Kareoke Nights

Not long ago, I watched the movie Duets with Gwyneth Paltrow and Huey Lewis. The movie is about a man that undergoes extreme changes in his life while singing on the karaoke circuit. Yes, there is a karaoke circuit. I learned as much many years ago.

Anne and I were NTN Trivia addicts and met many people during our years of participation. One person we met was Dave, an itinerant never-do-well when he lived in Oklahoma. He moved to Iowa before Anne died and I didn’t talk to him again until several years later after Anne had passed away.

Dave stayed with me a time or two while visiting from Iowa and I accompanied him on the Oklahoma City karaoke circuit. He had, it seems, become a karaoke DJ since moving back to Iowa. He had a pleasant but gravely voice and everyone seemed to know him no matter which club we went to.

Different clubs in town would have karaoke nights during different days of the week, often giving away prize money, usually fifty or a hundred dollars. What amazed me was that everyone knew everyone else and we encountered the same singers wherever we went. The best singers earned the prize money but it seemed only enough to support their drinking budgets in the karaoke bars.

As in the movie Duets, many of the singers were very good. Most had physical flaws. None of these singers was grotesque; they just were neither very handsome nor pretty. One girl with a diva’s voice was a hundred pounds overweight.

Dave visited a couple of times and then disappeared back to Iowa. This ended my research on the karaoke circuit but did introduce me to the national phenomenon highlighted in Duets. Since I can’t sing a lick, I never got hooked.

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