Vigilante Justice at the IHOP- part one of the Bloomington, IL karaoke experience

authors note: At about five pages, this is the first part of the story of the rowdiest experience on my summer tour. As with many other segments, beware glaring generalizations and stereotypes.


After leaving Madison, I made my way south into Illinois. I was heading into Bloomington to visit friends I met in Montana. Funny thing about this trip. With the exception of the visit I would make to my first girlfriend ever now living in Montreal, all of the friends I would visit on this trip would be people I met in Montana. But the Bloomington crew was special. For many reasons other than just karaoke, but I’ll stick with the theme and tell the story of the only time I was hooked from the stage.

Harold’s Club. Milltown, Montana. The building looks like it used to be some sort of small mill (fitting with the town name, I guess) and at night, the Harold’s Club sign on the side of the building is lit in a bright neon red that you can see for a mile. The best comparison I can come up with is Porky’s place in the movie of the same name. Inside Harold’s they have trophy mounts of a big horn sheep and mountain goat hung on the walls, and for pure protection I’m guessing, they’re both encased in the glass gunner shells of B-52 bombers. And while the crowd has changed since this particular story to include more college kids, at the time of this incident it was even more cowboy hats and trucker caps than the Limelight Lounge (for more on this story see the brief anecdote in “Poker and Self-Help Books-part one”), but I was still the long-hair. Luckily I was with my crew, then from Rock Creek, Montana, and I’m sure all of their own cowboy hats made up for the fact that they had a hippy in their company.

Maybe that’s why I felt safe with my choice of songs. Of course, the fact that I was drunker than two skunks probably played a part. For whatever reason, I chose to sing Led Zeppelin’s “I Can’t Quit You, Baby,” a relative obscure bluesy song off Zeppelin I. You might have heard of it, but I can pretty much guarantee that most folks at Harold’s hadn’t, and didn’t especially want to hear my slurring version serenading any woman in sight (which didn’t reach too far for me at this point. I could barely read the words on the monitor). Needless to say, about two-thirds through the song, the volume suddenly tapered off. Apparently I was done. I left the stage in a huff, to which my friends all eased my mind with comments like “I thought it was great,” and “I can’t understand why he cut you off.” Of course, about a month later, I overheard the true sentiments, like “whoa, that was bad,” and “man, was he ever drunk.”

This incident actually got me blacklisted with Tom, the owner of Solid Sound Karaoke, for almost a year. I would put in a song, and it would never come up. Soon enough, I started having friends put in my songs under fake names.

“Pablo, you’re up for the next song!” Tom would announce, and I would hop on stage triumphantly. Once you’re up there, he can’t deny you. Over the following years, I proved myself to Tom, and before leaving Missoula, I was actually one of his favorites.

So the Rock-Creek-now-Bloomington crowd was familiar with my antics, and with a preemptive email asking all friends and family to locate the nearest karaoke bar, we were primed for a good evening. I had no idea that it would eventually involve police and paramedics, but when you sign up for a night of karaoke, you hand over the reins to the fates.

It was interesting driving into Bloomington. Most of the Rock Creek clan actually grew up in this city, and over the years I had heard many stories and adventures revolving around it, so in a way it was like I was driving into my own hometown. As I crossed through the city, I tried to picture my friends as kids running through the streets, tried to picture it from their eyes back then. I was staying with Steve and Michelle Carr. You may remember Michelle from her quoted declaration in one of my earlier entries. “Nothing good happens after midnight,” she said after our night at Pheasant Lanes, but I’m still getting to that.

I had worked doing carpentry with Steve back in Montana, but not long after the birth of their second daughter, they decided they wanted to be closer to family. It had only been a couple months since their return to Illinois and I felt lucky to be a houseguest in their new home which Steve was already busy remodeling. The other friends showed up shortly after my arrival with beers in hand. Tyler Buckley arrived with his wife, Angie, and their new son, Colton (two additions to his life I had yet to meet). Davey showed up as well, maybe with Tyler. Angie would be taking Colton home for a quiet evening, so unfortunately (probably not unfortunate for her) wouldn’t be joining us. Michelle had arranged babysitting duties with her parents (another benefit of being closer to family), and was excited about the night ahead. The cards were laid out on the table, and the players departed for Pheasant Lanes Bowling Alley.

