I blame my mother and my Filipinoness, really. Karaoke, that is. I’m a proud American-Filipino, so 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 fears of singing in front of people
- To gather courage to do it
- To be 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.
Love or Loathe It Valentine’s Day
