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January 12^th, 2010

I went to a Karaoke party last night. I had a blast.

I love Karaoke, but I haven’t been for a while.  The pub I know that hosts it regularly caters to a much younger crowd, most of whom do not have to get up in the morning to take their kids to school.  So, they usually start at about 11 and go till  4 or 5 in the morning.

But, last night I decided to go for it and I’m glad I did.  I love Karaoke.  I am not a good singer, by any stretch of the imagination, but there are always some people who are worse, so I don’t feel bad.  There are also some people who are much, much better, so it can be  an exceptional evening for musical entertainment.  Win-win.

There wasn’t as large a crowd as I expected, (maybe because of the snow – the most they’ve had in Prague for 17 years) but that’s O.K.  When there is a large crowd, you get the chance to really play rock star and it is intensely exciting – you will never see me jumping from a bridge with a cord around my ankles, but standing on stage and being watched by hundreds of people really gets the old adrenalin pumping.  When the crowd is smaller, you get to get up and sing more songs, and the chances of meeting and talking to new people is actually better. So, win-win.

First I sang “Under the Boardwalk.”  I love the song, it’s poetic and it’s romantic.  It’s also a lot harder to sing than I thought it would be.

Then, they did a thing called Karaoke Roulette, where you just get up to sing and the moderator chooses the song for you.  In my case, he did a fantastic job.  I sang “Who put the bop in the bop she bop she bop,” and “Yakety Yak.”  Two really fun songs and people got up and started dancing on the 2^nd one.  There’s no bigger compliment than that.

I suspect that he had me pegged more by era than anything else.  That’s O.K.  I wasn’t planning on singing any Kurt Cobain tunes in any event.

Last, I sang a duet with a friend to the old show tune “What a Swell Party This Is.”  I didn’t know it very well so we stumbled through it, but everybody applauded and it was a lot of fun.  Once again, win-win.