oh, Murray Head, why have you forsaken me?!

Bangkok, Day Three: There's A Choice We're Making

2007-09-08T14:21:00.001-04:00

The Karaoke World Championships just ended about an hour or so ago here in Bangkok. The first-place winners: Lu Hee Wah, a jewelry-industry marketing and sales rep originally from Malaysia (though he's lived in Thailand for the past nine years); and Julie Walter-Sgro, a coffee-company operations manager from Australia. The U.S. took second place in themale division, thanks to Michael Moses Griffin. The whole shebang ended with a sing-along of (what else?) "We Are The World," which got the crowd going:

One unfortunate bit of news from the evening: I paid 10 Baht to try out one of the private karaoke booths, only to have my song of choice get stuck in a loop, meaning that I heard "If you leave me now..." repeated a half-dozen times before I just gave up. Now I know what Mrs. Cetera feels like.

On a final, unrelated note, I saw someone selling squirrels today—squirrels wearing miniature wool caps. More info tomorrow.

Bangkok, Day Two: Are You Tuk-Tuking To Me?

2007-09-07T23:05:00.000-04:00

If you enjoy karaoke, alcohol and free-roaming feral cats, than there was no better place to be Friday night than Bangkok’s Suan-Lum Night Bazaar, where the 5th annual Karaoke World Championship got underway. Seventeen singers from eleven different countries* performed two songs each, and despite the humidity and fog machines, none of them passed out. The beer garden was larger than I expected (its website says it holds 6,000**) and, for the first few hours, surprisingly crowded; despite the fact that this was a last-minute venue change, the organization managed to get the word out. Those in attendance got to hear several power ballads (Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go,” U2’s “One”), and saw this year’s two U.S. contestants, Michael Moses Grifith of Illinois and Barbie Robbins of Kentucky. Some poorly taken photos:

As if the on-stage antics weren’t enough, the beer garden has eight private karaoke booths on site, though only a handful of songs are in English, so I didn’t get a chance to try them out. But I did see a group of about a half-dozen or so exchange students from the U.S. and Australia crammed into a booth, trying to improvise their way through a Thai ballad. The gentlemen overseeing the rooms, Mr. Pornchai (below), told me they get an average of 100 customers a day; he also told me that karaoke is a relatively new phenomenon in Thailand—it only really took off, he said, in the last ten years—and that much of the hold-up was over copyright disputes and song availability.

But the real highlight of the evening took place afterwards, in the lobby of the Arnoma Hotel: That’s where a group of about 20 or so contestants and friends gathered around a piano to sing along to the likes of “Stand By Me,” “Sweet Child O’Mine,” and, of course, “We Are The World.” It was almost 1:30 a.m., and these people had just spent the last five hours listening to karaoke; they had every excuse to head back to their rooms and enjoy the silence. But they love nothing more than to sing, and so the prospect of a makeshift music hall (especially one that’s well-stocked with cheap Thai beer) is irresistible.

I stayed for an hour, watching with a placid, infant-like grin on my face. I don’t want to sound like a Nextel ad, but there’s something joyous about seeing people from so many different countries communicating with each other, especially when they do so using music. This upcoming week will mark another 9/11 anniversary, and for the last six years, the U.S. has alienated much of the rest of the world; at this point, whenever I visit another country, I automatically assume that somebody’s going to corner me and ask about Bush. But there were no politics in the room last night,*** and while I don’t want to extrapolate a big notion from a little moment, it’s comforting to know that the world’s not so far gone that we can’t all stop for a few minutes and break into a Stevie Wonder song now and then.

* Australia, Austria, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Malaysia, Poland, Sweden, Thailand, United States
** UPDATE: The organizers tell me it's actually 2,500.
*** UPDATE: Of course, because I wound up leaving, I found out that I did, indeed, miss the political discussions that went on until dawn. But I'd prefer to remember my naive little "we're all in the same gang" moment as it is.

Bangkok, Day One: Is This Thing On?

2007-09-06T23:17:00.000-04:00

Apparently, when you plug into Bangkok's Internet providers, all of your Google language settings are converted to Thai. If I had been smart enough to figure this out beforehand, I would have at least learned what the Thai symbol is "change me back to English, because I have no idea if I'm doing this properly, and I don't want to press the wrong button and accidentally download opium and then get arrested." So forgive any lost-in-translation mistakes over the next few days.

Anyhoo, after a 17-hour flight (during which I went only partly stir-crazy), I arrived in Bangkok Thursday afternoon, and soon after went for a walk around the neighborhood of Pathumwan, which I would best describe as "hot and friendly." I soon met up with the two U.S. contestants for this year's Karaoke World Championships. We went out looking for karaoke (what else?) around the city's Silom Soi 4 area, where we found two near-empty bars; turns out the real action was on the street, where the locals were holding an elaborate lady-boy beauty pageant. Still, we had a good time entertaining ourselves, though I have yet to find Murray Head's "One Night In Bangkok" available for karaoke here, which is amazing—sort of like walking into Allentown, Pennsylvania, and seeing no copies of Billy Joel's The Nylon Curtain.

The competition starts tonight, with 11 countries participating. More info tomorrow; in the meantime, enjoy these crappily taken pictures.

