Moving

If you've just found this site, the party's moved to a new location, Brian Raftery: Don't Stop Believin': How Karaoke Conquered the World and Changed My Life. And by "party" I mean occasional blog posts and blatant self-promotion.

Ted Leo karaoke setlist

As per Brooklynvegan, here's the setlist for the indie-rock karaoke event this Wednesday in Brooklyn:

OUTFIELD - Your Love
PRINCE - Kiss
THE WHO - My Generation
KELLEY CLARKSON - Since You Been Gone
STOOGES - Search and Destroy
RAMONES - Blitzkrieg Bop
MISFITS - Where Eagles Dare
BILLY IDOL - Dancin' With Myself
AC/DC - Dirty Deeds
CURE - Just Like Heaven
CLASH - Rock the Casbah
DAVID BOWIE AND QUEEN - Under Pressure
JOY DIVISION - Transmission
YEAH YEAH YEAHS - Maps
SAINTS - Stranded
ARETHA FRANKLIN - Respect
BLONDIE - Dreaming
THE BOSS - Dancin' in the Dark
THE BOSS - Born in the USA
STIFF LITTLE FINGERS - Suspect Device
MINOR THREAT - Minor Threat
CREDENCE - Fortunate Son
AMERIE - One Thing
STEELY DAN - Reelin' in the Years
SANTOGOLD - LES Artistes
THE KINGSMEN - Louie Louie

What, no Chisel?

Andy Dick is a Very Nice Man

He is! A few days ago, while flipping through a circa-1990 issue of Spin, I found this print ad for Pioneer's Laser Karaoke machines (I'm in the advance stages of hypernostalgia, during which I get more excited about old magazines than new magazines). Noting the resemblance to a certain star of The Andy Dick Show, I emailed Andy's website to find out whether or not it was him; a few hours later, he called to tell me that, indeed, this ad was one of his very first paid gigs, for which he received a mere $500.

The lessons here: 1) Every celeb has a long-forgotten karaoke past; and 2) if you've ever sent a drunken email to Andy Dick's website about how much you loved NewsRadio, he probably read it.

A Truth That's Hard As Steel

Violence is never funny. Unless, of course, it's spurred on by a karaoke rendition of Dio's "Holy Diver." And committed by a drunk guy named Drinkwine.

"My Thin Sides" is Sidesplitting (Zing!)

Army Navy's debut album is one of my top 10 favorite records of the year; Paul Scheer is one of my top 10 favorite members of Human Giant. Never did I imagine I'd get the chance to see them together at a karaoke bar.

Shake the Sheets

One of the appendices in Don't Stop Believin' is a wishlist of 30 songs I've always wanted to sing at karaoke, and yet could never find. Coming in at No. 12 is Ted Leo + the Pharamacist's "Where Have All The Rude Boys Gone?", one of my favorite tracks from the past five years. So imagine my surprise when I saw this announcement regarding New York magazine's upcoming indie-rock karaoke night:



Considering Leo's well-established cover-song credentials—and Andrew WK's ability to yell "party" over and over again—it's probably worth camping out at Studio B the night before, so you don't miss the sign-up sheet.

Karaoke 2.0

Time magazine's Josh Quittner endorses online karaoke as a mid-meltdown cost-saver.

McCain Staffers Knock On Heaven's Door

Deep within Newsweek's engrossing, 2,972-page (approx.) chronicle of this year's presidential campaigns is an account of McCain advisers Mark Salter and Steve Schmidt blowing off steam after the second presidential debate, in which their candidate wandered around the stage and made references to overhead projectors:

After the town-hall debate, Salter and Schmidt reunited with a dozen or so members of the traveling press corps at a karaoke bar in Nashville. It had been months since the duo had had a night out with reporters. Salter, who had sung in a band in college, was cajoled into singing a few tunes. Before long, and after a drink or two, he was into it. Under pressure from the reporters, Schmidt joined him for a chorus of Johnny Cash's "Folsom Prison Blues." Schmidt even sang "Rocky Mountain High," to squeals from the increasingly inebriated reporters. But then he went off and sat quietly. Schmidt looked worn out, his burly body weighed by stress and the woes of the campaign, his relentless stare dimmed by exhaustion. He ignored political questions and talked quietly about his family. Salter, on the other hand, had found his groove. Standing in the middle of the bar, dressed in his ubiquitous corduroy jacket, he bellowed "More Dylan!" until he had belted out every Bob Dylan song the bar had. Reporters sang loud, drunken backup and tried to get Salter to join them in boy-band dance moves. It was the first time anyone had seen Salter look as if he was having fun in a long time.

