DEDICATION
For my sisters Ann, Tracey, and Caroline
EPIGRAPH
We make up what we can’t hear
Then we sing all night.
Sonic Youth
CONTENTS
DEDICATION
EPIGRAPH
ONE: TOTAL ECLIPSE OF THE HEART
TWO: MAMA TRIED
THREE: SING YOUR LIFE
FOUR: WORK IT
FIVE: LIVIN’ THING
SIX: LIVIN’ ON A PRAYER
SEVEN: CRAZY IN LOVE
EIGHT: REBEL YELL
NINE: 99 LUFTBALLONS
TEN: CHURCH OF THE POISON MIND
ELEVEN: HEARTBREAK HOTEL
TWELVE: BOLD THADY QUILL
THIRTEEN: ROCK & ROLL FANTASY
FOURTEEN: HOT LEGS
FIFTEEN: SHE LOVES YOU
SIXTEEN: DEBASER
SEVENTEEN: DREAMING OF ME
EIGHTEEN: STOP DRAGGIN’ MY HEART AROUND
NINETEEN: WOULDN’T IT BE NICE
TWENTY: SOME OTHER TIME
TWENTY-ONE: NEW YORK, NEW YORK
TWENTY-TWO: FOREVER IN BLUE JEANS
TWENTY-THREE: LET ME ENTERTAIN YOU
TWENTY-FOUR: KNOWING ME, KNOWING YOU
TWENTY-FIVE: THE SPIRIT OF RADIO
TWENTY-SIX: ZIGGY STARDUST
TWENTY-SEVEN: ABOUT A GIRL
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALSO BY ROB SHEFFIELD
COPYRIGHT
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
ONE
8:04 p.m.:
Total Eclipse of the Heart
1
Once upon a time I was falling apart. Now I’m always falling in love.
By “now” I mean Saturday night, in one of the sleazy karaoke bars where I always seem to wind up. It’s me and my wife, somewhere in New York City. We’re here to sing the night away. It’s just after eight, early enough to beat the midnight crowds, too late to talk ourselves out of what lies ahead. We’re not going home before we get a few songs in. And we’re not getting up on time tomorrow. Sometimes we drag some innocent bystanders along. Tonight it’s just us.
Either way, we always come here for a fix of that transcendent experience we can only get from singing. The electric frazzle in the voices, the crackle of the microphones, the smell of sweat, mildew, vodka, and pheromones—the full karaoke experience. Tonight we are setting out to belt some of our favorite songs. We’ll do songs we’ve never tried before. We’ll take on duets we haven’t sung together. And we’ll do the standards we always have to do. But when you take that karaoke microphone in your hand, you don’t know what kind of adventure you’re stepping into. So you just have to surrender and let the song take over. You start to sing karaoke, and some kind of psychic heart-switch flips. If you’re lucky, and the beer doesn’t run out, it’s more than just a night of debauchery. It’s a spiritual quest.
This spiritual quest, like so many spiritual quests, involves Bonnie Tyler.
2
Welcome to Sing Sing, our beloved karaoke den on Avenue A. Ally and I cherish this spot because it has everything you want in a karaoke place: great songbook, private rooms, surly bartenders, cheap drinks. Every time we head over to Sing Sing, I get that thrill of anticipation as we pad down Avenue A. As soon as I see that red awning over the door, even from a few blocks away, the adrenaline starts to flow. The awning has the classic yin-and-yang symbol of the Tao. Except it’s at the center of a microphone.
From the sidewalk outside, Sing Sing looks like any other karaoke bar. There’s always a picture of a microphone outside. There’s a door guy checking drivers’ licenses, probably wishing he could be the door guy somewhere swankier, maybe a club where they have a velvet rope and a strict no-Journey policy. Inside, it’s dim fluorescent lights and red walls. The customers perch on their bar stools, just a few notes away from crashing to the floor. There’s usually a bartender. And there are always songs. That’s why we’re here.
