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I will survive… a night of karaoke

By Zoe Strachen

Not being able to sing is such a social handicap.

And then there’s the K word. Yes, karaoke, that uniquely modern blight on a night out, always ready to rear its ugly head and sully a perfectly enjoyable work party or hen night. My last “experience” was after a university summer school. Under duress, not to mention under the influence, a colleague and I got up on stage, in front of students, peers and the clientele of a packed karaoke bar in the Cowgate and sang – and I use the word loosely – Band of Gold. Luckily, by the second chorus the man had switched off the microphones, but I’ll never forget the expression of incomprehension that slowly dawned on the face of my partner in crime as I completely failed to hit any notes whatsoever. In fact, I saw her in the street the other day, and she hung her head in shame and hurried past without stopping.

Little wonder then that I had resigned myself to a life unleavened by song (not counting the odd furtive rendition of Jolene in the shower). Until, that is, I heard about Yes You Can Sing! Singing lessons for people who can’t sing. Curiosity got the better of me and I phoned teacher Gena Dry.

“Yes You Can Sing!” she said.

“No really, I can’t,” I protested.

“You can,” said Gena, without hesitation. “I can teach anyone to sing.”

“You haven’t heard me. I think I’m tone deaf.”

“I bet you’re not. There isn’t anyone I can’t teach.”

“Do you really think so?”

“Try me.”

Never one to resist a challenge, I signed up there and then for a group karaoke workshop. Under the strict stipulation that although I’d do my best during the lesson, under no circumstances would I humiliate myself by exposing my vocal failings in public afterwards. No way. Band of Gold had taught me a bitter lesson, one I wasn’t going to forget in a hurry.

When I arrived at Gena’s London studio, I discovered I wasn’t alone. As we stood in a circle, someone murmured: “This is like AA”, then, one by one, we introduced ourselves. “I’m Sarah and I can’t sing Happy Birthday without feeling embarrassed.” “I’m James and I want to develop a larger-than-life persona.” “My name’s Zoe and God, if you’re listening, please make the ground open up and swallow me.” OK, I didn’t say it out loud, but believe me I was thinking it.

Gena nodded sympathetically, and gave us a quick pep talk, “There’s a performer in everyone, that’s why karaoke is so successful. People love performing. Once you give them permission, they just adore it. We’ve all got a diva within us and today is all about bringing that diva out.”

I looked to look round the room. Aside from me, there was a lecturer, a temp, another journalist (strictly off duty), an interior designer and two life coaches. Apparently risking shaming yourself horribly in public is a crucial part of personal development. More surprising was the even gender balance. For some reason, I’d anticipated that the group would be all female, but it turns out that men are keen to sing karaoke too. But we were all shiftily evading eye contact and nobody looked obvious diva material. Gena was going to have her work cut out.

I’d somehow imagined we’d build up to the singing, but the first step was to throw the prospective kings and queens of karaoke straight in at the deep end. Gena taught us the words of Hit the Road Jack, a song for which I have something of a soft spot, and we sang the chorus together. Stephen was clearly already well acquainted with the diva within, but he’d done the workshop before. Awestruck, the rest of us crooned along as best we could, or rather I did my weddings and funerals trick of mouthing the words. Obviously used to this sort of shilly-shallying, Gena made the men sing together and then the women.

“I can’t hear you, girls.”

Unwilling to let the side down, I started making some noise. Nobody laughed, more to the point nobody cried and no dogs started howling. I started to relax. Until, that is, Gena started asking us to sing a line each. Alone. In front of other people… including a trained professional. My nightmare made real. When it came to my turn, I procrastinated, stuttered uncontrollably, then finally, unbelievably for me, I sang.

“Well done, you were in tune.”

“I wasn’t.”

“You were.”

I looked to my companions for approval. They nodded.

“You don’t mean to say …?”

“Yes, you can sing!”

I felt like pulling my top over my head and running round in circles, they way footballers do when they score a goal.

“Well, you wouldn’t expect to be able to drive without taking any lessons, would you?” Gena said.

It seems that singing isn’t any different, which was something of a revelation for me. I always thought you’d either got it or you hadn’t, but Gena explained that despite dreaming of becoming a professional singer, at age 20 she herself still couldn’t sing a note.

“Finally someone said, well, you’d better go and learn then. So off I went to singing teachers who said things like, it’s such a shame, you’re so keen. Or, the one before you, she was a natural. Or even, why don’t you take up cookery instead? But I just kept going until I found a teacher who said well, you can’t sing, but I can teach you. And I learned to sing well enough to make records and go on tour.”

Which explains why she now gets such a kick out of helping people to fulfil their own dreams. At the moment she’s coaching someone who wants to sing Shania Twain to her husband on their wedding night (From This Moment On rather than Man, I Feel Like A Woman, thankfully).

“When the goals are so personal, it’s such a joy. The person can’t lose, because it’s about having generosity and courage. Everyone will love them when they do it, so actually it’s easy to help people give a good performance that will make everyone say, wow, that was amazing.”

