Read Online Turn Around Bright Eyes by Rob Sheffield - Free Book Online
Authors: Rob Sheffield
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America fell madly in love with it?
Karaoke is a relatively new development in Western culture. It might seem like it’s been around forever, but it didn’t arrive until recently, and we still don’t know its long-term effects, like some new drug that hits the market before it’s properly tested. Even in the late eighties, it was obscure in English-speaking countries. But as soon as people found out that it existed, it caught on fast. Once we got a taste, we needed more.
It has a long history in Japan, a country I’ve never visited. Ally used to live in Tokyo, so she’s done karaoke in the motherland, with middle-aged salarymen singing Beatles and Elton John songs while consuming their weight in sake, which they’re destined to regurgitate on the train tracks. The first time I ever heard the word karaoke in the eighties was from my friend Marc, after he visited Japan; he said it was their equivalent of an American 1950s drive-in theater, a place where kids go to make out in the dark. “American karaoke is about as authentic as American sushi,” he assures me. “It’s California-roll karaoke.”
But it’s the American ritual of karaoke that fascinates me. Of all the amateur passions that thrive in the American psyche, singing seems to be the only one that has found this kind of mass expression. Karaoke is a throwback to a time before records, where families gathered around a piano and unfolded sheet music of the latest hit song. It’s a place where no-talents and low-talents and too-low-for-zero talents tolerate each other, even enjoy each other, as we commit brutal crimes of love against music. We’re all free to turn and walk the other way at any time, yet we stay to applaud each other.
I can’t think of any other forum like this in our culture. There’s no acting equivalent of karaoke, where an amateur thespian can get up on a public stage after shotgunning a few tall boys and perform the trial of Hermione from The Winter’s Tale . There is no restaurant karaoke where anyone can hop on the stove, burn dinner, and serve it up to the other customers. Imagine a bartending equivalent. You order a Rob Roy, and I’ll pour you a cup of Shasta Raspberry Zazz and Absolut Pepper with a shot of Four Loko plus a raw oyster. Would you drink it? No way—but this is what karaoke is. There is simply no other American ritual that rewards people for doing things they suck at doing.
Yet we stick around, before and after our song, cheering each other’s flaws. The only real bores in a karaoke bar are the ringers who can sing, like the eternal “Me and Bobby McGee” lady. In a karaoke bar, the closest you can come to unforgivably bad taste is competence.
The community created around karaoke is a sacred thing. It’s a universally supportive environment—nobody goes to scoff or judge. It’s not like a pool hall or bowling alley where the regulars glare at you for taking up valuable space. It’s a temporary but intense bond between strangers, a shipboard romance, a republic we create where we gladly consent to treat the other people around us like rock stars. How does music bring all this out of us?
Last fall I was in a crowded karaoke joint on St. Mark’s Place, waiting in line for the men’s room, surrounded by strangers with their arms around each other singing this country song I’d never heard before (Alabama’s “Dixieland Delight”) and by the time the second chorus rolled around I could sing along, too. It was a birthday party for a guy named Taylor, who was turning thirty-three. I’ll never meet you, Taylor, but judging from the friends you’ve made, and the gusto with which they sing about redtail hawks and whitetail buck deer and makin’ a little lovin’ and turtle-dovin’ on a Tennessee Saturday night, I’d wager you have spent your thirty-three years wisely. It was a grand experience. And that was just the line for the bathroom.
It’s a totally democratic environment. We all show up,
Karaoke is a relatively new development in Western culture. It might seem like it’s been around forever, but it didn’t arrive until recently, and we still don’t know its long-term effects, like some new drug that hits the market before it’s properly tested. Even in the late eighties, it was obscure in English-speaking countries. But as soon as people found out that it existed, it caught on fast. Once we got a taste, we needed more.
It has a long history in Japan, a country I’ve never visited. Ally used to live in Tokyo, so she’s done karaoke in the motherland, with middle-aged salarymen singing Beatles and Elton John songs while consuming their weight in sake, which they’re destined to regurgitate on the train tracks. The first time I ever heard the word karaoke in the eighties was from my friend Marc, after he visited Japan; he said it was their equivalent of an American 1950s drive-in theater, a place where kids go to make out in the dark. “American karaoke is about as authentic as American sushi,” he assures me. “It’s California-roll karaoke.”
But it’s the American ritual of karaoke that fascinates me. Of all the amateur passions that thrive in the American psyche, singing seems to be the only one that has found this kind of mass expression. Karaoke is a throwback to a time before records, where families gathered around a piano and unfolded sheet music of the latest hit song. It’s a place where no-talents and low-talents and too-low-for-zero talents tolerate each other, even enjoy each other, as we commit brutal crimes of love against music. We’re all free to turn and walk the other way at any time, yet we stay to applaud each other.
I can’t think of any other forum like this in our culture. There’s no acting equivalent of karaoke, where an amateur thespian can get up on a public stage after shotgunning a few tall boys and perform the trial of Hermione from The Winter’s Tale . There is no restaurant karaoke where anyone can hop on the stove, burn dinner, and serve it up to the other customers. Imagine a bartending equivalent. You order a Rob Roy, and I’ll pour you a cup of Shasta Raspberry Zazz and Absolut Pepper with a shot of Four Loko plus a raw oyster. Would you drink it? No way—but this is what karaoke is. There is simply no other American ritual that rewards people for doing things they suck at doing.
Yet we stick around, before and after our song, cheering each other’s flaws. The only real bores in a karaoke bar are the ringers who can sing, like the eternal “Me and Bobby McGee” lady. In a karaoke bar, the closest you can come to unforgivably bad taste is competence.
The community created around karaoke is a sacred thing. It’s a universally supportive environment—nobody goes to scoff or judge. It’s not like a pool hall or bowling alley where the regulars glare at you for taking up valuable space. It’s a temporary but intense bond between strangers, a shipboard romance, a republic we create where we gladly consent to treat the other people around us like rock stars. How does music bring all this out of us?
Last fall I was in a crowded karaoke joint on St. Mark’s Place, waiting in line for the men’s room, surrounded by strangers with their arms around each other singing this country song I’d never heard before (Alabama’s “Dixieland Delight”) and by the time the second chorus rolled around I could sing along, too. It was a birthday party for a guy named Taylor, who was turning thirty-three. I’ll never meet you, Taylor, but judging from the friends you’ve made, and the gusto with which they sing about redtail hawks and whitetail buck deer and makin’ a little lovin’ and turtle-dovin’ on a Tennessee Saturday night, I’d wager you have spent your thirty-three years wisely. It was a grand experience. And that was just the line for the bathroom.
It’s a totally democratic environment. We all show up,
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