Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
Speaker 1: and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant Chucker's Chuck tran Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just spice it up a little bit with some
Speaker 1: multiple stuff. Uh. And no one else is here with us.
Speaker 1: We're we're alone out there in the ether, um, and
Speaker 1: this is stuff you should know. Although my prediction is, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, we started recording a bit early today since
Speaker 1: we're on our own. I bet guest producer Dave and
Speaker 1: short stuff producer Dave was going to chime in about
Speaker 1: five minutes. Okay, yeah, well look forward to hearing what
Speaker 1: he says. Uh, what's your deal with karaoke? I sort
Speaker 1: of know, but I think that people should know. We should,
Speaker 1: we should, we should exchange stories. Okay. I like karaoke. Um.
Speaker 1: I particularly like karaoke in the K Box, which we'll
Speaker 1: talk about, which is basically it's a little private karaoke
Speaker 1: room for you and your friends. Have some great memories
Speaker 1: um of karaoke like that. Um. But I'll do it
Speaker 1: in front of an audience if I get a drink
Speaker 1: or two in me, you know, not too much. Though
Speaker 1: you go too much, you start trying to, like, you know,
Speaker 1: fight the piano player or something like that. Uh. Oh,
Speaker 1: so like live karaoke. Yeah, I've mentioned it a couple
Speaker 1: of times, but Sig Gold's Request Room in Manhattan is
Speaker 1: the place to go for live piano karaoke. Um. It's
Speaker 1: just a beautiful, wonderful place. So if you haven't been there,
Speaker 1: go check it out. It's great, about as good as
Speaker 1: live karaoke gets, like live instrument karaoke. Alright, so I
Speaker 1: haven't been there. I will go still, I forget you know,
Speaker 1: I thought you would have gone this past year. Right,
Speaker 1: I haven't been there, never been in a k box,
Speaker 1: um no, never had the private kerrie. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: we'll pronounce it karaoke even though it's kr a okay,
Speaker 1: cut out, okay, cut it okay, But we're not gonna
Speaker 1: do that. We're not because I think Dave Ruse helps
Speaker 1: us out. He's like, you can pronounce it correctly, but
Speaker 1: don't be expected to be invited out to karaoke night
Speaker 1: with your friends anymore, right after you practice your kata
Speaker 1: te right exactly. Uh so I um have done live
Speaker 1: karaoke a few years ago on my birthday. We went
Speaker 1: to the um, the one that has the rock band
Speaker 1: in the Virginia Highlands. I don't know that one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean they have the full on band. It's rock
Speaker 1: and roll live karaoke. Uh. One of the local Atlanta
Speaker 1: DJ's English Nick is there to serve as um sort
Speaker 1: of a backup singer, and they can mix his vocals
Speaker 1: and more if you're really bad, because no one wants
Speaker 1: to hear that kind of thing. But I get up
Speaker 1: there and did Surrender by cheap Trick and he uh.
Speaker 1: I saw him at one point even stand away from
Speaker 1: the mic, and I was like, I've got this. Oh wow.
Speaker 1: He he like went and did something else. I maybe
Speaker 1: ate some corns tips or something, a tip of the cap.
Speaker 1: But my deal with Karrie Karie okay, is I used
Speaker 1: to be scared to death to try it, and that
Speaker 1: was when I had severe stage fright performance anxiety, which
Speaker 1: I completely got over because now I'm in a band
Speaker 1: that sings in front of people. You and I get
Speaker 1: on stage in front of people and it doesn't bother
Speaker 1: me anymore. I think I'd still probably be a little
Speaker 1: nervous to do like an acoustic open mic thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you should be for a number of reasons. But uh,
Speaker 1: it's just funny how I used to be so scared
Speaker 1: and really overthink karaoke, like sit in the room, anxiety sweats,
Speaker 1: I really want to do it, but I won't put
Speaker 1: my name down, and then you know, the night comes
Speaker 1: and goes and I don't do it. Then I had
Speaker 1: this guilt and bad feelings. It was. It was a thing. Oh,
Speaker 1: I mean this was in my twenties and into my
Speaker 1: early thirties. I think when I moved to l a
Speaker 1: As when I really started. I guess it was in
Speaker 1: my twenties because when I moved to l As, when
Speaker 1: I uh finally did it, I was like, this is fine,
Speaker 1: and I sing better than a lot of these people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a great feeling to to, you know, be done
Speaker 1: and have the people you're with be like I had
Speaker 1: no idea you could do that. That's really impressive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's fun. Yeah, I enjoy it. Thir Do you have
Speaker 1: a standard karaoke song that you you do or too? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I usually try to do uh And I
Speaker 1: think we've talked about this under pressure by Queen and
Speaker 1: Bowie and I do kind of both parts at the
Speaker 1: same time you do like the Tibetan throat chaining kind
Speaker 1: of thing. But I I have made some mistakes too.
