Karaoke in Kerikeri

Chaff, 17 July 1995

A funny (yet meaningful) thing happened to me over the semester break: I had my very first Karaoke Experience. Up until then I had prided myself on never having been anywhere near anything to do with karaoke, thinking it a kind of quaint but ultimately pointless and degrading custom. But now all that's changed.

Finding myself on holiday in a crowded pub in Kerikeri full of people I don't know and will probably never meet again, I was able to enter the karaoke experience in a whole new way. There's only one pub in Kerikeri so all the different kinds of townsfolk were there; no style segregation for these people, which has to be healthy really. It was a great evening; everyone was into it, singing along with the stars and dancing merrily with each other. The two portly old men who mumbled along to 'Ain't That A Shame' were pretty cool, but the highlight for me was Mr Chu the greengrocer, who warbled 'Unchained Melody' beautifully, hitting all the high notes with just the right amount of pathos. The crowd was right there with him, there was swaying and arm-waving, there were moist eyes and slow dancing. What a moment. And part of the thrill of the whole thing is that gradual but inevitable slide from "No! No! Not even if you paid me!" to "well, maybe" to "Now! Can we do it now? I want to do it now!". I'm not entirely sure how the sight of three city girls raucously belting out 70s feminist-esque disco hits really went down, but they liked us enough to ask us to do 'Heart of Glass', which was a bit of a mission (you try screaming at maximum lung capacity for three minutes then going for that super-soprano Debbie Harry glide...)

Anyway, it made me wonder. Everyone I know seems to harbour massive scathing disdain for karaoke. Is it the music? What if there was alternative karaoke? Instead of having to choose between Linda Ronstadt and the Eagles, you could sing along to the Pixies, or Ministry, or Hole. It would go off! Everyone secretly wants to make a noise like Frank Black or Al Jourgensen or Courtney Love at least once in their lives. Especially if you got to do groovy voice distortion tricks and could make yourself sound like Satan. Or ... is it more than that?

See, I think a lot of us miss the point of karaoke. People who think that the idea is to go along and sit quietly in your own little group and watch other people making dicks of themselves have got it all wrong; the idea is for everyone to get ripped and sing along. This changes everything. You are the star, but you're performing with rather than to. Alcohol and singing seem to be two of those things that are just meant for each other, like cheese and onion or Scully and Mulder. There's some kind of primal human urge that dictates that once you've got a few drinks down you and loosened those inhibitions a little, you then make as much of a loud noise as you possibly can, announcing your presence and vocal capacity to all and sundry. People love singing anyway, no matter what the occasion. We invent all sorts of little rituals that involve singing together: school sing-alongs, hymns, national anthems. It's definitely a bonding thing. Karaoke is just another way around it.

Singing is a very elemental activity, it comes straight from the guts and is mediated by nothing but your lips and tongue; it's a pure manifestation of your inner self. And the fact that you can do it along with other people makes it like a kind of communion, a way of expressing yourself and relating to others at the same time. Individual expression and group bonding, catharsis and identification: how much more of a beautiful thing could there be? If only all the world leader types could get really drunk and have a good sing-song together, we wouldn't have half these misguided problems with territoriality and aggression that we do now.

It's not just about singing, though - alcohol is an essential ingredient. You've got to let down those barriers of concerns about personal integrity and image management and just get into the mood of the moment, let the crowd mentality flow through you. No one's really looking at you, self-consciousness only holds you back, you are just one little part of a giant musical creature making a HUGE beautiful noise. And you have to completely abandon cynicism, which is a pretty tough thing for us ironic 90s hipsters to do; we cling to our cynicism like a security blanket most of the time. It's a handy mask to hide behind, and although the beauty of joining the karaoke monster is that you don't need masks because no one cares what you look like anyway, they're still hard to give up.

Hmmm ... on second thoughts, maybe alternative karaoke wouldn't be such a great idea. Singing the kind of music you actually like listening to might only heighten self-conscious angst and make things boring. Maybe it's better to go with the cheese ... I mean come on, we all love it anyway don't we? We make like we hate it, then we pretend that we find it secretly hilarious, but no one admits that they actually really get into it. I mean, what's retro all about? And don't tell me you don't know the words, I know you learnt them in primary school.

Then again ... sigh ... maybe karaoke for this generation is doomed from the start. Everyone's too cool and sophisticated and afraid to laugh at themselves, except in a cynical and detached kind of way (which is cheating). Oh well ... anyone for a rousing chorus of 'Song Sung Blue'?...