McCain, alas, wasn't in attendance, meaning the Nashville crowd missed out on his hilarious Beach Boys parody.

How He Did It [Newsweek]

T-Pain's "Karaoke" Video

One part Duets, one part "Yankee Rose."

First chapter now online

Thanks to the overzealous digital scanners at Google, the first chapter of Don't Stop Believin' is now online. This chapter is more memoir-focused than the rest of the book, but it does include references to public-access puppetry, skeevy central-Pennsylvania sports bars, and Temple of the Dog's "Hunger Strike."

Facebook group

It's up here.

When You Believe

Holy crap, remember when I used to update this site once a week or so? Ooof. I have a few good excuses for my absence, as I've spent the past few months: 1) hanging out with "Weird Al" Yankovic and a local subway-poster vandal; 2) developing a new website, which should be up in a few weeks or so; and 3) finishing the book, which will be in stores by mid-December or so. It's now called Don't Stop Believin': How Karaoke Conquered the World and Changed My Life, and it features your truly on the cover (not my idea, I swear!)

More information TK, including a link to the new site.

On The Occasion of My 18th or 19th Nervous Breakdown

I promised myself that I wouldn't update this blog until I finished the book (which is slowly nearing completion, thank googely-moogely). This has driven me a bit crazy, as there have been already been several excellent-to-outstanding songs this year, and I have no forum in which to write quick, weightless blurbs about their potential public-singability (my karaoke-wishlist for 2008 so far includes Erykah Badu, No Age and, of course, Jordin Sparks). But I did want to take a quick moment to plug Like A Rolling Stone: The Strange Life of A Tribute Band, a new book by my friend Steve Kurutz. Strange Life is a non-fiction account of the ups and downs of Sticky Fingers, a Rolling Stones tribute band that Steve has been following for years. It's a smartly written and reported book—like a long-form New Yorker piece, but with Ron Wood references. I can't recommend it enough. Steve's site is here, and the book is available for purchase here.

All Together, Just Not Now

For my loyal audience of three: I am knee-deep in the book-writing hoopla, so I won't be able to update this site until next year. Until then, here is an exciting "first look" sneak-peek at my recent karaoke jaunt to Japan:


It's not going to incite Crystal Skull levels of advance buzz, of course, but I will finally get some of that coveted Monchhichi-related traffic.

Karaoke Wishlist: October 2007

1. Shudder To Think, "Red House" STT was one of the first self-consciously "weird" bands I listened to—a high-pitched, inscrutable bunch of art-rockers whose songs were subject to random time changes, and that seemed to accidentally fall into place (considering how far into Steve Miller Band I was when I first heard Shudder, such traits counted as revelatory). Several of the band members recently reunited for a few songs in Manhattan, and "Red House" was the highlight—the way Craig Wedren's voice turns to a plea during the "[she's] someone/I want/bad" bit toward the end is affectingly urgent (the linked clip is from the group's major-label era; I think the original recording of the song is still the best).

2. Aly & AJ, "Like Woah" As danceable as, say, Daft Punk, and almost just as robotic.

3. ABBA, "The Visitors" Having only really been familiar with ABBA's hits—all 137 of them—I've been finding all kinds of great songs on the Complete Studio Recordings box set, including this paranoid, hiding-under-the-desk near-hit. The lyrics are pretty bleak for a disco track ("These walls have witnessed all the anguish of humiliation") and the keyboard line could have been hijacked by Madonna if "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!" hadn't worked out so well.

4. Ben Weasel and His Iron String Quartet, "Summer's Always Gone Too Soon"
The former lead singer of Screeching Weasel—and the man who helped put the phlegm into snot-punk vocals—has a pretty terrific, pretty terribly overlooked new album; almost all of the songs are sing-along-worthy, but "Soon" is the highlight, and the open lyrics remind me of karaoke: "Someone is singing a song far away/as if they want everyone else joining in."

5. Britney Spears, "Gimme More" Spears has been doing her sex-kitten act since 1999, and it hasn't aged too well (maybe that has something to do with the fact that, in cat years, she now has the purr of a 49-year-old). That said, "More" is pretty much all production, and the hook is just short and simple enough to work—though how could it not, considering that they bring it back in every ten seconds or so.

