— Nationally Local —
Karaoke’s been on my mind lately.
There have been lots of other things on my mind lately, too, but they’re not relevant enough for inclusion in this email. This email, by the way, is the second issue of DoStuff Monthly. If you missed our maiden voyage, allow me to explain what you’re looking at. For topmost clarity, I’ll assume you’re coming at this from a “What even is any of this and who the hell are you?” perspective.
What is DoStuff?
DoStuff answers the question “What am I DOING tonight?” 170 million times per year. We power over 20 local websites nationwide, providing you with the tastiest (meaning cool) stuff happening on any given day or night. In Chicago, our site is Do312. New York City is DoNYC. Los Angeles is DoLosAngeles, and so on.
Ok, that tracks. What’s DoStuff Monthly?
DoStuff Monthly is an email sent out every month that contains opinions, news, interviews, chances to win giveaways, and other stuff that I consider to be both cool and good.
And who are you?
Rory Jones. I’m the Editor at DoStuff and a person typing this on a laptop.
Why did you refer to the first email as a ‘maiden voyage’? Isn’t that kind of pretentious?
I’m not taking any more questions right now.
Alright! Now that we’ve got all that sorted, let’s get into it. Alongside a VERY BIG GIVEAWAY that you WILL want to ENTER TO WIN, this month’s issue covers the aforementioned karaoke. Some people love it, some people hate it. Some people don’t even know what the word karaoke is because they got bonked on the head recently.
That’s a shame.
One of the great things about DoStuff being a national company is that we can, at the drop of a damn hat, rattle off a list of karaoke recommendations and advice that span the country. It’s like we exist in multiple places at once - a quantum particle that quantum parties. To that point, here are some karaoke picks from DoStuff metros across the nation. Ron from Do502 (Louisville) - “Best karaoke advice ever received: Just because there's a particular karaoke song available, you don't have to do it. Choose wisely. Some guy did "American Pie" and it's over 8 minutes. Cleared the bar area out. Choose your song wisely, and you could be a star for the night.”Lonique from Do816 (Kansas City) - “Every Wednesday, I used to do karaoke at Tin Roof. It's free, the food is pretty good, and the drinks are affordable. My go-to song is "I Wanna Dance With Somebody"; they let me get on stage and scream my heart out. No one judges, well, but this one girl.... she sings pretty well, and def talked sh*t about my screaming before lol. But, the audience loves it, especially when I jump off the stage with a mic in my hand to sing to everybody's girlfriends and boyfriends (lol).” Olivia from DoPDX (Portland) - “Baby Ketten Klub is open late, serves vegan food, has themed private rooms, and a main room where you can listen to a stranger belt out a song while waiting for your drink order.”Brooklynn from Do615 (Nashville) - “You can catch me on weekends at Wild Beaver singing “Truth Hurts” by Lizzo at the top of my lungs. I love that it's free and all day!”Ashley from Do317 (Indianapolis) - “No bar in Central Indiana is safe from my rendition of “Home Sweet Home” by Mötley Crüe.”Faith from Do214 (Dallas / Fort Worth) - “Jackie O's Monday Night Karaoke in Fort Worth is the perfect way to kick off the week! High energy, good vibes, and never a dull moment.” Brigid from Do617 (Boston) - “Hong Kong is my favorite karaoke spot in Boston. I can’t decide if I like singing better with tourists in Faneuil or college kids in Harvard. If you don’t want to sing, there’s always a dance party upstairs.”
ENTER FOR A CHANCE TO WIN:
- 2 x VIP passes to LOLLAPALOOZA 2025
- $600 Flight Credit
- Air-conditioned lounges, pristine restrooms, and front-row clarity at Chicago’s biggest music weekend.
- 5-Night Hotel Stay in Chicago, from July 31st - August 3rd.
Check out all the details on our Official Page. If you don’t win, don’t sweat it - we’ll have another one of these flyaway opportunities next month.
By Rory Jones
In Japanese, 'karaoke' means empty orchestra...
I cannot play any instruments, not with any proficiency anyway. I can strum a guitar with enough competency to convince a stranger that it’s not my first time picking one up. Still, my low skill level means I’m mostly limited to the chords of C, A, G, E, and, with persistently gnawing difficulty, D. I am, as a real guitarist might say, a few enchiladas short of a full plate - both musically and Tex-Mex-ically.
Some people are naturally gifted or hardworking enough to command the instrument’s digit-based parameters. Not me… and if I can be REALLY real with you, a big reason for my lack of progression is that playing guitar hurts my fingies (fingers).
I remember reading an interview with Morrissey in which he, in typically haughty fashion, explained why he doesn’t play guitar. He reasoned that singing directly to a crowd (without the benefit of an instrument to hide behind) is the ultimate form of connection between performer and audience. That to lay your soul bare using just your voice is true bravery.
It’s a cool quote, but I call bullshit.
Here’s what I think: Morrissey doesn’t play guitar because Morrissey tried to learn and he wasn’t any good, so he quit. Moreover, I’d wager that he gave up because, like me, it hurt his fingies. I have zero evidence of this, but it rings true in my gut - and my fingies.
Even if my theory is accurate, it doesn’t invalidate his message. Singing alone, as one does at karaoke, is courageous. A bajillion people are shitty at guitar, but to my ear, it always registers as roughly the same shade of unqualified. Bad singers, though, are a torturously varied mosaic of awful. The number of things that can go wrong, simultaneously and in different configurations, is tragic.