So while we might not be able to learn to sing properly in an afternoon, we could at least learn to sing with feeling and give an entertaining performance, distracting attention from any bum notes. Which sounded fine in theory, but in practice we still had the air of teenagers hanging around outside the headmaster’s office waiting to be suspended. Time for some serious icebreaking.

As I got down on my knees and plucked out an impassioned riff on my invisible Fender Stratocaster with my teeth, I was suddenly reminded that Gena does corporate workshops too. Forget paintball, how much more part of the team would you feel if you’d seen your boss leaping around aping Justin from The Darkness? By the time we’d mirrored each other’s dancefloor antics and reprised our most embarrassing hairbrush-for-a-mic posturing, we were well and truly bonded. We might not have had the voices yet, but we certainly had the moves.

Time for the true test. To sing a chorus alone, in front of the group, with no musical accompaniment. Full of new found confidence, we all passed. Plus another inner diva broke out. Lucy, who had never taken lessons or sung in front of anyone before in her life, spontaneously revealed herself to be a Chrissie Hynde-style rock goddess.

“That’s the scariest thing you could ever do,” Gena congratulated us. “After that, you can do anything.”

A few more practice songs and we were raring to go, though I have to say, when we tackled Suspicious Minds, the photographer did look as though her ears were about to start bleeding.

There’s only one word for the New Thai Orient Karaoke Restaurant in Turnpike Lane and that’s freaky. If expletives were allowed, I would elaborate. I don’t know if David Lynch is scouting for locations in London, but he could do worse. We were the first to arrive, so all its shabby glory was visible – the taped together seats, the cigarette burns in the carpet, that vaguely suspect stickiness on all the surfaces. But the staff and the wonderfully over the top karaokemeister, gave us a warm welcome, and we were soon ensconced with a generous supply of Thai beer, some stomach lining noodles and the karaoke menu.

“One Singha, one song, eh?” quipped Gary, indicating the label on the beer bottles and signing himself up for a Queen number.

I didn’t like to point out that it would take a hell of a lot more than one Singha for me to volunteer to strut my stuff. I knew nobody would force me to sing, but I was already half-crucified by guilt at my intention to wimp out.

The place was filling up alarmingly quickly, so Gena got the party started by singing It’s Oh So Quiet, which I’d never have predicted as a karaoke winner. The audience were captivated and everything she’d taught us became clear. Then again, when she was fronting her band the Colour Noise, the music press did compare her to Bjork, Sinead O’Connor and Alanis Morissette. The more vocally challenged members of the group exchanged agonised glances and started to pray that those performance skills would have the desired effect.

As one after another of my companions conquered their nerves and got up and sang, I realised with mounting horror that I owed it to them to do it too. Gaining succour from the benevolent response to a truly heinous interpretation of Kelis’s Milkshake, I scrawled my name next to the number for Hit the Road Jack and handed over the slip. There was no turning back. With trembling hands, I drained another Singha and offered to sell my soul to the devil if only my inner diva would get her finger out and come to my rescue. As it turned out, no Faustian pact was required. To my amazement, I did it. I sang a complete song, competently, in front of an audience and they didn’t run screaming from the room. They clapped, especially my proud new karaoke pals. What’s more, I actually enjoyed it. I’m not harbouring any illusions that I’ve suddenly morphed into Memphis period Dusty, but it was fantastic fun.

Before I knew it, the clock had struck midnight and not only had here been no lachrymose mauling of I Will Survive, but I’d provided spirited backing vocals to Should I Stay Or Should I Go and half of an emotionally charged duet of Desperado. It was definitely time to quit while I was ahead, or at least before I committed myself to a season of Gena’s song and dance workshops. Inner diva, fine, inner Agnetha from Abba, I can live without. Apparently the hardcore remaining Yes You Can Singers hooked up with a bunch of revellers and were still belting out show tunes at 3am.

Early the next morning, as I walked through the sleepy streets towards the Tube, even a surfeit of Singha couldn’t stop me from feeling high as a kite and indulging in a few “Gotta sing!” moments. When I spotted a crowd going into a church, it was all I could do to prevent my inner diva from running across the road and joining them. The congregation of the King’s Cross Welsh Tabernacle might not have been ready for my gutsy take on Fever quite yet, but the next time someone whips out a guitar at a party, there’ll be no stopping me.

Why everyone wants to sing

Margit Irimia has a lot to answer for. The ditty she wrote for her daughters, “We are the cheeky girls, you are the cheeky boys”, must rank among the most irritatingly catchy songs of all time.

The Romanian duo first graced our screens in 2002, during the auditions for Popstars: the Rivals and were the butt of jokes for weeks afterwards.

However, within a few months of the show’s finale, the Cheeky Girls had been rewarded for their lack of competence, signing a record deal with music mogul Simon Cowell.

The triumph of the deeply untalented sets a dangerous precedent. However, there are degrees of dreadfulness and these programmes show that people can improve. Take Darius Danesh, for example. First time around he murdered Britney Spears’s Hit Me Baby One More Time. A year later he was back and able to sing. Then there are those who we like to think would have made it with or without our telephone votes. The first Pop Idol, Will Young, is currently the best-selling male artist in the UK. Talent will out, as they say, but cheeky girls should keep it in.