I love the crowd at Sing Sing. It’s part of the show. You can always hear rockers and rappers and disco cowgirls and smoothed-out crooners. Despite the early hour, there’s already a bachelorette party full of blitzed bridesmaids teetering on their heels, ready to start splashing their Disaronno-and-Sprite on everyone. There are some lurkers in the shadows, too wasted to remember whose birthday they came here to celebrate. Maybe none of us can sing on key, but nobody minds. We’re not here to judge, right? Nobody’s here because they’re a great singer. We came because we want to be stars for a night.
Some places have a stage; other places you sing at the bar or grab a table. One of the reasons we love Sing Sing is they have the private rooms, which is definitely the way we want to go tonight. If you get there soon after 8 p.m., you can usually score one, but by ten, you’ll get stuck on the waiting list.
Karaoke has lots of rituals. The first, naturally, is showing up. The second: Ally and I check in at the front desk to get our room. It’s eight dollars an hour per person for the room, or two dollars per song if you sit at the bar. But it’s cheaper to rent the room, which means you stay later and sing more. You can sign up for a specified time, or you can sing until the bartenders throw you out at closing time. I can already tell tonight is going to be the second kind. But hey—it’s Saturday night, so I guess that makes it all right.
The karaoke host leads us down the hall. I get that familiar tingle as we head downstairs, across the black and white tiles, under the flickering bulbs associated with prison movies or Ministry videos. Sing Sing has a few dozen rooms in the basement—it’s a labyrinth down there. Ally and I have sung in every one of those rooms by now. The host turns on the karaoke machine and makes sure the remote control works. The TV screen has the lyrics and the goofy karaoke videos. There’s also a buzzer on the wall we can press to order more drinks.
This room was obviously decorated by a color-blind stripper in 1982. It’s halfway between “suburban rec room” and “motel meth lab.” The couch has been jumped on by so many wasted girls over the years, you know it’s indestructible. And the day it gets vacuumed will be the day Buddy Holly shows up to sing “Peggy Sue” for you in person. If you’re Catholic, this room might remind you of a confessional. But no, the rooms are never pretty. Why should they be? The owners know why you keep coming back here, and it’s not the décor. It’s that raw, primal need.
There’s never a clock, never a window. It’s just like a casino where they want to keep the suckers playing as long as possible. After a few songs, you’ll have no idea how long you’ve been singing, or how much longer you can last. If you’ve ordered a few rounds, you can use the empties to measure how long you’ve been there.
Down in the karaoke room, the first order of business is to grab yourself a songbook. They’re fat binders, the size of cinder blocks. Some of the books might be soggy from the previous occupants’ spilled cocktails. Others might smell funkier than the couch. The pages are laminated, which might have to do with the amount of human bodily fluids that get splattered on them. But I’ve flipped through every page of this book with love and reverence. For some of our favorite tunes, we don’t even have to look up the number. “Ziggy Stardust,” that’s 117718. (The version without the video. It’s always better without the video.) Those magic numbers are fried onto my brain. I mean, I couldn’t tell you my blood pressure right now, but I can tell you my favorite Aaliyah song is 119283.
Ally and I already know our first song tonight. She just takes the remote and punches in 117498. That’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” Everybody has their warm-up song, the
ir go-to jam, the one that gets the blood pumping. This one is ours. For all karaoke freaks around the nation, “Total Eclipse of the Heart” is one of those sacred anthems. It’s the kind of song that announces, “Dearly beloved, we have so totally gathered here today.” It’s the entrance antiphon of the ceremony.
But for Ally and me, it’s the first duet we ever sang, ten years ago, right after we met. Our first karaoke date was a Lower East Side loft party. (Certain friends of mine still remember this as “liquid mescaline night.”) The place was thick with clubsters and models and writers, plus a couple of karaoke hosts, Sid and Buddy, dressed up as their favorite dead rock stars. Ally and I made our debut with “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” The piano intro began and we took up our mikes. Ally took the hard part, i.e., the half of the song that has several million words crammed in there. Me, I took the easy part. I began to sing the mantra: “Turn around.”
