Rockin' All Over the World – Why Karaoke is a Great Way to Get Under the Skin of a Place
From New Brunswick to Berlin, Rhonda rates local singalongs for taking the pulse of a destination and making new friends.
Landing in Saint John, New Brunswick, after nine hours in the sky, we have only one thing on our minds – to locate the nearest karaoke joint and immerse ourselves in local bar culture. This fog-prone Bay of Fundy city might be known best-known for its high tides, whale-watching and hip craft breweries, but those can wait. The fastest way to get the measure of a place, we always find, is a rabble-rousing night of karaoke.
In Saint John, it seems there’s only one option open to us, and a distinctly unsavoury option it turns out to be, when we finally locate it on a Saint John backstreet: ill-lit to the point of lugubrious, with sticky floors and a musty whiff. Not that karaoke bars should be stylish, fragrant affairs: quite the opposite – their charm is in their insalubriousness or at least their tackiness. But this is other-level flea-pit.
Still we persevere, heading for the thronged bar as locals eye us curiously as if we’ve just landed from the planet Zog. Some of the men haltingly attempt to chat us up while clearly not knowing quite what to make of us. We’re a bit giddy with jet lag and somewhat disorientated. But we’re resolute in our mission to take this city by storm, so we put our names down on the long queue to get up on stage. It’s clear to us that we’ll trounce the locals.
Within a few songs, we’re shooting each other nervous glances. While the clientele here looks they could be 90% jailbirds and itinerants, each individual or group who gets up seems even better than the one before. There’s some serious talent behind these care-worn faces – some of them are almost stadium-level good. They belt out the Canadian classics – Bryan Adam, Celine Dion, Shania Twain – with confidence and panache. They seriously know their shit.
We can’t hope to compete. I’m all for not even trying, for going with something quintessentially British that we know really well. The Smiths, perhaps. Or Oasis. But there’s the risk that if the audience don’t know it, they’ll heckle us off for bringing down the vibe. In any case, Tracey has her heart set on covering something by her beloved Cher, and who I am to argue?
Only there’s not much choice left on the list, and we daftly agree to sing a song that Tracey doesn’t know too well and I’ve never heard before. We instantly regret it. Happily, the crowd have the decency to politely look away from the car crash unfolding on the stage and to talk among themselves while Tracey caterwauls and I just bumble along; there are no hurled glasses.
When we next get a turn, we feel like we reprieve ourselves with our rendition of Total Eclipse of the Heart, but it’s probably only better because the crowd are singing over us this time – a genius strategy on their part. We admit defeat…
And meanwhile, the Canadians just keep belting out the hits, the tearjerkers, the all-American classics about axe murderers and serial killers and ill-fated love and heartbreak and deception, until by the end we’re all waving our hands in the air as we sing along with a 75-year-old kween crooning Nights in White Satin with the full force of someone whose whole life history is encapsulated by these lyrics of unrequited love. Some of us are welling up; well, I know I am (menopausal, mucho?).
Our karaoke career had already seen us perform at an (unofficial) gay bar in Penang, with both Asian and Western classics, a Korean party at Ham Yard Hotel in Covent Garden, a random night at the infamous Gerry’s Bar in Soho, and in Manchester’s Chinatown. However terrible the racket we make, and there have been some literal howlers, it’s always proven a great way to make new friends and take the pulse of a city.
And karaoke is also the ultimate leveller. No matter how good or bad you are, nobody cares. It’s all part of the fun. In Manchester’s dark and sweaty basement Vina, for instance, we performed a truly dire version of Spandau Ballet’s Gold and a slightly less horrific one of West End Girls amidst a motley crowd of blow-ins: students, office workers, rockers and pin-up girls, K-pop boys, and even a couple on their very first date. Some were awesome, some were terrible, but we all had an absolutely brilliant time with strangers who fast became mates.
And we are getting better, slowly. Or at least we think we are. Our career highlight came this year at the really very marvellous Monster Ronson’s Ichiban Karaoke in Berlin’s hip Friedrichshain, where – where after watching a new friend Elissa perform a kickass tribute to Tina Turner, who’d died the previous week, and a cross-dresser sing a heart-rending take on Hey Jude – we were delighted to get our first chance to sing with a live band.
This time we picked the Fleetwood Mac banger Go Your Own Way - another dangerous choice, given that Tracey barely knew it. But fuelled by peppermint schnapps and Negronis and swagger, we gave it all we had in the way only heartbroken, divorcing, tipsy fifty-somethings can give a song all about a romantic breakup.
And the packed crowd lapped it up. As I thrust my mike-stand around and Tracey prowled the stage like a voracious cougar, a line of young dungaree-clad lesbians stretched their hands up at us like adoring groupies, eyes all puppy-like. And after we’d taken our bows and were fighting our way out through the crowd, we were high-fived and brought rounds of drinks by all and sundry.
For a brief time, I was Stevie Nicks – and in the words of the great songwriter George Gershwin, ‘You Can’t Take That Away From Me’. Not least because, with no video evidence of this particular show, we’ll never know just how bad we really were.