Speaker 1: I tried to do Foreigner as Cold as I said
Speaker 1: a friends uh not at their wedding but wedding weekend
Speaker 1: at a bar in Philly, and I just I was
Speaker 1: feeling it and was like, I had forgotten how high
Speaker 1: that song is. It was, Yeah, that can be a
Speaker 1: problem when you like starting your range but then you forget,
Speaker 1: Oh it keeps going up. That's a that's a real
Speaker 1: karaoke problem. And actually I saw a check that if
Speaker 1: you do that enough times you can get what it's
Speaker 1: called karaoke polyps, which are really Yeah, it's basically like
Speaker 1: polyps that grow on your vocal cords from straining your
Speaker 1: vocal cords by trying to sing like a professional without
Speaker 1: the training of a professional singer. So it can be
Speaker 1: deadly dangerous. Maybe not the deadly part, but it can
Speaker 1: be dangerous. Yeah, And I used to do the mental
Speaker 1: gymnastics of kind of like stepping outside and going through
Speaker 1: the song mentally real quick. Yeah, yeah, can I hit
Speaker 1: the parts for sure? For sure? And you should, I think,
Speaker 1: just as a responsible karaoke singer, you kind of do
Speaker 1: need to make sure that you can sing the song, because, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of funny to you if you do a
Speaker 1: bad karaoke performance. But the point of karaoke is to
Speaker 1: like blow everybody's socks off. Like just just tear the
Speaker 1: roof off the suckers is kind of my personal motto
Speaker 1: every time I grab the mic. Yeah, and you know,
Speaker 1: I've had sometimes where I've seen some performances at the
Speaker 1: live karaoke thing. There was this country guy that clearly
Speaker 1: drives in from you know, country Georgia to do this,
Speaker 1: and he had a cowboy head on and he did
Speaker 1: want a dead or alive. You could tell that's his deal.
Speaker 1: He comes into the city, he crushes it, and then
Speaker 1: goes back to the farm the next day and everyone's like,
Speaker 1: who was that lonesome cowboy? Who was that mask stranger?
Speaker 1: It's pretty cool to see an everyday person just get
Speaker 1: up there and really kill it. Yeah, and I'm sure
Speaker 1: that guy has to go out of town because he
Speaker 1: probably get beat up at his town if he tried
Speaker 1: to do that there. You know, he's kind of like this,
Speaker 1: like being anonymous too kind of enables that karaoke Gusto,
Speaker 1: I think as well, Yeah, so you said something earlier. Um,
Speaker 1: you compared kado okay and kada te. And there's a
Speaker 1: good reason for that because karate karta ta means empty
Speaker 1: hand and um kado okay is actually short for kata oka.
Speaker 1: Man I even practice this kata okayta um, which is
Speaker 1: like romangi when when people in Japan take an English
Speaker 1: word and just kind of chapaint it up a little bit.
Speaker 1: So instead of orchestra, it's okaya and kata so it
Speaker 1: means empty in Okaya means orchestra, so it's an empty orchestra.
Speaker 1: And that's really what car karaoke. Kata okay is. It's
Speaker 1: it's slang for empty orchestra, and it actually predates the
Speaker 1: concept of karaoke that we think of today. Yeah, apparently
Speaker 1: in the early fifties that was a you know, a
Speaker 1: pit orchestra in Osaka. They said we want you know,
Speaker 1: I'm the army. Sure what they wanted, you would assume
Speaker 1: better wages or more bathroom breaks or something, and they
Speaker 1: went on strike and the theater replaced them with a
Speaker 1: sound system and it was from Matsuda like tronics, And
Speaker 1: apparently as the story goes executive from Matsuda came there,
Speaker 1: heard the system and said, it's uh, the orchestra. There's
Speaker 1: music playing about the orchestra pit is empty, and thus
Speaker 1: the term was coined empty orchestra. And that was that
Speaker 1: was in the fifties. Um, I think nineteen fifty two
Speaker 1: was it, Yes, so um. Karaoke as we understand it
Speaker 1: today didn't come along for good almost two decades later.