Karaoke Wishlist: September 2007

1) Bone Thugs-n-Harmony, "Flowmotion" Even a scratchy YouTube sound clip can't take away from the sheer bonkers-ness of this song, which sounds like a local-news theme straight out of the Rapture (the biblical event, not the band). I would pay $100 to see someone try to sing along with verses 3, 7 and 14-16.

2) Bruce Springsteen, "Livin' In The Future" Despite its terrible title, Bruce Springsteen's Magic is my favorite Boss record in twenty years or so, mostly because it's so heavy on the power-pop; if it weren't for the sax solo, you'd swear he made it with the Heartbreakers, not the E Street Band. "Future" is a barroom sing-along—complete with a "nah nah nah" outro—and it brings to mind the glory days of you-know-what-song.

3) The Monkees, "What Am I Doing Hangin' Around?" I rediscovered this country-pop beaut while listening to the newly remastered Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, Ltd.; along with "Porpoise Song," it's possibly my favorite non-hit Monkees track, and further proof of their luck with hired-gun songwriters (the original is by Michael Martin Murphey, but it works much better with a more upbeat tempo and the Jones-Nesmith-Dolenz-Tork harmonies).

4) Junior Senior - Itch U Can't Scratch I know, I know: In music-blog time, this song is like 100 years old or something. But come on—it's still great, and it's not like any of their recent bonus-disc tracks were karaoke-worthy.

5) M.I.A. - "Paper Planes" I like the idea of Joe Strummer—sitting up in heaven, lighting matches off Che Guevara's boot—trying to figure out how the hell he and Wreckx-N-Effect wound up in the same song.

Hear His Call

One last KWC-related post: When I covered the event last year for Wired magazine, one Finnish performer stood out from the very beginning. From my notes at the time...

From finland: Ari Koivunen, long black t-shirt and jeans, long blonde hair; white ballcap. looks like a 14-year-old; has no stage presence—just stands there. Sings scorpions’ “ Still Loving You” crowd goes crazy when he hits the high notes and finnish flags start flying; an older couple slow dances in front of the stage

Ari didn't win that year's KWC competition, but a few months later, he wound up winning the Finnish version of American Idol, where he once again performed the Scorpions tune (he also sang "Piano Man," though I can't find that clip on YouTube):



Koivunen's debut album, Fuel For The Fire, topped the Finnish charts when it was released May 30th, and it's still in the top 10; the hit single, "Hear My Call," is a big power-metal anthem, and proof that karaoke can be a good career move—at least in Finland.

Oops

Some of the Bangkok posts got accidentally published and then un-published, due to my basic misunderstandings of Thai-language Google software. Anyhoo, they're up now.

Bangkok, Day Four (Or Something Like That): Where Is The Love?

The post-KWC festivities went wayyyyyy long last night—all the way into the morning, in fact. The reveling once again took place in the hotel lobby, where we drank and sang and talked until dawn. When the restaurant opened at 6 a.m., our fellow guests didn’t know what hit ‘em; suffice to say that anybody hoping for a nice, relaxed early-morning vacation breakfast was instead treated to the sight of a man singing a cappella near the buffet table.

After a late-morning nap, I headed over to MBK, which is one of several competing overstuffed shopping malls in the city. I’d heard they had karaoke rooms, and was hoping to find “One Night In Bangkok,” which I still haven’t been able to locate here (though one of my newfound friends of Sweden was gracious enough to play a few notes for me on the piano last night). Unfortunately, the MBK song selection was limited, so I wound up belting out the Black Eyed Peas’ “Where Is The Love?”, a song that I barely know and/or like. Oh, Murray Head, why have you forsaken me?!

Bangkok, Day Three: There's A Choice We're Making

The Karaoke World Championships just ended about an hour or so ago here in Bangkok. The first-place winners: Lu Hee Wah, a jewelry-industry marketing and sales rep originally from Malaysia (though he's lived in Thailand for the past nine years); and Julie Walter-Sgro, a coffee-company operations manager from Australia. The U.S. took second place in themale division, thanks to Michael Moses Griffin. The whole shebang ended with a sing-along of (what else?) "We Are The World," which got the crowd going:



One unfortunate bit of news from the evening: I paid 10 Baht to try out one of the private karaoke booths, only to have my song of choice get stuck in a loop, meaning that I heard "If you leave me now..." repeated a half-dozen times before I just gave up. Now I know what Mrs. Cetera feels like.



On a final, unrelated note, I saw someone selling squirrels today—squirrels wearing miniature wool caps. More info tomorrow.