I’m Sure I’ll Regret This

But I’m now on Twitter. I’ll try not to drop it after two weeks or so.

Karaoke Wishlist: February 2009

(Karaoke Wishlist is a semi-regular collection of old and new songs that are maddeningly hard to find at karaoke bars)

1) The Gaslight Anthem, “The ‘59 Sound” Put the chicken fingers down, and turn the TV all the way up, etc.

2) Billy Joel, “While the Night is Still Young” Last night, while sitting in a back room at Sing Sing, I scanned the bar’s Billy Joel songlist, looking in vain for this maudlin 1985 ballad. Joel is easily one of the best-represented sing-along artists of all time, and his karaoke oeuvre even includes such lesser hits “That’s Not Her Style,” a cadence-averse “ode” to Christie Brinkley in which Joel tells the entire world that, despite what you’ve heard, his wife does not go around screwing airplane pilots. And yet “Night” is nowhere to be found; in fact, of the 21 songs compiled on 1985’s Greatest Hits Volume I & II, it’s the only one not commonly found at karaoke bars, which is kind of a shame: Granted, it’s no “Allentown,” but it does have a highly karaokeable “woah-oh-oh-oh” outro, and the life-at-the-crossroads lyrics are especially bittersweet, given Joel’s perpetual hangdoggedness of the last few years. That said, the original video–with its sharks, stevedores, and After Hours yuppie crises–is absolutely bananas.

3) Kirsty MacColl, “They Don’t Know” The swooniest love song of all time (and not to be confused with this). Honestly, I’d even take the Tracy Ullman version at this point.

4) Los Campesinos!, “Death to Los Campesinos!” While researching Don’t Stop Believin’, I visited the North Carolina headquarters of Sound Choice, a 24-year-old karaoke company that’s recorded nearly 18,000 vocal-free backing tracks. One of the Sound Choice employees told me that duets are extremely valuable to the karaoke industry, as people tend to feel more comfortable when singing along with others. By that criteria, the multi-part “Death to Los Campesinos!” could be the penultimate karaoke number: The band’s dueling vocalists fight for air and airtime, often nudging one another aside altogether. Plus, I’d love to see a line like “I’ll be ctrl-alt-deleting your face with no reservations” scroll across a TV screen.

5) Prince, “Erotic City” By far the finest of Prince’s 2,714 mid-’80s b-sides.

Mouths of Decadence

While attending a Chicago Cubs fantasy-camp event in Mesa, Arizona, Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder performed three karaoke songs, including U2’s “Where the Streets Have No Name.” The clip’s highlight is at the very beginning, when somebody in the crowd yells “I’m goin’ hungry!”—a reference to one of the best karaoke songs of all time (see page 25). [Video via I Am Fuel, You Are Friends]

Re-evaluating the Bush Era

The Glycerine Medley

A Don’t Stop Believin’ reader named Kevin, Karaoke Host to the Stars sent along the above clip, in which he sets out to prove that just about every karaoke song in the world can be performed using the opening guitar riff from Bush’s hit “Glycerine.” He makes a convincing argument, though it makes me wonder: Why do I love just about every song included in the medley, and yet hate the ’90s faux-grunge ballad that seemingly ties them all together? Is it because Gavin Rossdale actually had the jangles (that’s British for cajones) to include a line like “When we rise/It’s like Strawberry Fields”? Yes, I think that may be it.

Interview Round-Up

I spent much of January doing radio interviews to promote the book, and even though I’m not crazy about my speaking voice—I always sound a bit like the Sleepytime Tea bear, if his teacup was filled with ketamine—they all went pretty well, save for the occasional shock-jock appearance. I’ve archived a few of them below, not because I want to show off, but because the hosts and call-in listeners often had some interesting insights and anecdotes regarding their own karaoke obsessions and/or fears:

Soundcheck, WNYC (2/4/09)
On Point, WBUR (1/30/09)
Word of Mouth, NHPR (1/29/09)
Mr. Media, BlogTalkRadio (1/26/09)

I’ll add more as I find them.

Soundcheck

I’ll be on WNYC’s excellent Soundcheck program this afternoon, talking about the U.S. economy, the search for Lithium in Bolivia, and Thailand’s problematic human-rights record. Or maybe I’ll just talk about karaoke. You can listen in at 2 p.m. EST on 93.9 in NYC, or you can stream it online.