"You went where?"
author's note: This entry runs about 4 dbl spaced pages in MS Word. One thing I forgot to mention was one of my choices for this evening... Buffalo Springfield's, "For What it's Worth." Without the video, this time.
23rd March, 2005
So you want to talk about strange?
Last Friday I went to karaoke at the Sportsmen’s Lounge in Cedar City, Utah. As you may recall, my two dear readers, a karaoke evening last Spring in the Blue Kat in Cedar started this whole mess to begin with. Seeing another’s true passion for live performance, even if only in the presence of a few others, inspired my whole Summer Karaoke tour.
Well, much to my chagrin, the Blue Kat has long since closed in Cedar City, and we’re left with only a couple choices, the same ol’ crackers, you know? Don’t get me wrong. I’m not knocking the Sportsmen’s… yet. I spent a fair amount of time there in my formative college years. Drinkin’ and dancin’. Shooting pool and fooling around. Hell, they provided me with my first taste of karaoke, so I have to give them some credit, but after being gone from Cedar City for over seven years, I was more than a little surprised to see that, beyond some interesting remodel decisions, the Sportsmen’s Lounge offered basically the same fare as ten years ago, and my tastes had changed in the interim.
But the Blue Kat had closed, and I gotta’ sing every now and then, leaving only the Sportsmen’s so far as I know. Now when I left you, fair readers, the end of 2004 was nigh. Jennifer and I had just started tiptoeing into the calming pools of new love. Through her (sort of) I had discovered others passionate about playing the Man (or Woman) Without a Band. I knew I’d found the perfect woman when she told me that her friends (coincidentally, quite of few with whom I had been friends in high school as well) had been holding something of a karaoke New Year’s party for quite a few years running.
Oh, it was on.
Without seeming like I was attempting a coup d’etat of the New Year’s party, I tried to probe for the details of the festivities. For instance, did someone have one of those home version karaoke machines? Tapes or just CD’s? As it turned out, Rebecca Jorgensen usually made the compilation music CDs for a stereo with a microphone jack, and then it was “Good luck! Hope you remember the words.”
I decided to take it up a notch, and the following happened in the early weeks of December (but not necessarily in this particular order): Jennifer told me her DVD player had a microphone jack. I discovered the first Karaoke DVD of what would eventually grow a collection of over 200 songs by New Years. Incidentally, the first DVD was probably the worst of my collection. It was produced somewhere in Asia with American actors. Yes, I said actors, which means videos, and you know my feelings on those. Even better, many of the lyrics were incorrect, based possibly on an Asian phonetic understanding of the words.
But the two biggest factors playing into the development of the New Year’s party came from my folks. The first being the offer of their place outside of town to host while they went to Catalina Island for their annual trip. And they completely caught me off guard with the Christmas gift of a Singing Machine Karaoke Machine, complete with a little camera that could project you either on the little six-inch screen, or in the case of my parents place, on their freakin’ huge television upstairs, while the lyrics scrolled over the smaller screen.
Are you sensing trouble? Chaos? The Las Vegas gang? Wild hysterical laughter, Mark Rock dancing, duets, love songs, drunk songs? Snow and mud, snoring and shouting? Are you getting an idea?
Well, none of that happened, Mom and Dad.
(As for the rest of you, look for “Man Without a Band” in book form in a few years)
Because the most important part was discovering a few more people in my circle of friends who liked to sing as much as me. And some pretty damned good singing, don’t you know? Of course, I think some of them (ahhemm, Kodi and Becca) get more practice with those Nintendo games (or Playstation or whatever). Have you seen these games? You can pick your character, stage, and song and you get judged on how closely your performance resembles the actual artist. Apparently, if you’re super-bad, you actually spontaneously combust on stage.
After warming them all up to the idea a couple weeks earlier, I convinced the gang (or at least as many as I could) to find sitters for children, gather up their courage (even if only the courage to listen to other drunks singing), and hit the Sportsmen’s this past Friday night. The gang in attendance was composed of Erin and Lannie Achord, Erik and Becca Jorgensen, and Jennifer and me. I knew from the get-go that Erin and Lannie were only there to play foosball, and was pleased that I could give them the excuse to get out for their first competition since before the birth of Addison. The two of them spent probably about fifteen minutes total at our table, but you could see it was purely social obligation when they were actually antsy to get back to the games. But during that time, Lannie asked me about my rating of the Karaoke experience at the Sportsmen’s, as I had been a couple times since being back in town.