Speaker 1: So there was this idea that anytime you had prerecorded music,
Speaker 1: especially if it was played in instead of you know,
Speaker 1: where a live performer would play, UM, that that was
Speaker 1: karaoke kata okay um. So it was kind of a
Speaker 1: handy term that a guy named Desca in a way
Speaker 1: um used when he came up with karaoke. And the
Speaker 1: idea of who invented karaoke who came up with it
Speaker 1: is not just widely settled, but for the most part,
Speaker 1: there is like those who know site desk in a
Speaker 1: way as the as the guy who who actually came
Speaker 1: up with this as we understand it, Yeah, I did see.
Speaker 1: You know, there are a couple of other people in
Speaker 1: the late sixties that kind of messed around with machines
Speaker 1: that kind of did what what the karaoke machine does.
Speaker 1: But yeah, his story is great. He's a if you
Speaker 1: look him up a picture, he's a pretty cool looking customer.
Speaker 1: And in Osaka in the fifties, he was in high
Speaker 1: school and he was a drummer in a rock band
Speaker 1: and then tried to be a musician professionally for a
Speaker 1: little while, but like so many musicians that tried that
Speaker 1: for a little while, ended up back at home in
Speaker 1: his late twenties, living with his parents in Kobe. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but he gave it a good decade long try, you know,
Speaker 1: he was out on the road. I read this really
Speaker 1: great UM kind of mini biography or autobiography UM from
Speaker 1: the early two thousands that was published in the appendix
Speaker 1: is voice Hero to look that up. It's a really
Speaker 1: he's just a charming guy. Um. But he he tried
Speaker 1: it for about ten years and it just didn't work
Speaker 1: out because most of the money was pocketed by the older,
Speaker 1: more established musicians. UM, and it just he wasn't going anywhere.
Speaker 1: I think he said that he realized that no matter
Speaker 1: how much he practiced, and he really practiced, UM, he
Speaker 1: would never be as good as somebody who had natural
Speaker 1: talent and it just wasn't for him, so he decided
Speaker 1: to try something else. But he didn't want to give
Speaker 1: up um playing entirely. He wanted to try to make
Speaker 1: a living somehow from playing music, and it just so
Speaker 1: happens that his parents living in Kobe placed him at
Speaker 1: this really particularly good spot for karaoke to begin, which
Speaker 1: is Kobe, which is about thirty minutes outside of Osaka,
Speaker 1: um where the very famous Kobe beef comes from. And
Speaker 1: at the time in Kobe, and for a while before that,
Speaker 1: there was a popular pastime of singalongs, which is basically
Speaker 1: like you go to a bar a snack is what
Speaker 1: they were called, and there'd be somebody playing a piano
Speaker 1: or a guitar or something like that, and everybody would sing,
Speaker 1: you know, popular songs along with the mini band that
Speaker 1: was playing. Yeah, but that was like groups singing together, uh,
Speaker 1: not like a single person either delighting or embarrassing themselves. Um.
Speaker 1: But he got into this scene a little bit and
Speaker 1: it was clearly a popular thing. So he's like, I'm
Speaker 1: a musician. I guess he played piano too, and he
Speaker 1: learned a few hundred really popular songs on piano and
Speaker 1: then started performing as the accompaniments, accompaniments, accompaniment. I think
Speaker 1: that's the Latin plural accompaniments accompany down what's the word
Speaker 1: for the person the accompanist? Accompany is accompany minimust empotymus.
Speaker 1: None of these sound right, it's accompany list Okay, that
Speaker 1: just sounds weird to me. But you know how that
Speaker 1: your brain just broke it did a little bit. So
Speaker 1: he was doing this as the piano guy, the piano man,
Speaker 1: if you will, and one day this customer comes in
Speaker 1: who had been frequenting these nights where he was playing piano,
Speaker 1: and he was like, listen, I'm a business guy. I
Speaker 1: gotta go to a different city on the sales for
Speaker 1: the sales meeting, and I gotta take these uh these
Speaker 1: other people out to you know, to go out drinking
Speaker 1: and singing after and you're my guy. I can't like,
Speaker 1: I can only sing along with you. So would you
Speaker 1: mind recording something for me that I can bring along?
