Turn Around Bright EyesThe Rituals of Love and KaraokeRob Sheffield It Books, an Imprint of Harper Collins Publishers
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turn around bright eyes. Copyright © 2013 by Rob Sheffield. All
rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part
of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever
without written permission except in the case of brief quotations
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Harper Collins Publishers, 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022.
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first edition
Designed by Shannon Plunkett
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data is available upon
request.
ISBN 978- 0- 06- 220762- 3
13 14 15 16 17 ov/rrd 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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1
One
8:04 p.m.:
Total eclipse of the heart
1Once 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, some-
where 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.
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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.
2Welcome 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 bartend-
ers, 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 ka-
raoke 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
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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 wast-
ed 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,
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under the flickering bulbs associated with prison movies or Min-
istry 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 sing-
ing, 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 oc-
cupants’ 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.
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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 kara-
oke 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 mikes. Ally took the hard part,
i.e., the half of the song that has several million words crammed
in there. Me, I took the easy part. I began to sing the mantra:
“Turn around.”
It’s funny— ten years ago, this song was just another eighties
oldie to me. I probably heard it all the time, yet never noticed
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it. I figured I already knew it. But I had never sung it with this
woman. And after that, it was a whole new song. Turn around. So
I hear it now and it reminds me of this woman I love. It’s just one
of the many insane adventures we stumbled into together. Turn
around. No matter how many times I hear it, the song will always
flood me with memories of all the times we’ve sung it. Next time
I hear it, tonight might be one of those memories. Turn around.
The song always starts the same way. Those same four piano
notes, over and over. But I can already tell this is just the first
shot of a marathon epic karaoke quest. I don’t care how late we
have to stay to get our fix. We will torch one great song after
another, until they pull the plug and kill the lights and beg us to
go home. Turn around.
One long night of karaoke, looping the clock around. And for-
ever’s gonna start tonight.
3My voice has never actually killed anyone. I am positive of that.
But yeah, did I mention I can’t sing? I can’t. It’s bad. I have
loved music all my life, and as they say, you always hurt the
one you love. So I have spent my whole life trying to sing, while
other people try to escape. I have been described variously as a
“hard trier,” a “good sport,” and a “vocal Chernobyl.” But oh, it’s
bad. And hence my karaoke problem. I am hopelessly obsessed
with karaoke because it lets me do the one thing I’ve craved
every minute of my life. It lets me sing.
It’s not like I haven’t tried before. I’ve always been an obses-
sive pop fan. I write for Rolling Stone, so I blast music all day,
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every day, constantly on the prowl for my next favorite song.
But I never had the talent to sing or play an instrument. Here’s
a complete list of my credentials as a singer: A kindhearted mu-
sic teacher let me sing baritone in the high school chorus. I am
fantastic at remembering the lyrics to every song. I rarely gush
blood from the mouth. I have both of my lungs. And let me em-
phasize: My voice has never killed anybody.
But that’s it for my credentials. Tacos will grow on Christmas
trees before I learn to carry a tune. Fortunately, it doesn’t matter.
In karaoke, talent means nada; enthusiasm is everything. What
I lack in talent, I make up for in passion. Hence my karaoke
problem.
If you’re someone like me, a fan who loves music but could
never hack it as a musician, karaoke changes everything. It un-
locks the door to center stage. It’s a safe and welcoming place
where anyone can join in the music. So even if you never sum-
moned the courage or skill to cross that line from fan to partici-
pant, karaoke is something anybody can do. Your only limits are
emotional. Indeed, it forces you to keep upping your emotional
ante, as you voice your innermost feelings out loud. And that’s
the weirdest thing about karaoke— sometimes you can feel like
you’re experiencing some of the most honest, most intimate mo-
ments of your life, while butchering a Hall & Oates song at 2
a.m. in a room full of strangers.
That intimacy is what makes it such an addictive vice. With
karaoke you’re really putting yourself out there. People are going
to watch you and stare. But the whole culture around karaoke
creates a temporary environment of total acceptance. When we
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do karaoke, we sing along with songs we hate. We cheer for the
weirdos across the room. We high- five strangers. You dim the
lights, crank the volume, and you can get away with anything.
Over the years, I’ve gotten totally obsessed. Like I said, I have
a karaoke problem. But admitting the fact that you have a prob-
lem is the first step toward making it an even bigger problem.
4I got obsessed with karaoke around the time I got obsessed with
Ally. It’s a fact: Getting obsessed with a girl is a good way of get-
ting obsessed with anything.
For us, karaoke is one of our shared passions, and it’s one of
the ways we communicate. Ally is an astrophysicist and a glam
rocker, so I always keep learning new things about the universe
from her. And even after years of marriage, I still find out strange
new things about this girl when we sing together. Every time we
get our microphone cords tangled up, I get a little more obsessed
with her.
I got into karaoke at a time when I felt like my life was a used
firecracker. I was only in my early thirties, but I figured it was
all too late for me. I was a miserable widower with no idea how
to muddle on. The happy chapter of my life was over, and the
world had run out of surprises. But it turned out my life was just
beginning. I fell in love, I got married, I found a new life and a
new home. Karaoke was just one of those surprises. But for me,
it turned out to be a way of finding my voice. Something about it
opened up doors for me emotionally. For me, it was part of com-
ing back to life.
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Right now, here in the basement of Sing Sing, Ally and I are in
for the night. We’re punching in the numbers and loading up the
machine for hours to come. We don’t know where the songs will
lead us, what kinds of memories or sensations they’re going to
trigger. But we will clutch the mike and feel the surge. If friends
show up to join us here, all the better. That just means more
songs. We’ll blast each other with requests and duets until they
kick us out at 4 a.m. Then it’s good- night hugs and cabs. There
will be friends dropped off until it’s back to just Ally and me.
As soon as we get home, we’ll fix some toast with cheddar on it,
before we fall asleep to dream of rock & roll.
Is this thing on? Good. Because I am. We’re here to sing. Every
now and then we come together. Every now and then I fall apart.
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