NY I Lose You, But You're Bringing Me Down

I moved to NY back in October and have yet to do karaoke here. Granted, I had pretty bad bronchitis for about a month.

I guess the title "Lose Yourself Awareness" is starting to age... What is Eminem even doing these days? Is he a dad or something? Brittany Murphy is dead.

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!

Das Karaoke

Karaokied in Berlin last night. Basically, I just showed up at Knaack for something to do (and to scout it out for The Hold Steady concert next Saturday). To give you a sense of what I was up against, check out this YouTube video. I guess Knaack has this karaoke show set up at least a few times a week in their upstairs room, called "Dizzy Lounge." If you follow the link, you'll find the songlist, amidst a bunch of German.

Actually, I think pretty much everyone who sang was way better than the girls in that video. There were a few people who were pretty amazing, especially given that they were all German. When I first arrived, they were actually finishing up some sort of contest that they hold there occasionally. The people in the contest all hung around afterward and kept singing, so that may have pushed the skill level up a bit.

The first song I sang was "Mr. Brightside" by The Killers. I got at least one beer bottle raised as a gesture of approval, and I think it generally went over pretty well. I think I also had a sort of fish-out-of-water novelty factor going for me. Maybe like an hour or so later, I sang "Tonight, Tonight" by The Smashing Pumpkins. This was slightly problematic, as they had what I will generously refer to as "The German Version" of the song on karaoke. I think this ended up being both good and bad. It was bad because a) the lyrics were wiping about one measure too slow, and b) the lyrics were very obviously transcribed by a German person, as they were about 30 degrees off from the real lyrics. Anyway, I think this sort of worked out okay, because after having been very obviously tripped up by the mistakes in the first half of the song, I went off-book for the second half and managed to pull it out, which the elite group of German karaoke singers congregated near the stage especially appreciated. By German karaoke standards, it's way more acceptable to scratch a bit on the lyrics anyway, so the first half was still probably above par.

Some songs that the Germans sang: Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody, Nirvana - Heart Shaped Box, Falco - Jeanny, Metallica - Enter Sandman, Metallica - Nothing Else Matters (same Metallica guy), Backstreet Boys - Incomplete (same Metallica guy), Luniz - I Got 5 On It, Alanis Morissette - Bitch, Evanescence (feat. Paul McCoy) - Bring Me to Life (We've really got to work this one into our repertoire. Also, it's worth noting that some German guy spontaneously jumped up on stage and did a really good Paul McCoy, complete with lean-back-and-shout movements reminiscent of the video), ABBA - Thank You For The Music, Limp Bizkit - Take a Look Around, Wham - Wake Me Up Before You Go Go, Suzanne Vega - Luka, The Eagles - Hotel California, Pink Floyd - Another Brick In The Wall, No Doubt - Don't Speak, Kiki Dee & Elton John - Don't Go Breaking My Heart (I had a little run-in with the girl from the duo that sang this song, as she needed a pen and couldn't understand what I was saying when I told here that there was a pen on the table around the corner), Johnny Cash - A Boy Named Sue (this was done by the KJ), Johnny Cash - Folsom Prison Blues (this was done by a dude with a Johnny Cash t-shirt), Green Day - Boulevard Of Broken Dreams, Dire Straits - Sultans of Swing (KJ), Mungo Jerry - In The Summertime, Cranberries - Zombie, Cat Stevens - Father And Son.

Wow, that's a much more complete list than what I was planning to post. Anyway, that should give you a sense of what types of songs Germans sing. I.e., exactly the same songs we sing, plus Falco. Though I will say that the song list has the same problem my original Sunfly list had back in the day, where there will be a relatively unknown song by an artist, but not the artist's big hit. While it's tempting to assume it's because Germans have different taste, I think it's a much safer bet to just assume that the KJ only has songs from a specific set of karaoke disks. And since a certain number of those disks were presumably purchased for the express purpose of obtaining songs by Falco, you can see where some odd titles might have crept in.

Most problematicly sparse artist -- Radiohead. All they have is Street Spirit.

Cigarettes MAY Cause Cancer of the Ear

So, last night at New Year's, some serious effort was put forth to karaoke with a live band. I guess the technical term for this is "jamming." But I feel like this still qualifies as relevant to this blog, provided that the jamming session does not cross that bar of quality differentiating jamming from "performing" or "practicing." I think it's also especially relevant to LYA in this case because the musicians all knew way more chords to songs than the singers knew lyrics to songs, making it all the more karaoke-esque.

Now that I've justified posting to LYA for the first time in months, allow me to present the topic of this post: the hazards of cigarettes. In this case, cigarillos, actually. And ambient smoke, more generally. (For those who aren't somehow precognizant of terms I invent for things on the fly, "ambient smoke" is differentiated from second-hand smoke by its dispersion and accumulation, which allows it to occupy an entire building with essentially uniform thickness and no identifiable source. It is the reason why I can walk into a certain building for a brief five-minute visit, and emerge smelling of smoke, despite the building having been mostly empty for several hours, and not containing any active smokers.)

