Sing Sing (East Village Karaoke)
A lot of time has passed. In that time, I've done quite a bit of karaoke. Lots of karaoke in Berlin. Karaoke back in LA, at my house, and at Soop Sok. My first weekend back from Berlin, we did karaoke at Rosen Music Studio. There was one really huge gathering at Soop Sok that would probably have been worth mentioning here, but oh well. I'm skipping to karaoke in the East Village last Saturday night.
The venue was called "Sing Sing," and was located between 5th Street and 6th Street on Avenue A. That's easily within walking distance from my sister's new (probably permanent, for at least a while) residence in the East Village. After a week in NY with relatively tame nightlife, consisting mostly of small gatherings of friends from HS and/or college, interspersed with quiet dinners with my sister and her boyfriend, I was ready for something a little bigger. Much thanks goes to Holmes, for helping me organize things. Basically, I just sent out a big "get off your asses and come out tonight" email to everyone in our circle of friends who might have been in NY that night, and then Holmes took it from there.
We got started pretty late. After meeting at a bar (Sophie's) at 11:00, we made our way over to Sing Sing to get a room. There was supposedly an hour wait, but that hour was quickly flirted down to about 10 minutes. Awesome.
Observations on Sing Sing:
1) The room we had was always either 55 degrees, or rapidly heating up to about 80 degrees. People were basically donning and doffing their coats every 20 minutes or so.
2) We had the lights off, so a lot of people kept looking in our window to see if we were with their group. I would have liked to have assembled a karaoke room with just the strangers who accidentally opened our door, as they all looked like they'd be fun to karaoke with. There was Bald Guy. And Greasy Hair With A Hat Guy. Regular-Looking Guy.
3) The song selection was totally solid. I sang not one, but two Editors songs ("Bullets" and "An End Has A Start"). There were way more Smiths songs than I've seen before (and different ones than what I've found online, despite a crazy amount of searching). I remember "Come Down" by Bush being particularly fun to sing. I'd say their song selection was about on par with what I have at home. Maybe a little more sparse in the areas where I've focused my efforts (with the exceptions of Smiths/Moz songs, in which case it was a tie. I don't have "Big Mouth Strikes Again," but they didn't have "Suedehead." We both have "Every Day Is Like Sunday").
4) We rocked it until 4:00 AM.
5) Beverages ordered were Sake and Beer. No Soju. This place was closer to "Little Japan" than New York's sorry excuse for a "K-Town." I think I heard someone mention that there's also a Sing Sing in NY K-Town, but I'm not entirely sure.
6) Cost was about $350 total. But people drank a lot, and were in NY so I'd say that a pretty good deal.
7) Early on, there were some technical difficulties with the microphones. Also, in general, the acoustics were really bad. I'm pretty sure it was a combination of a bad echo on the vocals, and having the music turned too low in contrast to the mic. People sounded better if they held the mic about 6" away, but of course in the heat of the moment, at least one person would often forgot to do that, and force a loudness competition with the other person, or just overwhelm them entirely. Perhaps as a result of this the event ended up being more about "power" than "precision," which is usually more fun anyway.
8) For queuing etiquette, it was pretty much open season. People would put whatever songs they wanted in the queue and just sing thing as they came up. The queue also stayed fairly short, which is always nice.
9) I had a great time. Thanks, NY friends!
The venue was called "Sing Sing," and was located between 5th Street and 6th Street on Avenue A. That's easily within walking distance from my sister's new (probably permanent, for at least a while) residence in the East Village. After a week in NY with relatively tame nightlife, consisting mostly of small gatherings of friends from HS and/or college, interspersed with quiet dinners with my sister and her boyfriend, I was ready for something a little bigger. Much thanks goes to Holmes, for helping me organize things. Basically, I just sent out a big "get off your asses and come out tonight" email to everyone in our circle of friends who might have been in NY that night, and then Holmes took it from there.
We got started pretty late. After meeting at a bar (Sophie's) at 11:00, we made our way over to Sing Sing to get a room. There was supposedly an hour wait, but that hour was quickly flirted down to about 10 minutes. Awesome.
Observations on Sing Sing:
1) The room we had was always either 55 degrees, or rapidly heating up to about 80 degrees. People were basically donning and doffing their coats every 20 minutes or so.
2) We had the lights off, so a lot of people kept looking in our window to see if we were with their group. I would have liked to have assembled a karaoke room with just the strangers who accidentally opened our door, as they all looked like they'd be fun to karaoke with. There was Bald Guy. And Greasy Hair With A Hat Guy. Regular-Looking Guy.
3) The song selection was totally solid. I sang not one, but two Editors songs ("Bullets" and "An End Has A Start"). There were way more Smiths songs than I've seen before (and different ones than what I've found online, despite a crazy amount of searching). I remember "Come Down" by Bush being particularly fun to sing. I'd say their song selection was about on par with what I have at home. Maybe a little more sparse in the areas where I've focused my efforts (with the exceptions of Smiths/Moz songs, in which case it was a tie. I don't have "Big Mouth Strikes Again," but they didn't have "Suedehead." We both have "Every Day Is Like Sunday").
4) We rocked it until 4:00 AM.
5) Beverages ordered were Sake and Beer. No Soju. This place was closer to "Little Japan" than New York's sorry excuse for a "K-Town." I think I heard someone mention that there's also a Sing Sing in NY K-Town, but I'm not entirely sure.
6) Cost was about $350 total. But people drank a lot, and were in NY so I'd say that a pretty good deal.
7) Early on, there were some technical difficulties with the microphones. Also, in general, the acoustics were really bad. I'm pretty sure it was a combination of a bad echo on the vocals, and having the music turned too low in contrast to the mic. People sounded better if they held the mic about 6" away, but of course in the heat of the moment, at least one person would often forgot to do that, and force a loudness competition with the other person, or just overwhelm them entirely. Perhaps as a result of this the event ended up being more about "power" than "precision," which is usually more fun anyway.
8) For queuing etiquette, it was pretty much open season. People would put whatever songs they wanted in the queue and just sing thing as they came up. The queue also stayed fairly short, which is always nice.
9) I had a great time. Thanks, NY friends!
posted by Joneseee at 9:31 PM
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