He couldn't have been more than five
feet tall. I guessed him to be around 50, taking
into account that Asian men often look much younger
than they are. The music began, a flattened sound
I imagined could only have been created by an
orchestra playing from within an enormous tin
box. He gripped the microphone with white knuckles
and, when his cue came, he sang, "Are the
reeves are budown! And the sky is guday! I went
for a wok! On a winter's day!" After
the first two lines, he fell out of sync with
the words flashing by on the large TV screen
above his head. His voice was loud in spurts,
for a known word or part of the chorus, but mostly
it was soft and quiet -- mumbles through a foreign
verse, a few disconcerting squeaky noises during
the instrumental break. The karaoke jockey (KJ)
was visibly agitated, his arms flapping in frustration
as he tried to lead the confused crooner back
to the right lyrics, the right pitch, the right
tune, and, at one point, even the right song.
The singer, however, looked as though he was
having a great time. A minute into his performance,
he politely stepped aside to allow a waddling
old white man with a beer belly the size of twins
into the unisex bathroom behind the "stage." There
were no more than 20 people in the small bar,
but it was enough to make the place look crowded.
I had thought it would be funny to drag my posse
to a place named after an amused fish for one
of its many karaoke nights. Little did I know
that this random idea to entertain myself while
annoying my friends would lead me straight to
the underbelly of a thriving San Diego subculture.
The Tickled Trout in Mission Valley became my
doorway to this underworld's inhabitants
-- the Karaokians.
During a break between singers, I stared at
one of three television screens on which the
KJ was playing a scene from Fast Times at
Ridgemont High.
"Have you seen a small CD case?" I looked to
my left to find a woman who resembled my high
school PTA president -- middle-aged, short and
stocky, tight brown curls framing her bulldog
face.
"No, sorry. Nothing was on this table when we
sat here," I said politely. Then I turned back
to the screen.
"It was right here," she said, pointing emphatically
at the empty spot next to my Guinness.
"Listen," I said calmly, now giving her my full
attention. "When I arrived at this table, there
was nothing on it but a napkin. I hope you find
your CDs, I really do. But they aren't here,
and no one here would take them. Okay?"
She didn't believe me. This became obvious
when she began circling our table, looking underneath
it suspiciously, then back up, as though she
might catch one of us passing off the stolen
goods. Finally, she turned back to her table,
where she proceeded to accuse each of her three
companions until one of them produced her case
from the spot where she had hidden it before
she went to the restroom. In the CD case were
her cherished homemade karaoke discs.
Empty Orchestra
Karaoke, defined as "a music entertainment system
that provides prerecorded accompaniment to popular
songs that a performer sings live by following
the words on a video screen," was introduced
in Japan in the late 1970s. "Karaoke" directly
translates as "empty orchestra," or more loosely, "without
a band." No one can be sure exactly where this
phenomenon began, but a popular story places
the beginning in a snack bar in Kobe City.
According to this widely believed tale, a guitarist
was suddenly unable to perform at the bar; in
an attempt to keep his patrons entertained, the
proprietor prepared tapes of the music from prior
performances and invited volunteer vocalists
to sing along.
There is one man, however, who is credited with
inventing the first karaoke system (8-track accompaniment
tapes and custom-built 8-track player) -- Daisuke
Inoue. Though we can thank (or curse) this drummer
from Kobe for kicking off the karaoke craze,
his failure to patent his invention has kept
him from reaping the rewards. He first leased
out his karaoke machines in Kobe in 1971, but
Inoue did not actually try his own invention
until 1999, while celebrating his 59th birthday.
In 2004, when he was 64 years old, Inoue received
the Ig Nobel Peace Prize for "providing an entirely
new way for people to learn to tolerate each
other." As a token for the humorous award, which
is a pun on the word "ignoble," Inoue was gifted
with a medallion made of tinfoil. If he had filed
his patent in 1971, he'd be a billionaire.
Soon after Inoue's invention, manufacturing
companies picked up on the idea and began churning
out better systems. Ten years later, with the
help of laser disc technology, lyric sheets were
thrown away and words were displayed on TV screens.
After that, it wasn't long before someone
added graphics to accompany instrumental breaks
(those cheesy beach scenes and photos of lovers
walking hand in hand).
Today, wannabe singers (like the bulldog I encountered
at the Tickled Trout) can make their own CDs
that they can cue up in modern karaoke systems
found in bars around the world.
Before embarking on my karaoke quest, my experience
with what I thought was a silly pastime was limited
to three hazy memories. The first time I tried
karaoke I was 21. It was 1998 and my date, a
tall gangly thing I met in Pacific Beach, brought
me to a dive in East County. After he bought
my third margarita, he persuaded me to take the
stage. With liquid confidence, I belted out the
words to "I Feel Lucky" by Mary Chapin Carpenter.
Later that night I learned that my improvised "meow" and
growl had delighted the roomful of middle-aged
men, who, at the time I sang, seemed nothing
more than a sea of flannel and denim.
The second time I stepped up to the mike was
at a place on Melrose in West Hollywood where
people didn't just sing, they auditioned.
I wasn't interested in that -- I wasn't
delusional enough to think I had the talent it
takes to be a rock star -- but I was out with
a handful of friends and I craved a moment in
the spotlight.
Conveniently, two of my friends were weekend
Vegas showgirls and part-time dancers at the
gentlemen's club in Beverly Hills. To deflect
some of the attention (I wanted the spotlight,
but I feared its intense heat on me alone), I
asked my girls to dance behind me as I sang Natalie
Imbruglia's "Torn." I'm not sure what
they did behind me, but it worked. Of all the
singers that evening, I received the most applause.
I should have stopped at two. I'm humiliated
to report what happened the third time. A week-long
training seminar brought me and other new employees
from the southwest region of our company to Irvine.
The bar was located across the parking lot from
our hotel.