Speaker 1: And he said sure, So we recorded some stuff on
Speaker 1: a reel to reel, gave it to him. The trip
Speaker 1: was a big hit, and the guy came back and
Speaker 1: said I need more of these, and that was, you know,
Speaker 1: literally the aha moment. He grabbed desca in a way
Speaker 1: by his lapels and shook him and said, give me more, man,
Speaker 1: I need some more. And he did. And apparently right
Speaker 1: at this time, as he was being shaken, Desca left
Speaker 1: his body astro project elsewhere into the universe, where he
Speaker 1: was greeted by the same entity that Um that led
Speaker 1: to the creation of Ketchup, and the same entity has
Speaker 1: Ketchup and karaoke under its belt because it met with
Speaker 1: Daiskin said this is like, pay attention to what's happening
Speaker 1: right now, invent karaoke, and dasa Um basically came back
Speaker 1: to his body and said, I have I have this
Speaker 1: great idea. I'm going to invent a machine that is
Speaker 1: basically me what this guy wants me to do live
Speaker 1: that I can multiply create a bunch of different machines
Speaker 1: that do the same thing and it's going to be
Speaker 1: the first karaoke machine ever. And that's what he did.
Speaker 1: He came up with something called the Duke eight, which
Speaker 1: is a great name. Yeah, it's cool looking, I mean
Speaker 1: the idea and you can look at pictures of the
Speaker 1: guy with this thing and it's you know, it's about
Speaker 1: the size of a small guitar amp or something which
Speaker 1: is not bad. You'd think would be the size of
Speaker 1: like a smart car or something for the first prototype
Speaker 1: back in the day. But it was simple. I mean,
Speaker 1: they had amps at the time. They really just combined
Speaker 1: a few technologies, which was an eight track player right
Speaker 1: from a car, A car, a car eight track players
Speaker 1: where they started with oh yeah and a which are
Speaker 1: really no different than any other eight track players. I
Speaker 1: guess that's true. Yeah, yeah, I mean maybe they worked
Speaker 1: better in motion. I don't know, no, but that's probably
Speaker 1: why those cars were so big, because they had to
Speaker 1: be that big back in the day to hold the
Speaker 1: eight track track. Uh. So, you know, it was like
Speaker 1: an eight track player mixed with a you know, an
Speaker 1: amp or a p A, a small p A. And
Speaker 1: his ideas, you know, he called the juke e because
Speaker 1: it was kind of like a juke box, is that
Speaker 1: you would put money in it like a juke box
Speaker 1: to get a certain amount of time on the clock,
Speaker 1: which I think was kind of brilliant instead of like
Speaker 1: a song, um like, I think the idea is that
Speaker 1: people would just keep feeding it. Yeah. He actually specifically
Speaker 1: said that he chose five minutes a hundred yen about
Speaker 1: thirty five cents bought you five minutes of singing time
Speaker 1: so that you'd be part way through the second song
Speaker 1: and have to put more money and to finish the
Speaker 1: second song. He was he was a sharp tack in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways, well in some way, in some way.
Speaker 1: Uh So I think they took a couple of months
Speaker 1: to build each. Uh They cost him about four d
Speaker 1: and twenty five bucks, which is about today. And he said,
Speaker 1: I gotta get some of these tracks recorded. So he
Speaker 1: got a bunch of his friends to record, you know,
Speaker 1: musicians to record these instrumental tracks, started shopping it around
Speaker 1: and sold all eleven of those machines and pretty quick order. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think. Um, I don't know if he sold them
Speaker 1: or if he took them as like basically, um a
Speaker 1: proof of conflict, yeah, something like that. Either way, he
Speaker 1: did get them in eleven different clubs around Kobe, um,
Speaker 1: and everybody was glad to have him there to look at.
Speaker 1: And that was about it. They just sat there and
Speaker 1: nobody did anything with him. Nobody knew quite what to
Speaker 1: do with them. And even if they did, I think
Speaker 1: it took you know how much gumption it takes in
Speaker 1: an established karaoke place when other people are doing it.
