Donald's Encyclopedia of Popular Music

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

KARAOKE

Literally 'empty orchestra' in Japanese; from there the disease spread during the '80s to reach every corner of the world. People with inhibitions loosened by alcohol or the party mood sing to pre-recorded backing tracks; standards and big hits are the preferred raw material, especially it seems 'My Way'. Walking in Hermosa Beach one evening in August '92 this editor saw through the window of a famous pub a man apparently singing and playing guitar, sounding like a sort of unplugged Springsteen; a closer look revealed that there were no strings on the guitar: the Lighthouse, once a world-famous jazz club, had been reduced to a karaoke bar. In a reversal of the principle, Simon Calder reported in Dec. '94 in the Independent that on assignment to Novosibirsk in Siberia he encountered a band playing live while a 'vocalist' mimed to a tape: 'I could not believe this until a female voice started cantering through the Boney M number while the man with the microphone mouthed inaccurate lyrics with a devastating absence of irony and enthusiasm.' Apparently there is no lower limit of the awfulness to which technology will be applied.