September 2011

The Perils of Karaoke

The Jersey Boy

I have a confession to make: I’m a karaoke junkie.

I’ve been riding Greyhound buses for years, traveling to random places and singing duets with strangers. There’s no better way of arriving at a new town than by finding the neighborhood karaoke bar, where you’ll meet locals looking for confirmation, support, and a touch of encouragement to get on stage. I’ve never fancied myself a great singer or a proper musician, but that doesn’t stop me from making a rock star (or a fool) of myself whenever I get the chance.

Karaoke in Missoula is as good as it gets. Wednesday night at the Badlander is my favorite downtown option, Monday night at Lucky Strike usually gets the biggest crowd in town, and Tuesday night at Harry David’s is the Granddaddy of Karaoke, with a live band backing you on stage for every song. This past month, however, the nature of karaoke in Missoula was shaken by the Western Montana regional competition of Talent Quest, a national championship of karaoke offering a shot at a recording contract.

(This prize, by the way, keeps getting funnier every time I think about it. Best-case scenario for the debut album? Forty-five minutes of elevator muzak with a Mad Libs lyric booklet printed in ten languages.)

I’m not against putting yourself on center stage and risking failure, nor am I necessarily against doing competitively what you’ve always done just for fun. But karaoke, at its core, works because everyone pretty much sucks, yet they know that the worse they are the more likely somebody will buy them a drink. No activity is more universally applauded for mediocrity than karaoke, and nothing is even close. If you are a great singer or a proper musician, karaoke shouldn’t be your scene, and you’ll probably be resented if it is.

All month people have been going on stage and listening to judges tell them they simply aren’t good enough. Karaoke represents, if not a mirror held up to nature, at least a microphone held up to the soul, and turning it into a graded performance defeats the purpose. Karaoke’s joy is in how it allows the shy and self-conscious to get over it on stage in front of a friendly audience, and judging by the disappointment on too many faces, we might not see them back up there again.

Look, America already has a karaoke competition, and it’s called “American Idol.” But this is Missoula, a town where failing to catch a single fish all day on the Blackfoot is still better than whatever else you could’ve been doing, where it doesn’t matter how long the M trail takes so long as you get to the top, where competitive spirits shouldn’t ever rise above the McCormick Park kickball league. Summer in Missoula is about doing what you love and then, when you’re done, finding new things to love, too. More importantly, summer in Missoula is about looking around at the sky, the rivers and the mountains and realizing that everything is “good enough,” whether or not you can hit the right notes.

Now that the competition is over I’m ready to get back to my roots, which is a relief because karaoke can be fun again and because it’s time for new endeavors. (A regular column in Missoula’s newest newspaper is a pretty good place to start.) You’ll still find me singing karaoke multiple nights each week, but from now on it will be nothing but Enrique Iglesias and Earth, Wind & Fire – off-key and embarrassing, just like it should be.