Scary-oke

I have been secretly doing karaoke on Wednesday nights. It's at a place called Kladdagh in the Jersey shore town called Highlands. It's a small semi-divey place in the middle of town. It's an Irish themed (duh) bar that is really standard bar fare and beer. The selection of beer is adequate but the taps are always off so I always buy bottled Sam Adams.

But I don't go there for beer. I go there for karaoke. It's a far less rowdy "crowd" of older professional drunks with a sprinkling of young folks that I take to be locals who went straight to work from high school. The set up for karaoke is modest, a good selection of songs but it has a wireless mike set up that makes it feel uncomfortably like American Idol.

Still, I like singing, it makes me feel good. I chose mellower songs that the older crowd appreciates. As usual for me I chose obscure ones that don't get sung by anyone else. I also make it a point not to repeat myself. Let's face it, the karaoke host bought thousands of songs, it's only fair to try to use them. Besides, I would get bored shitless hearing endless renditions of "Sweet Caroline" and Don't Stop Believing".

Still, Highlands creeps me out. I read an article in the New York Times about how many people moved from Manhattan to set up shop here. The article talked about how "cosmopolitan" Highlands is becoming. I have to disagree. It's old school working class waterfront town. I get no sense of a Hoboken like revival anytime soon. The people are stubbornly "townie" oriented. I admire that, but the people are scary.

I don't fit in, of course. I tend to like a diverse crowd, and this crowd is decidedly not diverse. I'm not expecting to make friends here. That suits me fine though. I can't handle being a townie in this town or any town. I need to be closer to the city, any city.

Anyway, I did songs that I have featured already on the blog. Except for "Hot In The City" by Billy Idol. The official videos are so bad that I had to resort to a Solid Gold appearance. A terrible show for lipsyncing performances. This one is good though.



On Tuesday at Jack's, my theme was to do the same groups from the week before, I only sang three times. The White Stripes song and the T-Rex song I have posted the videos for in previous blogs. The Who song was "Who Are You". I was joined on that song by a very short, non dwarf guy in a hat. The video from the theme song from CSI is a recording session for the ast Who album with Keith Moon as drummer. I like this for its simplicity. Though Moon looks very bloated.