Sing Me Spanish Techno (Or At Least Some Black Eyed Peas)

2007-08-29T09:32:00.000-04:00

Not to plug, but my Spin magazine story about karaoke with the New Pornographers is up on the magazine's website. The most nerve-wracking part of the whole evening was when the band's publicist requested that I break the ice by getting up and singing the first song, which resulted in my jittery rendition of Queen's "Radio Ga Ga." Trust me, those added-on "ga ga" and "blah blah" choruses last for 18 minutes when you're stone-cold sober.

32 Short Films About Glenn Frey: Karaoke Videos In The YouTube Era

2007-08-29T00:39:00.000-04:00

The karaoke video should have died years ago. In the early-to-mid-'90s, U.S. manufacturers realized they could cut down costs by switching from lavishly produced Laserdiscs to the relatively cheaper CD+G (compact disc + graphics) format. CD+Gs had long been popular in Asia, and it's easy to understand why: Not only could they hold far more songs than Laserdiscs, but they were also much easier to carry around, meaning that millions of sing-along enthusiasts could now croon in the privacy of their own homes or grotto. Karaoke jockeys, meanwhile, no longer had to haul around back-breaking crates of music just to play a gig.

There was an aesthetic downside to this cost-efficient technology, however, one that became obvious before the song made it to the first chorus. Whereas the karaoke videos (or “karaokes”) of the '80s featured elaborately staged, often absurd live-action shorts, the CD+G discs usually consisted of abruptly unfolding lyrics and some garish color patterns; occasionally, producers inserted a random "cool" visual halfway through, though many of them look like bad Nagel-painting knock-offs. The Japanese had intended for karaoke videos to boost the singer's confidence, theorizing that if audience members were distracted by the strange on-screen clips, then the singer's nerves would be calmed. Now those impossible-to-avoid images were gone, replaced with graphics that could have been created on an Apple IIc. Within just a few short years, an entire small-scale art form was nearly wiped out.

Then came YouTube. At first, the site’s karaoke-video options were limited to brief snippets of some presumably drunken subject singing a few lines from “Ballroom Blitz,” and then quickly throwing his or her hands up in shame. But as of summer 2007, there are thousands of clips that could be considered as karaoke videos: Spur-of-the-moment sing-alongs, educational guides, demo tapes—you can even find vintage clips from the '80s and '90s. Technology once rendered the karaoke-video art form obsolete; now, thanks to enthusiastic YouTubers, it's been revitalized and archived.

To illustrate the evolution of the karaoke, I spent an afternoon watching dozens of clips that resulted from the search terms "karaoke hotel california" (the track has always been a popular sing-along number, despite the fact that the second half of the song is essentially a drawn-out dueling-guitar solo). After about an hour or so, my head grew heavy and my sight grew dim—but not before I could catalog the four types of karaoke videos that most commonly populate the site:

The “Official” Clip
A professional-looking video, though not an especially good-looking one. The model looks bored—as do the boats—and while there is a shot of a hotel at one point, it seems like it’s situated in Florida, not California. Commercially produced karaokes such as this one have only recently begun to pop up on YouTube, and I’m guessing that’s partly because of copyright protection, and partly because so few people have access to the “classic” Laserdiscs collections that went off the market more than a decade ago.

The Demo Tape
The clip may not look too slick, but rest assured: In the hours before it was uploaded, the camera angle was rejiggered multiple times, the CD player was placed next to the speakers at a precise angle, and an unseen friend was implored to hit the “record” button at a planned time. There are thousands of karaoke audition reels like this on YouTube, though it’s not always clear what sort of reward the singers want: A label deal? Some positive comments? A vote in some vaguely disclosed talent show?

The Viewer-as-Voyeur
Thanks to herky-jerky camerawork and low-quality fidelity, these caught-in-the-act videos are often difficult to watch, especially for a whole five minutes or so. But more than any other form of karaoke video, they capture what it’s like to spontaneously sing in public—the fear, the awkwardness, and the inevitable moment when self-consciousness gives way to joy. That said, sometimes they’re best viewed with the sound off.

The Cheatbook
The vocals are buried way down on the bottom, and the on-screen lettering is big and blurry, in a style reminiscent of those “Take Me Drunk I’m Home” shirts that you could get at Spencer’s Gifts in the ‘90s. There’s no storyline here, no stock footage, and—in this case, at least—no color; it’s the sort of follow-the-word clip that exists solely for those playing along at home. A good teaching aide, but not much fun otherwise.

Look How They Shine For You

2007-08-10T14:37:00.000-04:00

The weirdest part about the alleged assault on a Seattle man who was singing Coldplay at karaoke? The song was "Yellow," which is one of Chris Martin's more tolerable numbers. If it had been "Fix You" or "Speed Of Sound"—or, God forbid, something by Travis—this would have made a lot more sense.

Also, a note to my three or so readers: I'm getting hitched next week, which accounts for the slow-down in posts. Once I return from my nutty nuptials—which will, we're hoping, close with karaoke—I'll head off to Orlando for the Karaoke World Series, and then to Bangkok for the Karaoke World Championship. Once I return, semi-regular posting will resume. In the meantime, please don't beat anyone up over an obvious karaoke selection. Unless it's "My Heart Will Go On."