Now that definitions are in order, let me arrive at my anecdote, to be followed immediately by my public service announcement. The anecdote is that just minutes before starting to sing (in fact, on my way down to the singing room), I lit up a little cigarillo with visions of giving myself a more raspy, sultry voice, and found, much to my dismay, that the cigarillo had debilitated my lungs to the point that I could not even sing "Boulevard of Broken Dreams." Everyone has their songs that are easy or hard for them. Boulevard is generally one of the easiest for me to do, in terms of both range and inflection. I can't speak to the quality of my performances (if they are amazing, I prefer to remain humble, and if they are horrific, I prefer to maintain the illusion that they might be amazing). But as far as effort goes, it is generally low. Yet, last night I couldn't get past the first "road" without having at least six notes go sour.

It's unfair, though, to attribute all of the vocal wickedness to a single cigarillo. Rather, I imagine that what happened was a slow marinating process, in which my lungs were seasoned with 100 years' worth of ambient smoke, then flash-fried in the fumes of the cigarillo. And it's not unthinkable that a few pieces of ash from the fireplace may have snuck into my lungs as garnish.

Public Service Announcement:
Smoke temporarily destroyed my singing ability and I can barely speak this morning, but the voice of my friend who chain smokes was not affected at all. Instead, he just sounds sort of weird all the time.

Chun's Party

Chun's Party was lots of fun. Lessons learned, as discussed on the car ride home:

1) By the end of the night, the queue is sometimes up to an hour long.
2) Due to the above, many songs end up needing to be skipped because the requests were made by people who already left.
3) Once the skipping of songs starts, it is difficult not to accidentally skip songs that people still want to sing.
4) Due to inconsistent pacing of song requests, sometimes the same person (often me) will end up singing several songs almost or literally back to back.
5) If Chess and his girlfriend have a baby, people will pay good money to come hear it cry.
6) If a group of new people you don't recognize comes into your karaoke box and immediately starts singing a song, they probably don't belong in your karaoke box.
7) I can't sing the song "I'm Not Okay (I Promise)" by My Chemical Romance.

Possible solutions to the first 4 problems:
1) For larger events, we might consider using our own queuing system, where a Karaoke Master (or "KM") keeps a list of songs to be sung, and has names associated with the list, so that the order can be restructured to fit the mood and songs can be skipped when people are missing.
2) For smaller events, we could adopt the strategy of non-ownership, whereby songs are not necessarily sung by the person who queued them. This allows not only for the order of singers to flow more naturally, but also for the queue to remain reasonably short, since you don't have to put songs into it to ensure you have a chance to sing.
3) Though it has its own drawbacks, karaoke at my house does not suffer from most of these problems.

Soju have fun last night?

I really don't know why we didn't think of it before. I think adding soju to the home karaoke party really helped take things to a whole new level. And now all we need is a young Korean fellow to pop his head in occasionally and look at us like we don't really belong in my living room. Then the experience will be complete.

A thing that I've seen people do in other blogs is give "ups" to people who helped them out somehow. So, major "ups" to Chun for directing us to the K-town Galleria for late-night soju purchases, all the way from Pitchfork fest. And "ups" to Yank for having the following encounter at a liquor store in K-town:

Korean store clerk: Can I help you?
Yank: Hi, yes. Do you have any soju?
Korean store clerk: Any what? I don't think so.
Yank: Soju?
Korean store clerk: What?
Yank: Soju.
Korean store clerk: OH!!! SOJU!!! You like soju!?!
Korean policeman: Come with me! Let me show you where the soju is kept!
Korean store clerk: SOJU!!!

And here is the generic recipe I found at http://daisylee.blogspot.com/2004_06_13_daisylee_archive.html for making soju cocktails:

1 part soju, 1 part flavor, 1 part sparkly. Here, flavor is whatever the juice is that you're using (or yogurt or whatever). And "sparkly" is like sprite or fanta or something (depending on the flavor). And in some cases, you are supposed to add a little bit of simple syrup (water + as much sugar as you can get to dissolve in boiling water -- roughly equal parts water and sugar).

A variant I saw on wikipedia is also:

1 part soju, 2 parts sparkly, and a packet of something (like lemonade powder). In this case, 1 of the parts of sparkly is being combined with the powder to make the flavor.

Another interesting thing to know about soju is that there is "distilled" soju and "diluted" soju. Diluted soju is basically just ethanol with some stuff added. Distilled is more like other liquors, coming from rice and wheat and stuff. Supposedly, the fact that soju is often just diluted ethanol is the reason why it's is so cheap.

And if you are drinking soju in the presence of a senior, you are supposed to turn your head away, so that they can't see you drink it. Oh, and you shouldn't fill your own glass -- pretty sure I broke that one about 40 times last night.

Also a hit: Hite.
Not as good as Hite, I thought: OB
Both beers were improved though, by being served in the "pitcher" sized portions.

Not screwing around

So, I got pretty tired of screwing around with IRC. I just don't have time for it. It's still great for getting obscure songs, but it's not an efficient way to get large collections of songs, which is what I'm most interested in. I'm currently downloading about 22 gigs of karaoke songs from bitcomet. 12 gigs are for the first 242 sunfly hits disks (most of which I already have, but it will be good to get a solidified archive) and 10 gigs of which are Sound Choice songs (which I don't have very many of). This should help the balance the collection with songs that are a little more American.

I also downloaded some new karaoke hosting software. Haven't tried it out yet, though.

On the way to work this morning, I sang "Wake Me Up When September Ends" to myself at least 4 times. I think I need my fix.