Speaker 1: Imagine being literally the first person to do karaoke like
Speaker 1: you probably would. You know, it just took a little bit. So, Um,
Speaker 1: Desica hired somebody, uh he said, a pretty girl in
Speaker 1: a sexy outfit is how he put it in that
Speaker 1: one autobiography, UM, and had her go around to all
Speaker 1: these eleven clubs and basically like sing karaoke. And she
Speaker 1: did it, um because he hired her too. But apparently
Speaker 1: she came back and was like, I would do that
Speaker 1: again just for fun. That was a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: And from that point on, basically the whole concept of
Speaker 1: karaoke took off, at least in Kobe. Yeah, there were
Speaker 1: about two hundred of these machines uh in and around
Speaker 1: Kobe uh in pretty short order. And I think it's
Speaker 1: a good time to take a break. I think it
Speaker 1: is too, because karaoke is just simmering that the lid
Speaker 1: is like rattling on the pot right now. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: about to blow. All right, we'll be right back. Well,
Speaker 1: now we're on the road, driving in your truck. Want
Speaker 1: to learn a thing or two from Josh can Chuck.
Speaker 1: It's stuff you should know, all right, Okay, chuck. So
Speaker 1: there's a rendered fat spitting out the sides of the
Speaker 1: pot and steam going everywhere. I just burned my hand
Speaker 1: on it. Let's tear the lid off of this sucker,
Speaker 1: which is tangential to my karaoke motto of tearing the
Speaker 1: roof off the sucker. That's right. So they're going gangbusters
Speaker 1: in Kobe, and like you said, it's not too far
Speaker 1: from Osaka, which is a bigger city. And a couple
Speaker 1: of entrepreneurs from Kobe said, this is great, but we
Speaker 1: need to get this to Osaka, And they brought a
Speaker 1: duke eight around kind of showed it around and it
Speaker 1: really hit big to the tune of they were moving
Speaker 1: about twenty five thousand of these a year pretty quickly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Because so remember I said that Kobe was like a
Speaker 1: perfect place for karaoke to to kind of be incubated,
Speaker 1: because people already did these sing alongs in Tokyo and Osaka.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like that they liked watching an actual band
Speaker 1: perform or listening to actual songs in the jukebox. Um.
Speaker 1: But when these guys, it could not find the name
Speaker 1: of this club, but that when they opened, essentially the
Speaker 1: first karaoke club in Osaka. Um. I guess it just
Speaker 1: hit at just the right chord, just the right time,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, Osaka was a karaoke town,
Speaker 1: and in very short order, Tokyo was as well. Um
Speaker 1: And because it kind of blew up for the first
Speaker 1: time in Osaka, Osaka is considered the birthplace of karaoke,
Speaker 1: even though it really was born in Kobe, like very plainly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So you know you mentioned earlier that he was a
Speaker 1: pretty sharp tack in some ways, uh and others. And
Speaker 1: I'm not saying he wasn't smart, but he didn't patent
Speaker 1: the thing. His brother in law said he really should
Speaker 1: patent this Duke eight. He said, you know what, patent
Speaker 1: law is really complicated here in Japan. It's super expensive. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, all I can patent is the business model
Speaker 1: because all of these you know, it's just a combination
Speaker 1: of other components that already have patents on the which
Speaker 1: is you know, I guess it's just different. I know,
Speaker 1: just from my Shark Tank viewing that in America, if
Speaker 1: you put together these different or any different technologies and
Speaker 1: just the right way, you can't get a patent, you know,
Speaker 1: not always but um, I've seen patents go through where
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, that's just this, this and this. They're like, yes,
Speaker 1: but we can bind them in the patent offense recognized it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's I think it's called an improvement or something like that.
Speaker 1: And I actually read this really interesting article chuck in
Speaker 1: a on magazine like I don't know, five six, seven
Speaker 1: years ago, um, where it basically made the case we
Speaker 1: stopped actually innovating we humans did back in maybe the
Speaker 1: sixties or seventies, and that everything we've invented since then
Speaker 1: it's basically just putting existing stuff together. And they used
Speaker 1: the example of the iPhone, which basically is like, it's amazing,
Speaker 1: it's this amazing technology, but it's you know, it's a camera,
Speaker 1: it's also a phone, it's also your email, it's also text.
