Karaoke with Erk, part 1

Wikipedia states that karaoke translates roughly into English as "empty orchestra" but to me, the stereotype seems to be "drunken Japanese businessman trying to sing."


My earliest memory of karaoke was in the 1980's singing to George Michael's song "Faith" at Penrith Show at a 2KA outside broadcast with Brian Sanders. Now to fast forward a few years, 2KA is now 96.1 The Edge broadcasting out of North Ryde, Brian is the traffic reporter for "The Shebang" on Triple M under the handle of "Sando" (the bloke could be the subject of another blog!) and karaoke is relatively main stream.


While I was in a choir in primary school, most of my singing now is restricted to the car, while driving a train or at a mate's place on Singstar, sometimes I find myself interested in a karaoke night at a local pub or club. Singstar is really good and we have had various interesting nights recently singing with it, mostly without the use of alcohol. The last time I did karaoke in public was a couple of years ago at the Paceway from memory.


A couple of weekends ago, I decided to go out to dinner to the Penrith Hotel with Boi, Ben, Leigh & Amanda. While we were eating, a karaoke night was starting up so we decided to stay and have a look and listen. Sometimes you hear really good people singing and on this occasion, there was a couple of ladies who were REALLY good. One of them I think might work at the servo close to Erk HQ but I haven't asked her yet. The guys were less good but enjoyable.


One guy was singing that "fly away" song that features as the theme song of "Airline" or "Airport" on Foxtel and I thought of that show and halfway through the song, the guy stopped as the song got too fast for him. I joked that he was taken away by Customs.


We had a look at the huge song list and some of the songs had um, interesting titles. When we'd spot one, a person would have a laugh and show the song around. There were literally hundreds of songs but I can't remember some of the funny ones now.


The highlight though was probably the way Leigh and I sung. Normally of course, you sing all the words on the screen. Also, sometimes I would sing a harmony that I know is in a song but not on the screen. I have a bad habit of doing that in Singstar as well.


But Leigh and I took karaoke to a scary new level. Instead of singing just the words, we'd sing whatever symbols and characters were on the screen as well. Depending on the song and the age of the song, the graphics varied and some of the graphics looked like they were done on a Commodore 64 so sometimes the dividers etc were either stars or boxes.



So an example might be


What's the story, morning glory?


*************************

Oasis were once a good band
But what have they done lately?
No one knows and no one cares
This is an example only..........


So Leigh and I would sing the lot - boxes, stars, dots and the like. So to use the above example, here's how Leigh and I would sing it........


What's the story comma morning glory question mark


star star star star star star star star star star star star star star star star

Oasis were once a good band
But what have they done lately question mark
No one knows and no one cares
This is an example only dot dot dot dot dot dot dot dot dot dot


And there will be a repeat on the 25th as we return for my birthday.


It was funny, the host said that there was a karaoke bus coming in half an hour so we better get our requests in now. 3 hours later he mentioned the bus again so we called him on it and I suggested that it is running on CityRail time (OK, for once I can do a joke that I often have directed at me!).


It was an interesting night and one that will be repeated..............


oops, repeated dot dot dot dot dot dot dot dot