“Well,” I shouted over a Metallica song performed by a slightly overweight girl who made up for her lack of talent with an overabundance of enthusiasm, “this is actually my first time with this guy [Hyrum Zerkle of HyZee Karaoke. Am I in Utah or what?], but for a relatively small town with a college, based on other comparisons, I’d give it about a seven.” Upon discovering later only one Neil Diamond song, I dropped that to a five. Maybe a three.
As to Erik, a good friend of mine from my last two years in high school, he had made it pretty clear that he didn’t plan on singing. As did Jennifer. Neither of which, I believe, came as much of a surprise to Erik’s wife, Becca, or myself. But while this was just another night for me, it had special meaning to Rebecca. After almost 15 years in Cedar City, she had never been in the Sportsmen’s Lounge (“only been in any bar once or twice,” Erik told me), and she had never performed karaoke live outside of her circle of friends. Now this is important because Rebecca is in the top five most passionate-about-karaoke people that I’ve met in my adventures, and she has the talent to boot. And as far as the art goes, the second best thing to performing yourself is getting someone else hooked. It’s like a drug, I tell ya’.
You hear your name called. Your heart races. You take another drink, and walk up to the microphone. Maybe you light a cigarette, but you hope they don’t see your hands shaking when you set your beer on the stool. Because even the most confident of us, even after having had praises heaped upon us from friends and strangers alike, will still get nervous that first song of the evening. Like actors or dancers, that moment of pure adrenaline just before going on stage.
Next thing you know, it’s too late to sit back down. You’re singing, trying to keep up with the lyrics, often surprised by what you’re reading. (So that’s what Mick is saying). Sometimes people dance, or sing along, clap their hands or hoot their approval, but it’s the applause at the end that sends you back to your bar stool floating just a couple inches off the sticky floor. That’s what it is all about. That love of music so intense that, whether you can pull it off or not, it makes you want to go back for more. To sing the songs you sang well the first time. To try again the songs you screwed up before. And to attempt the ones you’ve always wanted to hear yourself singing over loudspeakers.
As I get back to work on my travelogue, and attempt to tell you the rest of the adventures from my Summer Karaoke Trip (it’s almost been a year since I left), I think it’s important to remember why I started all of this nonsense to begin with.
23rd March, 2005
So you want to talk about strange?
Last Friday I went to karaoke at the Sportsmen’s Lounge in Cedar City, Utah. As you may recall, my two dear readers, a karaoke evening last Spring in the Blue Kat in Cedar started this whole mess to begin with. Seeing another’s true passion for live performance, even if only in the presence of a few others, inspired my whole Summer Karaoke tour.
Well, much to my chagrin, the Blue Kat has long since closed in Cedar City, and we’re left with only a couple choices, the same ol’ crackers, you know? Don’t get me wrong. I’m not knocking the Sportsmen’s… yet. I spent a fair amount of time there in my formative college years. Drinkin’ and dancin’. Shooting pool and fooling around. Hell, they provided me with my first taste of karaoke, so I have to give them some credit, but after being gone from Cedar City for over seven years, I was more than a little surprised to see that, beyond some interesting remodel decisions, the Sportsmen’s Lounge offered basically the same fare as ten years ago, and my tastes had changed in the interim.
But the Blue Kat had closed, and I gotta’ sing every now and then, leaving only the Sportsmen’s so far as I know. Now when I left you, fair readers, the end of 2004 was nigh. Jennifer and I had just started tiptoeing into the calming pools of new love. Through her (sort of) I had discovered others passionate about playing the Man (or Woman) Without a Band. I knew I’d found the perfect woman when she told me that her friends (coincidentally, quite of few with whom I had been friends in high school as well) had been holding something of a karaoke New Year’s party for quite a few years running.
Oh, it was on.
Without seeming like I was attempting a coup d’etat of the New Year’s party, I tried to probe for the details of the festivities. For instance, did someone have one of those home version karaoke machines? Tapes or just CD’s? As it turned out, Rebecca Jorgensen usually made the compilation music CDs for a stereo with a microphone jack, and then it was “Good luck! Hope you remember the words.”
I decided to take it up a notch, and the following happened in the early weeks of December (but not necessarily in this particular order): Jennifer told me her DVD player had a microphone jack. I discovered the first Karaoke DVD of what would eventually grow a collection of over 200 songs by New Years. Incidentally, the first DVD was probably the worst of my collection. It was produced somewhere in Asia with American actors. Yes, I said actors, which means videos, and you know my feelings on those. Even better, many of the lyrics were incorrect, based possibly on an Asian phonetic understanding of the words.
