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By Scott Steepleton Country News - April 29, 1992 What's that? Dressing like Boy George and lip-synching "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me" passed you by? Well, then get down to Wilson's for the next wave of audience-as-entertainer fun - Karaoke, in which any one, young or old, can be a rock 'n' roll star. The technology behind Karaoke is simple: a machine plays the music to a song of your choice, only the vocals have been removed. With the help of a microphone and video monitors which display the lyrics, you suddenly become the lead vocalist on any of the hundreds of songs the Karaoke operator has in his or her collection. In the case of Doc and Nancy Thompson, owners of Cayucos Vidio and Gifts - who will again do Karaoke from 8:30 to ll:30pm at Wilson's, 2748 Spring St. on Thursday, May 14 - That's 500 songs. And you can choose from Country and Western, rock and roll and, as Rykia Roach and John Gallagher did last week, Sonny and Cher, for a rendition of "I Got You Babe." With most people comfortable singing only in the bathroom, and only to themselves, why would anyone get up in front of a roomful of total strangers And attempt to sing Karaoke, which, according to Doc's best research, means "orchestra, less one?" He said it's similar to thc follow-the-bouncing-ball sing-alongs of Mitch Miller a few decades ago. Nancy said: "It's a constantly changing thing. The peolpe are the show. It involves the normal person who' s not the stage person. I know, I'm one of them" Rykia Roach summed it up this way: "Nobody cares how bad you are.' That's an understatement. But, people who sing Karaoke don't bad-mouth each other, even when Free's "All Right Now" sounds like a Bob Dylan tune: no matter the quality of the performance, everyone sings Karaoke is cheered on. Nancy Thompson had not been a public singer and had not even seen the $10,000 Karaoke machine until the day last summer "when my husband ordered it and it was here." And from the moment she saw it, Nancy knew "I wasn't going to sing on it." |
Time has a way of changing people,
however, and seven months later, Nancy who said she's anything but a
night person hates to miss a night of Karaoke. She warms up the crowds
with Patsy Kline tunes, and on those occasions when a job cuts into her
day at the video store, Nancy lines up an employee to cover while she
goes out and helps Doc. At present, they take their machine to three venues, each with its own personality and style of music preferred by the participants. Anyone can sing Karaoke said Doc, who "can't carry a note in a bucket. But, I can do the real fast songs where I rough up my voice." Karaoke, he said, "is a lot of fear the first 30 seconds and a total humiliation." After that, however, it's nothing but fun, even for those like Lori Gallagher, who was about to sing Karaoke for the first time last Thursday night. " I love to sing and everyone who knows me knows I love to sing," she said. "This is supposed to be my debut" For her first shot at Karaoke, Gallagher chose a duet with Roach on Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam's "Head to Toe." Doc got the music ready, Nancy handed the women their microphones and before you can say care-ah-o-k, Gallagher and Roach have their 15 minutes of fame. Well, at least three minutes. The music blastes, lyrics crawl across the screen and Gallagher and Roach can be heard singing Ooh, baby, I think I love you from head to toe. When it was over, Gallagher smiled. Was she pleased with her performanace? We'll find out latter. Unlike other Karaoke operators, Doc and Nancy don't set up a microphone on stage and make people walk up to it to sing. Instead, they use cordless mikes, which they take to the singers. That way, Nancy said, they can sit down and sing or, they can stand in front of everyone, as was the case of Debbie Figg and Julie Ricks, both of Atascadero, who sang "Grandpa (Tell 'bout the good old days)" by The Judds. The ultra-daring can throw all shame aside and do their thing in front of a video camera which feeds the image into a big-screen TV. For their duet, Gallagher and Roach stayed in their chairs. As the last strain of Lisa Lisa's hit echoed into oblivion, they shared an embarrassed look and each sipped something cold. Roach said, "I haven't heard that song in years, and I forgot the words." Of her performance, Lori Gallagher said: "It was very embarrassing, but it's over with now." |