It’s funny—ten years ago, this song was just another eighties oldie to me. I probably heard it all the time, yet never noticed it. I figured I already knew it. But I had never sung it with this woman. And after that, it was a whole new song. Turn around. So I hear it now and it reminds me of this woman I love. It’s just one of the many insane adventures we stumbled into together. Turn around. No matter how many times I hear it, the song will always flood me with memories of all the times we’ve sung it. Next time I hear it, tonight might be one of those memories. Turn around.
The song always starts the same way. Those same four piano notes, over and over. But I can already tell this is just the first shot of a marathon epic karaoke quest. I don’t care how late we have to stay to get our fix. We will torch one great song after another, until they pull the plug and kill the lights and beg us to go home. Turn around.
One long night of karaoke, looping the clock around. And forever’s gonna start tonight.
3
My voice has never actually killed anyone. I am positive of that.
But yeah, did I mention I can’t sing? I can’t. It’s bad. I have loved music all my life, and as they say, you always hurt the one you love. So I have spent my whole life trying to sing, while other people try to escape. I have been described variously as a “hard trier,” a “good sport,” and a “vocal Chernobyl.” But oh, it’s bad. And hence my karaoke problem. I am hopelessly obsessed with karaoke because it lets me do the one thing I’ve craved every minute of my life. It lets me sing.
It’s not like I haven’t tried before. I’ve always been an obsessive pop fan. I write for Rolling Stone, so I blast music all day, every day, constantly on the prowl for my next favorite song. But I never had the talent to sing or play an instrument. Here’s a complete list of my credentials as a singer: A kindhearted music teacher let me sing baritone in the high school chorus. I am fantastic at remembering the lyrics to every song. I rarely gush blood from the mouth. I have both of my lungs. And let me emphasize: My voice has never killed anybody.
But that’s it for my credentials. Tacos will grow on Christmas trees before I learn to carry a tune. Fortunately, it doesn’t matter. In karaoke, talent means nada; enthusiasm is everything. What I lack in talent, I make up for in passion. Hence my karaoke problem.
If you’re someone like me, a fan who loves music but could never hack it as a musician, karaoke changes everything. It unlocks the door to center stage. It’s a safe and welcoming place where anyone can join in the music. So even if you never summoned the courage or skill to cross that line from fan to participant, karaoke is something anybody can do. Your only limits are emotional. Indeed, it forces you to keep upping your emotional ante, as you voice your innermost feelings out loud. And that’s the weirdest thing about karaoke—sometimes you can feel like you’re experiencing some of the most honest, most intimate moments of your life, while butchering a Hall & Oates song at 2 a.m. in a room full of strangers.
That intimacy is what makes it such an addictive vice. With karaoke you’re really putting yourself out there. People are going to watch you and stare. But the whole culture around karaoke creates a temporary environment of total acceptance. When we do karaoke, we sing along with songs we hate. We cheer for the weirdos across the room. We high-five strangers. You dim the lights, crank the volume, and you can get away with anything.
Over the years, I’ve gotten totally obsessed. Like I said, I have a karaoke problem. But admitting the fact that you have a problem is the first step toward making it an even bigger problem.
4
I got obsessed with karaoke around the time I got obsessed with Ally. It’s a fact: Getting obsessed with a girl is a good way of getting obsessed with anything.
For us, karaoke is one of our shared passions, and it’s one of the ways we communicate. Ally is an astrophysicist and a glam rocker, so I always keep learning new things about the universe from her. And even after years of marriage, I still find out strange new things about this girl when we sing together. Every time we get our microphone cords tangled up, I get a little more obsessed with her.
I got into karaoke at a time when I felt like my life was a used firecracker. I was only in my early thirties, but I figured it was all too late for me. I was a miserable widower with no idea how to muddle on. The happy chapter of my life was over, and the world had run out of surprises. But it turned out my life was just beginning. I fell in love, I got married, I found a new life and a new home. Karaoke was just one of those surprises. But for me, it turned out to be a way of finding my voice. Something about it opened up doors for me emotionally. For me, it was part of coming back to life.
