Turn Around Bright Eyes: The Rituals of Love and Karaoke

181 Pages·2013·1.11 MB·English

by  Rob Sheffield

DEDICATION
For my sisters Ann, Tracey, and Caroline
EPIGRAPH
We make up what we can’t hear
Then we sing all night.
Sonic Youth
CONTENTS
DEDICATION
EPIGRAPH
ONE: TOTAL ECLIPSE OF THE HEART
TWO: MAMA TRIED
THREE: SING YOUR LIFE
FOUR: WORK IT
FIVE: LIVIN’ THING
SIX: LIVIN’ ON A PRAYER
SEVEN: CRAZY IN LOVE
EIGHT: REBEL YELL
NINE: 99 LUFTBALLONS
TEN: CHURCH OF THE POISON MIND
ELEVEN: HEARTBREAK HOTEL
TWELVE: BOLD THADY QUILL
THIRTEEN: ROCK & ROLL FANTASY
FOURTEEN: HOT LEGS
FIFTEEN: SHE LOVES YOU
SIXTEEN: DEBASER
SEVENTEEN: DREAMING OF ME
EIGHTEEN: STOP DRAGGIN’ MY HEART AROUND
NINETEEN: WOULDN’T IT BE NICE
TWENTY: SOME OTHER TIME
TWENTY-ONE: NEW YORK, NEW YORK
TWENTY-TWO: FOREVER IN BLUE JEANS
TWENTY-THREE: LET ME ENTERTAIN YOU
TWENTY-FOUR: KNOWING ME, KNOWING YOU
TWENTY-FIVE: THE SPIRIT OF RADIO
TWENTY-SIX: ZIGGY STARDUST
TWENTY-SEVEN: ABOUT A GIRL
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALSO BY ROB SHEFFIELD
COPYRIGHT
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
ONE
8:04 p.m.:
Total Eclipse of the Heart
1
Once upon a time I was falling apart. Now I’m always falling in love.
By “now” I mean Saturday night, in one of the sleazy karaoke bars where I
always seem to wind up. It’s me and my wife, somewhere in New York City.
We’re here to sing the night away. It’s just after eight, early enough to beat the
midnight crowds, too late to talk ourselves out of what lies ahead. We’re not
going home before we get a few songs in. And we’re not getting up on time
tomorrow. Sometimes we drag some innocent bystanders along. Tonight it’s just
us.
Either way, we always come here for a fix of that transcendent experience we
can only get from singing. The electric frazzle in the voices, the crackle of the
microphones, the smell of sweat, mildew, vodka, and pheromones—the full
karaoke experience. Tonight we are setting out to belt some of our favorite
songs. We’ll do songs we’ve never tried before. We’ll take on duets we haven’t
sung together. And we’ll do the standards we always have to do. But when you
take that karaoke microphone in your hand, you don’t know what kind of
adventure you’re stepping into. So you just have to surrender and let the song
take over. You start to sing karaoke, and some kind of psychic heart-switch flips.
If you’re lucky, and the beer doesn’t run out, it’s more than just a night of
debauchery. It’s a spiritual quest.
This spiritual quest, like so many spiritual quests, involves Bonnie Tyler.
2
Welcome to Sing Sing, our beloved karaoke den on Avenue A. Ally and I
cherish this spot because it has everything you want in a karaoke place: great
songbook, private rooms, surly bartenders, cheap drinks. Every time we head
over to Sing Sing, I get that thrill of anticipation as we pad down Avenue A. As
soon as I see that red awning over the door, even from a few blocks away, the
adrenaline starts to flow. The awning has the classic yin-and-yang symbol of the
Tao. Except it’s at the center of a microphone.
From the sidewalk outside, Sing Sing looks like any other karaoke bar.
There’s always a picture of a microphone outside. There’s a door guy checking
drivers’ licenses, probably wishing he could be the door guy somewhere
swankier, maybe a club where they have a velvet rope and a strict no-Journey
policy. Inside, it’s dim fluorescent lights and red walls. The customers perch on
their bar stools, just a few notes away from crashing to the floor. There’s usually
a bartender. And there are always songs. That’s why we’re here.
I love the crowd at Sing Sing. It’s part of the show. You can always hear
rockers and rappers and disco cowgirls and smoothed-out crooners. Despite the
early hour, there’s already a bachelorette party full of blitzed bridesmaids
teetering on their heels, ready to start splashing their Disaronno-and-Sprite on
everyone. There are some lurkers in the shadows, too wasted to remember whose
birthday they came here to celebrate. Maybe none of us can sing on key, but
nobody minds. We’re not here to judge, right? Nobody’s here because they’re a
