I blame my mother and my Filipinoness, really. Karaoke, that is. I’m
confident every American Filipino is born with a mic in their hand, and a rice
cooker in the other. Standard issued cultural items, basically.
After some inflection it was no surprise to me that I’ve had karaoke
in my life prior to meeting Mari, Malarky’s, and becoming a karaoke host. The
first “time” was an impromptu session that I thought I was alone.
In 1996, I was a supervisor for the now defunct Thrifty Payless Drug
Stores Inc. One particular morning, I was assigned inventory count in our
warehouse at the back of the store. I plugged in the overhead music, which was nothing more than Muzak tracks on a
repeated loop. I needed some white noise, even if it was the same 8 songs that
I’ve heard for 5 years. I knew every lyric of every song by memory. Once ABBA’s
“Dancing Queen” popped on, I launched into singing into my Papermate
microphone, and my clipboard tambourine. I was alone in a 1,000 square foot
area, so I flexed my golden pipes. As the song faded into the next one, I heard
a faint clapping from the overhead office from the accountant that had no doubt
been there the whole time.
Then that erupted into full blown applause at the end of performance
mixed in with laughter from the morning crew that had gathered by the swinging
doors which I didn’t notice.
Fantastic, I thought. I’ll never be able to live this down with a
crew comprised of an ex-Marine, a practicing boxer, and a Korean War vet. Over
the next couple weeks, my work desk was adorned with ABBA posters, a white
belt, a pair of white boots, and of course, a tambourine.
I digress.
For the most part, I’ve performed karaoke sober or relatively
buzzed. I noticed that other singers would be hammering down drinks or shots
prior to their song. My eyebrows furrowed the first few times I saw this.
I thought, “Why the hell would you want to be Hot Mess Express
pulling into the depot?”
Curiosity got the better of me, so I asked. And repeated the
question, and have kept a running list of answers.
- To lower my fear
- To gather courage
- To sound better
Being an on-again-off-again karaoke host, I’ve come to the
conclusion that everyone has one good song in them. Whether they’ve belt it out
in their car, shower, or empty crib, they have that song that speaks to them.
I’ve seen the gamut of singers: ex-professional singers to sloppy
drunk singers.
What’s your go-to karaoke song, Spaceship Earth? Or if you had a gun
to your head and you were forced to sing a karaoke song, what would it be?
(this is affectionately known as a karaoke suicide – a song that’s unpolished)
Comment below, lemme know what you think!
Be good like you should, but if you can’t be good then be good at
what you do!
Microphone drop! bOoM
‘los; outro.