A singer can have bad pitch, forget the lyrics, or sing them in the wrong order. Their voice can crack, warble, or miss an intended note only to crash and burn in Flat Man’s Land. They might attempt a high note and instead issue forth an avian squawk. (No offense to birds, I’ve never heard one sing out of key.) You can do all or some of those things at once.
You can also just sorta sound like shit. The difference between this and a guitar is that those horrible sounds are coming out of your body. Biologically. YOU made them. YOU made them sound like that.
“Ma’am, we traced the call… It’s coming from inside your throat!”
There was a study conducted (that I will certainly not bother to link, verify, or even fully recall) which concluded that a majority of people would rather die than be subjected to the absolute horror of public speaking. Judging by how viscerally I’ve seen friends refuse to do karaoke (which is similar but arguably more vulnerable), I don’t doubt it.
My karaoke “career” began when I was 23. Newly single and historically sad, I had moved back to my hometown of Austin from my college town of Denton. I took to walking to the same bar near my apartment on what is, in retrospect, far too many nights a week. I rarely met up with anyone - seeing friends was reserved for the weekends, and MY misery hated company.
The bar in question was (and for now, is) called Ego’s. It’s a dingy little place, known for hosting karaoke seven days a week and not much else. Concealed within the bottom parking level of an abandoned office building on Congress, Ego’s is a relic from a weirder age of Austin. The kind of funky, rinky-dink watering hole that the gears of industry seem intent on choking out of existence.
I’d sit there alone, quaffing G&Ts and watching people sing until I was good and ready to stumble back to my one-bedroom apartment... The place with fruit flies spawning in the kitchen sink and a ratty mattress lying frameless on the floor. I hadn’t read any Bukowski at this point, but I was doing a convincing impression of his wretched barfly schtick all the same.
I have no idea how many times I went to Ego’s before I mustered the beans to sign up for karaoke, but it must’ve been quite a few. There were many nights spent wanting to be one of the good singers while being petrified that I’d be one of the bad ones. Nonetheless, I did eventually get drunk enough to take the stage to sing "Let’s Stay Together."
…Why in God's (Al) Green Earth did I choose that song? It’s almost entirely upper-stratosphere falsetto and is pretty explicitly about saving a relationship. Meanwhile, my throat was cracked from blasting American Spirits, and my prior romance was dead, buried, grave-robbed, and subsequently cremated for good measure.
I don’t know how, but I fuckin’ nailed it.
You know how I know? Not because the crowd applauded loudly (much appreciated). Not due to generous ‘WOOOOOOS’ thrown my way (y’all’re too kind). I know my rendition of "Let’s Stay Together" was good because a black dude in his late 50s high-fived me directly after I left the stage.
Yeah, I know. I know, okay?
But it just felt so good to have that particular guy’s approval for that particular song. This happened over a decade ago, and I truly remember it more vividly than the first time I met my brother’s firstborn child. Had I bombed, I don’t know that I would’ve ever done it again. Hell, even a few polite claps might’ve put me off it forever. Here’s why: when you do karaoke, the object is not to do OK - it’s to bring the house down. You get three or so minutes to give it your best shot and leave nothing onstage. That’s why it’s compelling to watch.
You see a rare side of people when they do karaoke. A peek into the ecosystem of their soul, if such a thing exists. Their song choices, confidence, and showmanship - or lack thereof. The degree to which they try. If someone goes up and insists on only doing songs that both they and everyone else generally agree are comically passé, that’s a glimpse at veiled insecurity. Some guy gets up and does a Creed song, but I don’t see a funny impression of Scott Stapp — I see someone unwilling to fail in a way that isn’t safeguarded by irony.
A lady pushing her larynx to the upper limit on Lady Gaga’s "Deep End" is thrilling, whether she nails it or not. If she pulls it off, it’s a triumph. If she fails or doesn't quite scale the summit, the audience will still cheer because she got up there and gave it her all. Just as in the case of public speaking, the crowd wants you to succeed; everyone watching is on some level imagining themselves on that stage singing that song.
Morrissey was right (about this one thing), it is pretty brave to stand up in front of people and sing your heart out with nothing but a microphone and that song by 4 Non Blondes that I’m so tired of hearing.
When you know what karaoke songs you’re good at, it becomes a secret weapon in what could be a mostly empty arsenal. If you and I go out to a bar and play darts or pool, my performance will probably be aggressively middling. But get me loosey goosey in a room with a microphone and a backing track, I’m Chris Isaak. I’ll croon ‘Noooo IIIIII… don’t wanna fall in love,’ and I know everyone will eat it up because I’ve done that song a million times, and people always do.
If I’m losing the crowd because it sounds like I’m bragging… trust me, I’m not. Despite all my poetic waxing on the subject, the truth is that being good at karaoke just isn’t very impressive. As it stands, the greatest cultural beacon that points to its importance is Carpool Karaoke, which is hosted by one of the most obnoxious British people ever to appear on television… and that’s saying something when Pierce Morgan exists.
Karaoke is a party trick, a simulacrum of real musical talent, like a parrot that can perfectly mimic its owner or a person who’s very good at tracing a masterpiece. At its best, karaoke is watching someone flawlessly inhabit another person’s creation. They can never own it. And yet, on the right night, it can scratch the surface of something real.
Karaoke is an empty orchestra, but the audience is full.
This is, as it were, the end of the email. DoStuff Monthly Issue #2 is doneski. Thank you for reading all of it! That was quite considerate of you. Here’s something incredible: If you wait patiently for about a month while constantly refreshing your email inbox, you will find yourself reading DoStuff Monthly Issue #3.
See you then.