great singer. We came because we want to be stars for a night.
Some places have a stage; other places you sing at the bar or grab a table. One
of the reasons we love Sing Sing is they have the private rooms, which is
definitely the way we want to go tonight. If you get there soon after 8 p.m., you
can usually score one, but by ten, you’ll get stuck on the waiting list.
Karaoke has lots of rituals. The first, naturally, is showing up. The second:
Ally and I check in at the front desk to get our room. It’s eight dollars an hour
per person for the room, or two dollars per song if you sit at the bar. But it’s
cheaper to rent the room, which means you stay later and sing more. You can
sign up for a specified time, or you can sing until the bartenders throw you out at
closing time. I can already tell tonight is going to be the second kind. But hey—
it’s Saturday night, so I guess that makes it all right.
The karaoke host leads us down the hall. I get that familiar tingle as we head
downstairs, across the black and white tiles, under the flickering bulbs associated
with prison movies or Ministry videos. Sing Sing has a few dozen rooms in the
basement—it’s a labyrinth down there. Ally and I have sung in every one of
those rooms by now. The host turns on the karaoke machine and makes sure the
remote control works. The TV screen has the lyrics and the goofy karaoke
videos. There’s also a buzzer on the wall we can press to order more drinks.
This room was obviously decorated by a color-blind stripper in 1982. It’s
halfway between “suburban rec room” and “motel meth lab.” The couch has
been jumped on by so many wasted girls over the years, you know it’s
indestructible. And the day it gets vacuumed will be the day Buddy Holly shows
up to sing “Peggy Sue” for you in person. If you’re Catholic, this room might
remind you of a confessional. But no, the rooms are never pretty. Why should
they be? The owners know why you keep coming back here, and it’s not the
décor. It’s that raw, primal need.
There’s never a clock, never a window. It’s just like a casino where they want
to keep the suckers playing as long as possible. After a few songs, you’ll have no
idea how long you’ve been singing, or how much longer you can last. If you’ve
ordered a few rounds, you can use the empties to measure how long you’ve been
there.
Down in the karaoke room, the first order of business is to grab yourself a
songbook. They’re fat binders, the size of cinder blocks. Some of the books
might be soggy from the previous occupants’ spilled cocktails. Others might
smell funkier than the couch. The pages are laminated, which might have to do
with the amount of human bodily fluids that get splattered on them. But I’ve
flipped through every page of this book with love and reverence. For some of
our favorite tunes, we don’t even have to look up the number. “Ziggy Stardust,”
that’s 117718. (The version without the video. It’s always better without the
video.) Those magic numbers are fried onto my brain. I mean, I couldn’t tell you
my blood pressure right now, but I can tell you my favorite Aaliyah song is
119283.
Ally and I already know our first song tonight. She just takes the remote and
punches in 117498. That’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” Everybody has their
warm-up song, their go-to jam, the one that gets the blood pumping. This one is
ours. For all karaoke freaks around the nation, “Total Eclipse of the Heart” is
one of those sacred anthems. It’s the kind of song that announces, “Dearly
beloved, we have so totally gathered here today.” It’s the entrance antiphon of
the ceremony.
But for Ally and me, it’s the first duet we ever sang, ten years ago, right after
we met. Our first karaoke date was a Lower East Side loft party. (Certain friends
of mine still remember this as “liquid mescaline night.”) The place was thick
with clubsters and models and writers, plus a couple of karaoke hosts, Sid and
Buddy, dressed up as their favorite dead rock stars. Ally and I made our debut
with “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” The piano intro began and we took up our