Right now, here in the basement of Sing Sing, Ally and I are in for the night. We’re punching in the numbers and loading up the machine for hours to come. We don’t know where the songs will lead us, what kinds of memories or sensations they’re going to trigger. But we will clutch the mike and feel the surge. If friends show up to join us here, all the better. That just means more songs. We’ll blast each other with requests and duets until they kick us out at 4 a.m. Then it’s good-night hugs and cabs. There will be friends dropped off until it’s back to just Ally and me. As soon as we get home, we’ll fix some toast with cheddar on it, before we fall asleep to dream of rock & roll.
Is this thing on? Good. Because I am. We’re here to sing. Every now and then we come together. Every now and then I fall apart.
TWO
8:09 p.m.:
Mama Tried
Yucca Valley, California: the dead of winter, on Route 62, out in the Mojave Desert, under the stars. The parking lot of a barn-size roadhouse called the Joshua Tree Saloon. The sign outside proclaims, “Wednesday Karaoke Night.”
We’re a couple of strangers in town, but we give it a try. A booth, a pitcher of beer, a plate of fries. It’s full of mostly cowboys, bikers, local ladies, nobody under thirty. It’s hard to know who’s here for the tunes, and who’s here just because it’s the local watering hole.
The stage has a mirror ball, and a giant clown face overhead: We’re talking full-on serial-killer clown face. The karaoke DJ is a friendly young guy who resembles Billy Ray Cyrus back in the “Achy Breaky Heart” days, with muscles, a flowing mullet, a cowboy hat, and a salmon tank top. His DJ rig has a discreet microphone for him, so he can cover the vocals in case the singer freezes or loses her voice. The lady who sings “Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under?” starts giggling hysterically with fear, so he turns her volume down and takes the song himself. You get the sense he’s handled this before.
There’s a long line of folks waiting to sing, mostly the ladies. They do “Chain of Fools” and “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” and “Hell on Heels.” A silver fox named Smitty whose cowboy hat is older than I am does a lightning-fast country chestnut I’ve never heard, “The Auctioneer” by Leroy Van Dyke. A fiftyish guy who gives off that preacher vibe does a somber version of “Live Like You’re Dyin’.” “Good evening, Joshua Tree,” he says. “I think it’s about time for you, time for all of us, to finally learn to live . . . like you’re dyin’!�
� A surly gent named Grant follows that with “Lay Lady Lay.”
The song I write on my slip is “Mama Tried,” the country classic by Merle Haggard. Great karaoke pick: easy, short, fast, to the point, rousing chorus. But it’s also kind of a sacred song, so I’m nervous not to screw it up. You want the regulars to like you, to know you respect their house rules. My slip’s been in the pile for a while when the DJ comes over to get my initial, since there’s already a Rob here tonight. Another Rob? That makes me sweat a little. So I’m Rob S. now, and Ally’s decided she’s not going near the stage, since one of the older women just did this mega-hostile Miranda Lambert song about slapping the crap out of sassy young ladies who come sniffing around your man.
The table right in front of the stage is six cowboy hats, six beards, Waylon and Willie and Paycheck songs. These guys are the only hell their mamas ever raised. But the really tough patch of the crowd seems to be the fifty-something mamas, who are out for blood. They brought their own karaoke CDs, which means 1) they rehearsed all week, 2) they don’t trust the DJ to play a version that meets their standards, and 3) he knows enough to take their orders. It’s a heavy local scene. You remember in Dogtown and Z-Boys when the skater punks talk about their “Locals Only” surf spot? Where if you try to invade the waves, they come up to you right on the beach and hand you the carburetor out of your car? It felt like that.
When the DJ calls Rob S., I feel a sudden pang of I-hope-they-like-me tingles. I picked this song because the saloon reminded me of all those years I lived in Virginia, my Blue Ridge Mountain days. That’s where I first heard this song, learned to love it, learned what it meant. It reminds me of friends and family. I spent years learning to speak the language in the South. On the road, no matter where I go, I always seem to slip into this temporary accent I think of as “travel Southern.” The accent that says, “I’m a mellow Virginia boy, not one of those uptight out-of-towners. I have a burning desire to get along and be accommodating. I am not hassling you about how long this rental-car transaction is taking, honest. I am absolutely not from Boston.”
Turn Around Bright Eyes: The Rituals of Love and Karaoke Page 1
