Earlier in the evening, one man caught my eye
when he sang during the warm-ups, and then again
later when he chose not to compete. He was tall
with shaggy blond hair and looked like a retired
surfer, but when he sang, he was a dead ringer
for Frank Sinatra. When I asked him why he didn't
compete, he said, "I've never entered a contest.
The people that enter them are the people that
work the circuit. I feel contests are designed
by bars to bring people in to spend money. It's
not really about finding the best singer. It's
about a bar owner who says, 'Hmm, we're
slow on Wednesday nights. We'll offer a $300
prize, but we'll have six weeks of first
rounds, three weeks of second rounds.' And
every one of those nights people who are in the
contest have to come back and they're supposed
to bring their friends to cheer for them and,
you know, it's just a big contrived thing
to bring people into their bar. And then you're
down to who's judging you? Who picks the
winner? How much does this person know about
music or performance?"
This was Mike, a rare breed of Karaokian, one
of the few who think karaoke is supposed to be
fun and that people who take their karaoke hobby
too seriously are missing the point. If the Dalai
Lama were to be reincarnated as a fortysomething
surfer dude with a passion for karaoke, he would
come back as Mike. I wanted to know what this
point was that so many others were missing, so
I met up with Mike at his weekly KJ gig -- a
volunteer position at a retirement community.
The Orchard
"At this point, I don't consider anyone
there elderly," says Mike of the 700 senior residents
at the Orchard in Point Loma. He first showed
up four years ago to volunteer as part of an
assignment for a class at Mesa College. When
the assignment was over, Mike continued his free
Friday-afternoon gigs. "Those people make me
feel good. In a bar, I turn off the music at
the end of the night and everyone's drunk,
nobody notices; the jukebox is turned on and
I'm gone. But these people really appreciate
it. I mean, these people are my friends."
This venue is open to the public. "The more
the better," urges Mike. "The people that live
here get to see new people come in and sing --
it's entertainment for them -- and the people
who come in from outside places get to see a
new place." Not to mention that at the Orchard,
unlike at a bar, the audience is seated, quiet,
and attentive. I greeted Mike as he arrived in
the parking lot. Before he made it to where I
was standing, two older men, reminiscent of Statler
and Waldorf (the old guys in the balcony on The
Muppet Show), called out from behind his
truck, "Open the damn door!"
Mike obeyed, and as soon as he unlocked the
back of his truck, the two old men rushed his
equipment into the building like expert stagehands. "If
we can get this set up now, we might be able
to get in one more song!" one of them shouted.
At the tender age of 28, I was the youngest
person in the room. The excitement was palpable,
or maybe the weight and buzz I felt was some
sort of chemical reaction to the density of perfume
and pain patches.
"Welcome back, Annie!" Mike said. "Hey, Richard,
how's your wife?"
"Not good, Mike. Her hip is broken. I want to
sing first because I need to take her to her
doctor's appointment." Richard was one of
the men who had been waiting in the parking lot
for Mike to arrive.
Then it hit me: Mike was not simply these people's
friend -- he was family. He knew every name,
alluded to stories and experiences shared. Like
a son returning home from abroad, he was the
cause of the excitement.
Richard took his place before the giant television,
in front of expectant, smiling, and attentive
friends and neighbors, and sang "Blue Bayou." At
one point in the song, he did a little dance,
turning and shaking his octogenarian booty at
the audience, inciting cheers from the group
behind me who had proclaimed themselves hecklers.
Ninety percent of the songs performed were written
before 1950. Half of them were love songs. Old
people singing about love is apparently one of
my emotional triggers. Staring at a wrinkled,
life-worn face, I found myself wondering, Who
were you with when you first heard this song?
How much heartache have you suffered in your
many years on this earth? What joys do you remember
when you mouth these words?
When Ray got on his knees to ad-lib during "Rock-a-Bye
Baby," making the room erupt with laughter, I
wondered if he had been the class clown 60 years
before. They danced, they laughed, they crooned
with the raspy voices of those whose vocal cords
have long surpassed their warranty. They were
having more fun than I'd had at any nightclub.
I laughed through most of the songs, as was
the obvious intention of those who were singing
them. Then Mike called the name "John," and an
old man shuffled his way to the microphone. His
calm presence quieted the room, and we waited
in silence while Mike cued up his song. John
focused his gaze somewhere far away -- another
time, another place -- and he began to sing "The
Rose," ever so slowly, his pace bringing new
meaning to these lyrics I knew by heart. After
he whispered the last two words, "the rose," he
smiled sadly, nodded, and returned to his seat.
Hosting Karaoke
Aside from his Friday-afternoon appearances
at the Orchard, Mike doesn't KJ anymore.
In 1989, at the El Torito in Mission Valley,
Mike experienced karaoke for the first time. "I
had never seen it before in practice. Having
always been a singer and musician, it was easy
to embrace it." In 1989, karaoke was still on
laser discs. "I wanted to get into the technology
of it. At the time, I was way into computers.
"Karaoke has become like pool and darts and
cocktails -- a lot of bars have it," Mike says. "Working
in bars just doesn't pay." Currently, Mike's
main source of income is from DJ-ing weddings
and corporate functions (www.garage-records.com). "Used
to be standard, five years ago, a good host with
a good selection could make about $150 a night
for four or five hours. Now it's down to
about 100 bucks."
Mike attributes this decrease to the ubiquity
of karaoke machines. "In the last five years,
karaoke went from just being in bars to being
in homes. A lot of people that like to sing and
want to be part-time karaoke hosts have daytime
jobs, and they'll go in and say, 'I'll
run karaoke for you. I've got 50 discs, and
I'll do it for 50 bucks because I just love
to sing!' So what you're getting is a
semiprofessional host, because the bar owners
want to pay minimal amounts of money." Mike's
karaoke collection boasts over 28,000 songs,
efficiently organized on his computer.
As a host, Mike lived and breathed among Karaokians. "Karaoke
is supposed to be entertaining," he says. "People
go to enjoy the good singers or to laugh at the
bad singers. If you have too much bad karaoke,
though, people singing off-key, then your show
starts to suck."
Mike has ways to help the poor, unfortunate,
and tone-deaf. When he's at the Orchard,
it could be something as simple as turning up
the music so that a singer can better hear the
key. "There's not much you can do if they're
really dying. At times I've 'accidentally' shut
off the song and blamed it on me, like, 'Oh,
sorry! Computer malfunction!' People are
scared to go out and do it. They have their own
insecurities about how good they're going
to do. I can say, 'Hey, come on, take it
easy.' "
