Got a text from Cortney today, asking me if I wanted to go to karaoke tonight. Because her sister`s over from America, and of course she has to experience that great Japanese institution of karaoke. And Cortneys inviting me out. It’s the only time I really hear from Cortney. You see she’s not inviting me out of goodwill, she’s asking me to do her a favour; because of course you need a group to go to karaoke with – there`s nothing more depressing than seeing Vinne sitting in the karaoke booth by himself singing `Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go”. No really. There is nothing more depressing. While sober, the idea of karaoke is anathema; it`s almost rude to invite a sober person out to karaoke.
Helen on the other hand better understands the nature of karaoke. She has wisdom beyond her years. She always gets a big crowd to her karaoke nights while entertaining a Scottish friend or relative.
When she is entertaining a guest, she would never dream of inviting everyone out for karaoke; she invites everyone out for a drink, and then, when the time is right, the word `karaoke` may be heard whispered about in the far corners of the room, in the hope that the tide of recklessness may spread it`s message and bewitch the drunken undoubting hearts of the carousers. But it is only spoken in whispers mind you, for to speak to loudly of it may shatter such a fragile idea. A concept made frail by it`s ridiculously pointless and self-destructive nature.
Karaoke in Japan is a little different than elsewhere. It`s not sung in front of the whole bar, but in small booths with just you and your friends. Some of these places like Big Echo, an enormous company whose signs and stores dominate suburbs – some Big Echo places are 8 stories tall – come of these places are immaculate, like being in some pastel space station, with white identical corridors that twist and retwist perplexingly upon themselves. If you forget your room number or fail to check it on leaving, well, without your ball of twine, you`ll never find your way back.
Or, on the other end of the scale there`s Heartbeat in Abiko. The damp rooms smell of armpit, and for 1000yen an hour they will serve you an infinite amount of some venom, some foul substance that apparently is alcohol, due to the fact that you have the most spine-aching hangover the next morning even though you never got drunk off it.
But these karaoke places form a kind of oasis in every community. If you`re incabably drunk, and the morning`s first train is an hour away, you can rent one of the rooms and sleep in it. The waiters will be sure to wake you once your allotted time has expired.
Also, while I`m sure they aren`t particularly comfortable, those tables would be serviceable platforms to have a root on I`m sure. And you won`t be interrupted unless you order a drink. And you can crack on `Sultans of Swing` while you`re on the job.
Karaoke is like cocaine. Its never planned.
I`ve never in my life planned a night on the coke. I`ve seen the merry dance it leads people on. At first, you only have have coke when you`re at a party.
Until eventually you party every night just as an excuse to have coke.
But every now and then I`m sitting at a pub in Piccadily with one of me good buddies – surrounded by dark oak and tattered velvet – and the manager closes the doors early and a Colombian drug baron, and his little blonde floozy chop up some lines on the bar, and you suck them up your nose.
I am not going to stand in the way of what is so obviously divine providence
And next thing its 4am in some nightclub, and your synapses are firing in perfect harmonic unity, and Sengas and my thoughts are just latching together like a turbine; and our conversation is in this syncopated rhythm we can find the words to perfectly match our thoughts which are so deep and I am SO damn fuckin cool that I could fuck any girl in this pub but I am so cool that I cant really be bothered I dont need to pander to my ego in such a crass and vulgar manner and it was nice of that girl who I was chatting to to turn and walk away from me so she could show me a better view of her arse and I exist between the molecules the waves of fate flow around me and theres a diaphonous luminescense around everything.
Just like karaoke. I never plan to go to karaoke. Because it is such an absurd notion, that if it is mentioned too early, the three chaperones of sobriety, inhibition and parsimony will immediately begin to sandbag the idea, working to galvanise your will against the suggestion, so that when the time comes to leave, sensibleness has won the day, and you head home. But if the timing`s right (or wrong), and the idea is suggested after those three chaperones have long been whelmed by the tides of Beer, Shochu and Sake then you may find yourself in a dank room drinking some bitter contagion, thinking you`re Eminem, or worse, Kate Bush.
Theres nothing to be gained from a karaoke session, and everything to be lost. Money, friends, respect, memory, a hangover-free day at work the following day. There`s not even a chance of scoring a root at karaoke. Even with cocaine you might get a shag, if a woman falls for the chemically induced over-bloated sense of self-confidence you seep; but with karaoke, well, there`s no masculinity in seeing a pair of men sharing a microphone singing the echo to `California Dreaming.`
But there it happens. All of a sudden you`re staggering out to a pink sky, and your throat is hoarse, and you’ve been caught on video singing ‘Man I Feel Like a Woman.”
Karaoke, like cocaine must always remain an accident. Like seducing – did I just say seducing? – like trying to score a woman.
It must not be planned, or forced.
I always like to have a plan now in my evenings. Because it’s a plan that keeps me away from Colombian Drug Dealers and karaoke.
honest dave