First Night as a Karaoke DJ

Last night I received initiation into the sacred order of karaoke DJs at a local townie dive. The lineage extends far into the distant past, when early humans would sing bad disco songs by the fire to keep away predators at night.

In some ways, karaoke appears to be a folk reclamation of an alienating pop culture. Where once we had our regional and ethnic songs, capitalism has flattened everything into one-size-fits-all global (and American) pop, available at the flick of a switch anywhere in the world at any time. Karaoke is where this pop ephemera re-enters the manifest realm, re-enters locality, and is squeezed through the dialects and deficencies of those participating, become something both grotesque and beautiful, like a bonsai tree in the key of D. The worst karaoke singers then, in this view, are not those with the bad voices, but those show-offs who sacrifice everything to remain faithful to a song's "original" performance. In failing to make a song their own, in failing to substitute words, spoof the chorus, change keys, change the rhythm, and give shout-outs to their Mexican homeboys in the back row, these singers are playing the game on Pop's terms, endlessly perpetuating the indifferentiated Machine. The real task is make a song something entirely new and make it good.

Last night's featured performers included a Milf-tastic mother of two, a drunk bouncer with a fondness for late-80s hip-hop, a mustachoed garbage man in Civil War boots, a black pimp flanked by three floozies, a meek librarian-looking girl with lungs of steel, and yours truly, Creedence Idiot Boy.

Look for further updates on my new career next week.<

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