Recall what I said about clip art? Here is a similar situation. Did you know you can go to college and get a degree on how to draw choppers? That is correct, drawing motorcycles. I had to look twice at that one because the site would not say which college unless you signed up first. I confess to not having a separate file for “Bad Choices In Life” but spending money on a “career” like that is a candidate. It is not a bad concept if a few dozen people join up, but what happens when 50,000 kids think they’ll get a job at it? How many motorcycle sketches do you buy each week?
It seems my idea of “live” karaoke is not that original. But my approach certainly is. I’ll explain. By now I’ve met a dozen people who talk about starting such a band. Upon questioning, they plan to back up singers. Upon further questioning, they are overlooking some hard facts. The hardest fact is that it has been years since the average musician (99% in this town) could play a given tune in any key but the original. That would be like asking the Mustang Sally Dink to play it in E flat. It ain’t gonna happen.
[Author’s note: the Mustang Sally Dink is the nickname of a local jerk who answers every ad in every newspaper, bulletin board or Internet post no matter what type of guitarist is asked for. He has become a standing joke in this vicinity. He shows up wanting to play “Mustang Sally” whether it is on your song list or not. I threw him out the door. He also spends ten minutes tuning up, like you’re to be just plain happy he could make it over.]
All this reminds us of the lady who used to show up at Cort’s [Coffee House] with music scores and wonder why nobody could accompany her. Huh? What’s a music score? Easy: Beatles 358, Clapton 14. Ha-ha, just kidding. My point is that a lot of guitar music is tricky to play except with the original tuning. You can capo up, but not down. In my 100+ song list, maybe ten tunes are played in a sharp or flat key and I could not readily tell you the notes I’m playing.
Another thing. Listen to me, guitar people, if these people knew the words, it wouldn’t really be Karaoke. That is where I take over. I’m programming words and music. It is so daunting I am likely to only allow a narrow range of keys near the original. As in a semi-tone or two. I’ll listen to your big plans when I see you putting in some comparable effort. If you even can.
Audio books. I listen to them when driving. This media can be a disappointment until you become less demanding. You don’t get the vivid mental images as when reading. Another letdown is the quality of the narrators, who all seemed to have attended the Monotone Weird Accent Academy for Slow Listeners and the Slightly Deaf. Come on you bozos, pick up the pace—dammit, let them rewind or crank the volume if they miss something.
I’d like to report an exception, in fact, an exceptional exception . Sidney Sheldon, who wrote “Windmills of the Gods” (not to be confused with “Chariots of the Gods”). Don’t hastily conclude he has any advantage reading his own work for he is plainly an author, not a speaker. Most people sound funny using their larger written vocabulary when talking, present company notably excluded. Sheldon’s pronunciations can make you “grimmiss” but he knows his plots so well. There is even believability to the way he staggers his voice for the different characters (again, within the context listening to somebody read out loud).
I’m reading his “The Sands of Time” and I’m getting much more out of it than the Hemmingway-like undertones. I take it Sheldon is Catholic, because he so easily rationalizes the screwball reasons women become nuns. Or his weird concepts of female sexuality, which are firmly rooted somewhere between Playboy back issues and Grade Seven locker room. Yet, compared to others in this line of work, Sheldon does a remarkable job of it. Worth a listen.