A few quick words about the participants of this evening before I go much farther. Steve… at least six and a half feet I’d guess, but not lanky. A solid house of a guy, Steve was known in Rock Creek as the Gentle Giant for his quiet disposition. Just don’t cross him when he’s had a few. Dave, or Davey… visited Rock Creek from Illinois a few times over the years. While he’s about my height, his girth equals almost two of me, and it’s mostly muscle. Tyler matches my size almost to the letter, but occasionally his mouth (or more importantly, what comes out of it) is more suited to someone of Davey’s stature. As he is strong willed and opinionated, it seems to me that few people are lukewarm on Tyler; they either really like him or they don’t, and that’s just fine by him. As for me, well my brother always said that it was my look that kept me out of fights, and luckily so, because I lack any of the experience in that arena should anyone care to take me up on it. In Rock Creek, I was the Loose Deputy. Finally there’s Michelle. The peacekeeper. The moderator. The most level-headed of the bunch…usually.

With the exception of a note that I scrawled to myself on the back of one of the song slips (we have to keep a wrangle on Dave and Tyler), these personality types really won’t come out until the IHOP after karaoke, but I wanted you to have a picture of the main players in this evening as we all piled into Tyler’s ride on our way to Pheasant Lanes. Another friend of the gang from their childhood days, Doug, met us at the bar and hung out for awhile, but was smart enough to leave early.

I’m not sure what everyone else was expecting when we arrived, but I wasn’t surprised by the crowd we found in the lounge of Pheasant Lanes (for more on this, visit any bowling alley bar on a Saturday night… especially if they have karaoke). Tyler, pretty conservative and usually dressed looking the part, probably summed it up the best for everyone else. “When I heard you were coming into town,” he said, “I had all of these great ideas of things we could do and places to go. This wasn’t one of them.” But to give him credit, he was the only other besides myself to get up and sing a couple.

A few random moments and notes I made before the evening got too rowdy:

Don’t do the new songs. One of my personal karaoke credos. Be it country or rock, I usually choose the classics. For one, the new songs are too fresh to imitate, but more important, as I believe Steve pointed out, when you hear a classic rock song it takes you back to good times and good memories, times maybe sitting around a campfire or drinking with buddies, not just to what you heard on the radio on the ride over. This credo will come into play later in my trip at Vocalz, a karaoke bar in Montreal.

Those that follow the bars for karaoke. At any karaoke night, you’ll be able to pick out the regulars. Chances are, one or both of two facts are certain. They’ll do the same songs every week. And they know the establishments where karaoke takes place on any given night of the week. Oh yeah, one more thing. They either don’t drink much, if at all, or they’re raging alcoholics. Of course, I can’t say too much here. I have my favorite songs to sing, and when I lived in Missoula, even if I didn’t always go, I always knew where I could sing if need be.

The owner sings. This is a given. The operator of the equipment will always sing. Usually (hopefully) they’re pretty talented. They love to sing, may have even been in a band, or at least wish they could be in a band. Did I mention the name of this karaoke travelogue when it ever gets published? “Man Without a Band.”

The wandering singer. Our group sat in a raised area of the lounge away from the main karaoke equipment (however, there were at least four screens around the bar where the lyrics could be seen), and I couldn’t understand why almost all of the singers in this particular lounge either wandered around or stood in random spots throughout the bar to perform. I had never seen anything like it. But when I went up to the front to do my first song, Waylon’s “Rambling Man,” I realized that this was because the usual main monitor was absent, so people chose whatever screen was closest to them. Unlike the Chinese bar in Honolulu, where there was a main monitor but nobody chose to use it. They didn’t even stand from their tables. Have I told the Honolulu story yet? That was a doozy. Maybe I’ll insert that in between part one and part two of the Bloomington story. Keep your eyes peeled.

Two of the whitest guys ever singing ‘I Like Big Butts,’ by Sir Mix-A-Lot. This always cracks me up when super white people do rap songs. Enough said. If you’ve seen it, you know what I mean. If not, again, visit any bowling alley karaoke on a Saturday night. You’ll see.

As it turned out, the gang chose Pheasant Lanes because the bartender happened to be a brother-in-law (I believe) of Michelle’s. Ahh, family. The drinks were flowing, and we weren’t paying for most of them (although he got a helluva’ tip). As the evening progressed, things got louder and rowdier. This was when I wrote my note about Tyler and Davey, Tyler being a good instigator and Davey being big enough to back it up. Still things remained mostly calm, but I knew things were getting loose as we waited for my second song, Neil Diamond’s “Holly Holy.” It seemed like I had been passed over a few times, and naturally protective of my interests, there were a few grumbles from our group wondering when my turn would come again. Even Michelle was starting to get a little rambunctious. To wrap up Part One of this segment, I’ll end with the other funny quote from the evening. Some random guy chosen before me was in the middle of butchering a song. I made some comment about how I should’ve been up there, and Steve says to me…

“We could just go up there, take the microphone from him, knock him over the head a couple times with it, and then hand it back to him.”

The image this comment invoked incited laughter for a good few minutes.