But the two biggest factors playing into the development of the New Year’s party came from my folks. The first being the offer of their place outside of town to host while they went to Catalina Island for their annual trip. And they completely caught me off guard with the Christmas gift of a Singing Machine Karaoke Machine, complete with a little camera that could project you either on the little six-inch screen, or in the case of my parents place, on their freakin’ huge television upstairs, while the lyrics scrolled over the smaller screen.
Are you sensing trouble? Chaos? The Las Vegas gang? Wild hysterical laughter, Mark Rock dancing, duets, love songs, drunk songs? Snow and mud, snoring and shouting? Are you getting an idea?
Well, none of that happened, Mom and Dad.
(As for the rest of you, look for “Man Without a Band” in book form in a few years)
Because the most important part was discovering a few more people in my circle of friends who liked to sing as much as me. And some pretty damned good singing, don’t you know? Of course, I think some of them (ahhemm, Kodi and Becca) get more practice with those Nintendo games (or Playstation or whatever). Have you seen these games? You can pick your character, stage, and song and you get judged on how closely your performance resembles the actual artist. Apparently, if you’re super-bad, you actually spontaneously combust on stage.
After warming them all up to the idea a couple weeks earlier, I convinced the gang (or at least as many as I could) to find sitters for children, gather up their courage (even if only the courage to listen to other drunks singing), and hit the Sportsmen’s this past Friday night. The gang in attendance was composed of Erin and Lannie Achord, Erik and Becca Jorgensen, and Jennifer and me. I knew from the get-go that Erin and Lannie were only there to play foosball, and was pleased that I could give them the excuse to get out for their first competition since before the birth of Addison. The two of them spent probably about fifteen minutes total at our table, but you could see it was purely social obligation when they were actually antsy to get back to the games. But during that time, Lannie asked me about my rating of the Karaoke experience at the Sportsmen’s, as I had been a couple times since being back in town.
“Well,” I shouted over a Metallica song performed by a slightly overweight girl who made up for her lack of talent with an overabundance of enthusiasm, “this is actually my first time with this guy [Hyrum Zerkle of HyZee Karaoke. Am I in Utah or what?], but for a relatively small town with a college, based on other comparisons, I’d give it about a seven.” Upon discovering later only one Neil Diamond song, I dropped that to a five. Maybe a three.
As to Erik, a good friend of mine from my last two years in high school, he had made it pretty clear that he didn’t plan on singing. As did Jennifer. Neither of which, I believe, came as much of a surprise to Erik’s wife, Becca, or myself. But while this was just another night for me, it had special meaning to Rebecca. After almost 15 years in Cedar City, she had never been in the Sportsmen’s Lounge (“only been in any bar once or twice,” Erik told me), and she had never performed karaoke live outside of her circle of friends. Now this is important because Rebecca is in the top five most passionate-about-karaoke people that I’ve met in my adventures, and she has the talent to boot. And as far as the art goes, the second best thing to performing yourself is getting someone else hooked. It’s like a drug, I tell ya’.
You hear your name called. Your heart races. You take another drink, and walk up to the microphone. Maybe you light a cigarette, but you hope they don’t see your hands shaking when you set your beer on the stool. Because even the most confident of us, even after having had praises heaped upon us from friends and strangers alike, will still get nervous that first song of the evening. Like actors or dancers, that moment of pure adrenaline just before going on stage.
Next thing you know, it’s too late to sit back down. You’re singing, trying to keep up with the lyrics, often surprised by what you’re reading. (So that’s what Mick is saying). Sometimes people dance, or sing along, clap their hands or hoot their approval, but it’s the applause at the end that sends you back to your bar stool floating just a couple inches off the sticky floor. That’s what it is all about. That love of music so intense that, whether you can pull it off or not, it makes you want to go back for more. To sing the songs you sang well the first time. To try again the songs you screwed up before. And to attempt the ones you’ve always wanted to hear yourself singing over loudspeakers.
As I get back to work on my travelogue, and attempt to tell you the rest of the adventures from my Summer Karaoke Trip (it’s almost been a year since I left), I think it’s important to remember why I started all of this nonsense to begin with.
posted by A Man without a Band at 11:26 AM
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