Ten Years in an Empty Orchestra Pit: A Relatively Sympathetic Observer's Guide to Karaoke--Pt. III
winners. While such contests generally attract a better class of singers, they also pierce the artificial veneer of camaraderie among the participants, that unnatural show of disingenuous humility that is as much a part of the karaoke scene as second hand smoke ("You were great!" "Thanks, but you were even better!"). Once the contest begins, everyone breaks out their best show-off songs, and polite applause is mixed with catty murmurs about missed notes and shaky rhythms. The tension builds with each performance until the "judges" (usually the KJ and/or a few pals) separate the victors from the vanquished.
Anyone expecting a karaoke contest to result in an impartial assessment of talent is hopelessly naïve. First, the song selections can vary so widely (rap, country, rock, musicals) that selecting between them is like comparing apples and ostriches. Second, most karaoke singers have the stage presence of Richard Nixon on Quaaludes, so there's not much to go on there, either. But more important than anything else, this is not the Miss America pageant: it's an effort to lengthen bar tabs. So the first thing you need to know is that the winner will probably be one of the regulars, someone who shows up and spends money even on days when no rewards are offered. KJs are not Price Waterhouse accountants; they are sworn to no professional standards, but they do have friends, favorites, and girls that they're trying to hit on. As a rule, expect the contest winner to emerge from one of those three categories.
Karaoke is popular in Lubbock, Texas, perhaps because the town has relatively few alternative diversions (shooting prairie dogs gets old very quickly). Lubbock is a place where grown-ups still wear Stetsons, and it was the site of the first karaoke contest I ever witnessed. The crowd was fairly young, and the KJ, when he wasn't awkwardly flirting with a gaggle of fetching coeds, was cranking up the amps to a level somewhere between "puree" and "liquefy". The contest featured a series of George Straits and Garth Brookses with an occasional Dixie Chick thrown in for variety. It wasn't the Grand Ole Opry, but they weren't bad. When the winners were finally announced, everyone was a little surprised that Cowboy Hat Guy #5 had beaten out Cowboy Hat Guy #2, who seemed to be the better singer. It wasn't as much of an injustice as the Soviets winning the Olympic
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