Speaker 1: Like it's all these existing things just put together in
Speaker 1: one convenient place. Um. And that that's a really great
Speaker 1: example of how we actually stopped like creating new stuff
Speaker 1: and just basically repurposing, repackaging existing stuff, and that hopefully
Speaker 1: we're due for another huge technological advancement sometime soon if
Speaker 1: we don't, um, just decline from utter decadence before we
Speaker 1: get the chance to do that. Yeah. I remember there
Speaker 1: was a meme a few years ago or probably a
Speaker 1: little more than that, that showed up this the front
Speaker 1: page of a radio shack magazine at or whatever, and
Speaker 1: it was in at the bottom it said, all of
Speaker 1: these are now on your smartphone and it was like
Speaker 1: forty things, you know, from like tape recorders to microphones,
Speaker 1: to cameras to uh, you know thing, what's the thing
Speaker 1: that tells the temperature? The a an accompanist? But basically
Speaker 1: everything you know on that page is now on an iPhone.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like, well, and now I see why
Speaker 1: Radio Scheck is no longer around. Yeah, poor Radio Scheck.
Speaker 1: They really they did a lot there and they got
Speaker 1: kind of dissed at the end. It was pretty great.
Speaker 1: I love that story, it was and they had a
Speaker 1: really cool logo too. I agreed. Um. So, so you
Speaker 1: said that that he did not patent the karaoke machine
Speaker 1: the juke a right, Yeah, I mean he made plenty
Speaker 1: of money still though. Yeah. So yes, he's still manufactured
Speaker 1: juke case eight and sold them and you know, he
Speaker 1: sold tens of thousands of them a year and they
Speaker 1: were his machine. So basically for a long time until Base,
Speaker 1: until other competitors figured out that there wasn't a patent
Speaker 1: on this thing. Um, if you wanted a karaoke machine,
Speaker 1: you had to go to Daska in a way, right
Speaker 1: and buy one. So yes, he definitely made money, and
Speaker 1: he continued to make money over the decades and through
Speaker 1: the years, selling like UM equipment or UM cd s
Speaker 1: stuff like that. Right, So he was fine, and he
Speaker 1: actually seems very zen about this. But it is entirely
Speaker 1: clear that had he patented this, and I think this
Speaker 1: really kind of drove home to me just how globally
Speaker 1: popular karaoke is, he would have been a billionaire many
Speaker 1: times over just from inventing karaoke and kicking back and
Speaker 1: taking the royalties from the initial patent. He didn't like,
Speaker 1: I agree, though he didn't seem like that kind of
Speaker 1: guy from reading about him, it seemed because once you
Speaker 1: do that, your job then is is fighting people in court. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and that who wants to do that now? He didn't
Speaker 1: seem interested in it. He also wondered, I think in
Speaker 1: that one autobiography article, if it would have taken off
Speaker 1: UM had had he had a patent on it, it
Speaker 1: might not have just gotten as big as it was.
Speaker 1: I think that, you know, which is a pretty an
Speaker 1: argument in favor against intello intellectual property laws. But I
Speaker 1: think we should do in an episode just on intellectual
Speaker 1: property one day. Let's do it. Let's do it shot. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know who didn't feel that way was uh, an
Speaker 1: inventor from the Philippines name Roberto del Rosario, because he
Speaker 1: did get a patent on his karaoke singalong system in
Speaker 1: seventy five. Uh. And you know, I guess he'd I
Speaker 1: don't know his full story, but surely he knew what
Speaker 1: was going on with the Duke eight and knew that
Speaker 1: he could kind of capitalize on that. He I read
Speaker 1: a little bio on him, and apparently he claims that
Speaker 1: he had no idea about um karaoke as far as
Speaker 1: Japan is concerned, and that he invented it independently. So
Speaker 1: who knows about that. But he's also very frequently cited
Speaker 1: as an inventor of karaoke incorrectly. UM. And then there's
Speaker 1: another guy too, who will meet Actually, let's meet him
Speaker 1: right now. There's a guy named um k T kag
Speaker 1: Come on, so ka uh is a He was a
Speaker 1: Japanese businessman who happened to manufacture um karaoke machines and
Speaker 1: the reason that he's frequently cited as the inventor of
Speaker 1: karaokes because he and another guy named Earl Glick are
Speaker 1: the two men who introduced karaoke to the West through
Speaker 1: a machine debuting in two called the Singing Machine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we should say that. Uh. You know, Dave, one
Speaker 1: of our great writers, helped us put this together and
Speaker 1: he got a lot of this stuff from this point
Speaker 1: forward from a book by a man named Brian Raftery
Speaker 1: called it Don't Stop Believing Colin How karaoke conquered the
Speaker 1: World and changed My life. And I think this is
Speaker 1: kind of one of the seminal books on karia. That's
Speaker 1: the impression I have as well. Um, but you know
Speaker 1: it came to America, like you said, it had been
Speaker 1: spreading throughout Japan and obviously with international business travel in
Speaker 1: international travel period, it's the kind of thing that eventually
Speaker 1: made its way to the States. And uh, this film producer,
Speaker 1: producer of Children of the Corn was, Yeah, that's sort
Speaker 1: of his most most noteworthy movie because I mean, well
Speaker 1: he respect he was, Yeah, I mean I had respect
Speaker 1: for him, just being the head of how Roach Studios.
