Tuesday's Theme: Uhhhhh

I love doing karaoke. Well, duh. I listen to music on the way to work and occasionally hear a song that I like but have never done. Peter Gabriel's "Games Without Frontiers" came up and I recalled how much I loved the song from when I was a teenager. So, I had to come up with a theme related to Peter Gabriel that can applied to other musicians. The only one I can think of off the bat was that he was the main singer of the band Genesis before embarking on a solo career. I had my theme.

So I sang "Games Without Frontiers" in the snarky tone representative of the song. The video is classic early 80's art. Nicely done on a limited budget. It's appropriately creepy for an artist that was critical of Thatcher's Britain.



Solo artists that were once in a famous group before hand? It's Paul McCartney time! Karaoke Steve had the song "1985" from his Band On The Run album. I had never done the song before. It's an odd song sung in a nasal tone that seems like a 1920's singer. It's a tricky song with odd interludes. I didn't care bout pleasing anyone because the only cute girl left already. The sound on the CD was good but the highlighted words were off time so I tripped over the words, something I have been doing a lot recently, especially on new songs. The video clip is vintage Paul doing it solo and halfway through he is singing it without having an instrument on hand, like Mick Jagger and Robert Plant. This is rare and interesting, he could have given both of them a run for their money with his stage presence.



The third song I sang was the first solo hit by Eagles singer Don Henley. "Dirty Laundry" is my favorite Don Henley song. It's a brutal attack on the news media circa 1982 that rings more true in the 21st century. Don Henley is a tenor which is just out of my key but I can do this song when my voice is clear. The last verse changes key into a higher range than I can do sometimes including tonight. Oh well. Anyway, Don Henley didn't make a video in 1982 so the clip is from 1993, during the Clinton inauguration. It's interesting seeing Dennis Miller hosting the show back in the days when he was funny. These days he's a right winger who hates Clinton and thinks Bush is great. Do I need to mention that he's not funny these days?


I went off the theme on my fourth song, although the song was covered by a female solo artist Joan Jett who was in a band called the Runaways. Gary Glitter, famed pedophile wrote the song "Do You Want To Touch..." back in the 70's. It's a fun song from the hey day of British Glam Rock. Glitter was a clown performer who seemed liked he was 40 plus years old at the time. Still it's a hoot. I did better on this version than the Joan Jett version I did a month ago.