But hosts like Mike don't sympathize much
with the pompous breed of Karaokians. "The people
that go up there but maybe don't have quite
the level of skills they think they have, the
people who are trying to do a good job and for
whatever reason can't, those are the hardest
ones to watch. A lot of people go up there treating
it as a joke and jerk around, and your heart
doesn't go out to them -- they're joking
around, they know they can't sing, they're
a little buzzed, and they go up there and they're
just doing their thing and that's cool. But
the pros...when they bomb, you don't have
as much sympathy as the middle-of-the-road person
who was trying to do a good job and might have
been scared."
Karaokians
"In my opinion, these people take themselves
way too seriously," says Mike. He says many Karaokians
have the "Tony T. syndrome." When Mike used to
host, he saw a lot of Tony T. "He just believes
that he is the freakin' shit, and he sits
there basking in the glory from all the women
out there who just heap praise on him. That guy,
he's on the extreme end."
Mike laughs as he remembers one instance in
which a singer walked up to the microphone and
said, "Dude, give me some more reverb, man, put
some bottom end on there." But, according to
Mike, once the guy began to sing, "the first
notes out of his mouth were wrong."
Most Karaokians follow ten unspoken rules that
are best summed up in Mitsui and Hosokawa's Karaoke
Around the World: (1) Do not sing while you
are drunk, (2) Do not sing too loudly, (3) Do
not abuse the echo effect, (4) Do not monopolize
the microphone, (5) Do not sing songs written
for the opposite sex unless you want to surprise
the audience, (6) Do not sing songs composed
by very gifted writers (because they are usually
too difficult for lay persons), (7) Do not be
too narcissistic (the most commonly broken rule),
(8) Do not sing two songs in succession, (9)
Do not sing the same song that someone else has
sung, and (10) Applaud after others have finished
singing.
After Tony T. cited numbers 7, 8, and 9 as rules
that no good karaoke singer should break, he
shared with me the following story: "This guy
was trying to get a job as a Neil Diamond impersonator,
and he brought a cameraman with him because he
was taping his performance. I guess they greased
the palm of the karaoke host so he could sing,
like, two or three songs back-to-back at the
beginning of the show. He looked like an older
version of Neil Diamond, had the sequined blazer,
the helmet hair going on, and the rings and stuff.
He was one of the few people I ever showed up
at karaoke. I had to show him up."
Tony went on to explain how one should sing
a Neil Diamond song. "The thing about singing
Neil Diamond is, Neil Diamond has a high voice
but he has a gruff, he has a depth. Unless you
can hit that, don't try it. This guy comes
in with his whole entourage thinking he's
just that and a bag of chips. And I understand
he was doing it for a purpose; he wanted to get
a job as a Neil Diamond impersonator, and he
looked the part for the most part, and he didn't
sound too bad, but I felt the urge to knock him
down a peg because when he sang, he didn't
sound anything like Neil Diamond. He had this
high, velvety-type voice, but the gruff and the
depth just wasn't there."
Tony greased the palm of the karaoke host, which
meant he slipped him around $5. According to
Mike, no good host should have let Tony do what
he did next, which was to sing two of the same
songs the impersonator had just finished performing. "I
got up and I showed Dude how you sing Neil Diamond," said
Tony. "I think he felt bad -- he looked like
somebody done shot his dog."
Tony is not modest when speaking of his singing
talent. "My voice kind of does whatever I lend
it to. I can pull off George Strait pretty all
right in karaoke. I've heard people tell
me I sing better than Jon Bon Jovi. Some people
say I sing better than George and Garth [Brooks].
I mean, they've got multi-platinum records
all over their walls and I don't have anything,
but I mean..." At this point, Tony began to sing
some Barry White, which turned the heads of all
the coffee sippers in the Kensington Starbucks.
"There are people [who] sing karaoke, and they
are people that say, 'Oh, it's just karaoke,
it's just for fun.' But when you work
hard at something, when you really work hard
at something, I mean, that's where the delineation
between the two-fisted drinker and the real singer
comes into play." Tony sings karaoke in public
six nights a week. Tony, like Linda and every
other serious Karaokian, does not drink alcohol
when he's singing. "Alcohol can irritate
the cords in your throat. Real singers drink
lemon water."
"How far are you gonna go being serious about
karaoke?" wonders Mike. "You can't become
rich being a karaoke singer. American Idol is
about as far as you can take it. Kelly Clarkson
was a karaoke singer." So why do Karaokians become
so obsessed? "I think they just like the spotlight," says
Mike. "They can't go walk into a bar that
has a band and say, 'Can I come up and play
with you?' because it's a different animal.
With karaoke, everyone has a chance. They also
probably have a good deal of ego to themselves:
they feel that everyone wants to be seeing them
and that they're doing people a favor by
singing for them.
"Guys like [Tony T.] are nothing but entertainment
for the host," continues Mike. "He'll be
working the room and getting his adulation, but
he's playing at, like, Joe's Grease Pit,
with eight people there. He's strutting the
room and making mistakes, singing the wrong notes,
and Tony T., he's been working, like, eight
years now to do this. I mean, six years ago,
when I was [hosting] full-time, every night he'd
show up at whatever bar I was at; he'd bust
in expecting me to throw him right into the rotation
because he's a 'big star.' " According
to Mike, all Karaokians "are in some level of
Tony T-ism."
Mike prefers karaoke environments where everyone
is having fun. "If it's a family event, all
of a sudden the grandparents want to see the
grandchildren singing, everyone just wants to
see each other having fun doing something. It's
so different in a bar. If you have eight people,
we'd have fun because if someone in our group
sang -- good or bad -- we'd be supportive;
or if they sing like shit we can give 'em
hell. But when you get a single guy walking into
a karaoke bar at 11 o'clock with his discs,
I can read him right away -- he probably doesn't
drink, because he's driving from bar to bar,
doesn't spend any money at the bar; probably
thinks he's going to walk in and I'm
gonna put him up and he's going to kick ass
and leave. I'd do the same thing, want to
get put up and sing, but I drink like a fish
and tip."
Champs
One Saturday night Mike stood in for a friend
as KJ at Champs on Clairemont Drive. At first
glance, Champs appeared to be the antithesis
of the Orchard. The average age was under 30.
Maybe it was the bar owner's intention to
keep the place brightly lit, juxtaposing the
show-all, sober environment with its drunk, hazy-eyed
patrons. Whatever the reason, after the dart
tournament ended, the place remained illuminated
for the rest of the night.
Mike always opens the floor by singing a song. "Mainly
as a sound check, to make sure all the equipment's
working right. And it breaks the ice."
People drank, talked, laughed. What they didn't
do was pay attention to the man singing in the
corner at the far end of the bar. A young woman
named Chelsea belted out Aretha Franklin's "Respect" --
Chelsea was the only person at Champs that night
whose skin was more cappuccino than strawberry-vanilla.