Speaker 1: How Roach Studios were responsible for Laurel and Hardy and
Speaker 1: our gang, the Little Rascals, but by the time Earl
Speaker 1: Glick was presiding over it, it was like basically teetering
Speaker 1: on bankruptcy and resting on its Laurels had no idea
Speaker 1: that he produced children of the Corn. So, yeah, mad
Speaker 1: respect to Earl Glick. So in nineteen eighty and again
Speaker 1: this is a great story. I hope it really went
Speaker 1: this way. He was on a cruise ship and he
Speaker 1: was playing blackjack, ran out of dough and needed to
Speaker 1: double down and needed more money because he had a
Speaker 1: great hand apparently, and there was like you said, a
Speaker 1: man named is it Kai or k k which is
Speaker 1: short for Kiso Kisu, so k is nearby. He said,
Speaker 1: here's three three large I can cover you on. That
Speaker 1: gave him three grand glick one and obviously that formed
Speaker 1: a friendship. He was like, you're you're a great guy
Speaker 1: just to give me three thousand dollars like yeah, and
Speaker 1: and k was like, you're a great guy to pay
Speaker 1: me back exactly, And they they bonded there on the
Speaker 1: cruise ship and when they hit Tokyo and docked. Uh.
Speaker 1: Takagi took Mr Glick back to his office, said, Hey,
Speaker 1: look at this karaoke thing. It's pretty great. You should
Speaker 1: get these going in the States. And Click was like,
Speaker 1: and I'm not so sure about this, but Takagi was
Speaker 1: not to be deterred, and over the next year would
Speaker 1: kind of send him sales figures to the point where
Speaker 1: Click was like, hey, there's some real money to be
Speaker 1: made here. Yeah, so so, I mean, at least in Japan.
Speaker 1: By this time, karaoke had been like a huge since
Speaker 1: station in Japan for a full decade, like it changed
Speaker 1: the culture. Um Deska in a way basically points to
Speaker 1: the invention of karaoke as like giving like all of
Speaker 1: these intensely overworked Japanese office workers a way to like
Speaker 1: blow off steam and like just feel better about themselves
Speaker 1: that they otherwise didn't have. So it really took off
Speaker 1: in Japan, but it was questionable whether it was going
Speaker 1: to take off in America. So it wasn't like a
Speaker 1: given thing that just because the sales figures were high
Speaker 1: in Japan that they were going to translate into America.
Speaker 1: And at first, actually that is how it went. When
Speaker 1: they came up with the singing Machine in two Um.
Speaker 1: Apparently kay Takagi would demonstrated on the street and get
Speaker 1: booed um because, as he recounted later, it seemed like
Speaker 1: the American public like took offense or was generally agitated
Speaker 1: when people who weren't professionals publicly performed music, and that
Speaker 1: was the whole basis of karaoke. It still is. It's
Speaker 1: reasonable though, Yeah, I mean, here's my deal, Like, if
Speaker 1: someone there can be a certain amount of bad that's
Speaker 1: still kind of entertaining and fun depends. But there's some
Speaker 1: that's so bad where it's just you're waiting and waiting
Speaker 1: for that song to end. It's just so painture, and
Speaker 1: that's when that's when you boom. You need to stop this.
Speaker 1: So there's a certain booing threshold for sure, especially when
Speaker 1: you know that they are essentially deliberately singing badly they
Speaker 1: deserve to be Yeah, yeah, Okay, that's a different thing.
