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October 25, 2004
On Karaoke
I first learned to read Japanese from watching tapes of the ultra-cheesy Jpop music program Music Station and following along with the lyrics at the bottom of the screen. Karaoke was the obvious entertainment extension of this tradition, and being able to sing Japanese songs helped me pass many a night with old, crusty suits and personality-suppressing OLs with whom I'd normally have absolutely nothing in common.
Now that I am living in Japan under my own free will, my karaoke box visits have decreased drastically. When I do go, I end up drinking too many shelf-liquor oolong-hai's and blowing out my voice for a week. I discovered that my baritone range works best with JRock from 1996-1998, so my repetoire has dwindled to the following catalog of embarassing works:
| the yellow monkey - "spark" the yellow monkey - "love love show" sharan Q - "iiwake" l'arc en �iel - "honey" |
I used to judge a karaoke venue on its amount of Flipper's Guitar songs in the songbooks, but I don't even try to pretend to make the experience fashionable anymore. Lately, I have been gravitating towards the back-of-the-book yougaku (Western music) section and proudly singing Badfinger, The Partridge Family, or Cheap Trick, but no one knows these songs nor cares. I was psyched to sing Donovan's "Sunshine Superman" the other day, but had to stop it in the middle lest I endure further bored stares.
A lot of Americans assume that karaoke must be an ironic source of entertainment in Japan, because of its innate kitsch and ridiculousness, but certainly for the older karaoke generations, it is a honorable way to spend a night out while avoiding the wife. There is a certain "everyone sings and we applaud everyone!" kind of celebration of mediocrity in the traditional karaoke setting. However, karaoke for young hipsters in Tokyo is Japan's closest experimentation with the values of Western irony. Japan's cooler kids tend to reward the worst singers and the worst song selection with the greatest applause and praise. Someone who's actually good may get some surprised exclaims of "umai!" but then won't be invited back. No one is there to hear anything good - just poor renditions of early 90s Jpop garbage and maybe a Journey song.
I am intrigued by this Americanization of Japanese karaoke practices, but I don't know if I can endure destroying my health just for the kind of one-note jokiness of it all. And there is the problem of "ironic spending" - we intentionally sing stupid songs that we hate and the artists get paid "unironic" royalties for it. So I am leaving the circuit for a while, but if anyone wants to go sing some The Dynamites in a couple of months, I may be up for it.
Posted by marxy at October 25, 2004 7:45 PM