Speaker 1: If someone is just super drunk and being really obnoxious too,
Speaker 1: and that's different. It's when they're trying and they're bad,
Speaker 1: that's when you shouldn't boo them because you will totally
Speaker 1: shatter their spirit forever. Yeah, So it's it's up to
Speaker 1: you as an individual to cast that judgment at that
Speaker 1: moment exactly. Just use it wisely, is all. That's right? Alright,
Speaker 1: So the it's not taking off quite yet, he's demonstrating it,
Speaker 1: like you said, not doing a good job, as legend
Speaker 1: has it. Click supposedly even took it to Frank Sinatra,
Speaker 1: who will figure in always figures in it karaoke, it
Speaker 1: seems like, and Frank was like, no, thank you. He said,
Speaker 1: what is this, huncle junk baby? You can you can
Speaker 1: do Sammy. I'll do Frank from now and OK. That
Speaker 1: was actually me doing a bad Phil Hartman impression of
Speaker 1: Frank Sinatra. Well, mine is just Billy Crystal doing doing
Speaker 1: Sammy Davis Jr. So oh, I like to think of
Speaker 1: you doing Sammy Davis Jr. Well, it's funny because, uh,
Speaker 1: Sammy was actually there. When Frank turned it down. He
Speaker 1: was like, I don't know, Matt, you could make some
Speaker 1: real dough with this thing. And Frank said, don't contradict me, Sammy,
Speaker 1: not in front of Click. Boy, that's pretty good. Phil Hartman,
Speaker 1: I think Joe Piscopo used to do it back in
Speaker 1: the day. Was great memory. He was doing some like
Speaker 1: um roundtable discussion about current topics or something, and say
Speaker 1: O'Connor was one of the panel members, and he kept
Speaker 1: call her the sign aide and q ball and like
Speaker 1: she she was like trying to have this, you know,
Speaker 1: legitimate conversation or whatever. He just kept dismissing her. Jan Hooks.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, yeah, it was great. Great. That was
Speaker 1: back when he was really mad at her because she
Speaker 1: tore up the picture of the pope protesting abuse and
Speaker 1: it's like, maybe we should revisit that. Yeah, yeah, right, exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I think she was kind of right on,
Speaker 1: right on target. They're still around, I can't remember. I
Speaker 1: was reading about her not too long ago, and I
Speaker 1: mean she's still, if not putting out music, I think
Speaker 1: she's an artist at least she's still creating, still creating things.
Speaker 1: Uh So karaoke takes holden at least on the West coast.
Speaker 1: And I saw some places like we're going to cover
Speaker 1: the East Coast and the West coast. I saw that
Speaker 1: before this even happened. The Midwest. Yeah, did you see that? No?
Speaker 1: I was totally joking. Really, yeah. I saw an archive
Speaker 1: New York Times article about the place we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about in man. Huh. And they said that it had
Speaker 1: already been sort of making the rounds in the Midwest
Speaker 1: because of Japanese autoworkers. Oh wow, that's really impressive. So
Speaker 1: but it was in the Midwest and no one knew
Speaker 1: about it. So yeah, So did this predate Dimples on
Speaker 1: the West coast though, or did it kind of also
Speaker 1: simultaneously go on in l A. Well, if Dimples, what
Speaker 1: year was Dimples Dimples? I have the impression was in
Speaker 1: the mid eighties. I would say probably let's go with eight. Five, No, no,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. Seven is when it really took off. Well,
Speaker 1: the article in the New York Times was from eighty seven,
Speaker 1: and they said that it had already been a thing
Speaker 1: in the Midwest. Wow, that's that's really hats off to
Speaker 1: Peka for innovating with karaoke in the US. Probably Detroit maybe,
Speaker 1: I guess that's kind of where the Japanese auto manufacturing
Speaker 1: was back then. I wonder if it was Japanese executives
Speaker 1: coming over and talking about karaoke or American auto executives
Speaker 1: going over to Japan and learning about karaoke, then coming
Speaker 1: back to the Midwest and being like, let's do something tonight, right,
Speaker 1: I put on a bunch of mufflers today exactly, I'm
Speaker 1: ready to unwind and build something that's really interesting. Man,
Speaker 1: nice nugget. So Dimple's like we mentioned, it was until
Speaker 1: I think the mid two thousands of bar and Burbank.
Speaker 1: From what I saw, oh is that when it closed
Speaker 1: and in favor of a Whole Food to be built
Speaker 1: over the top of it. The Whole Food well they're
Speaker 1: multiple Whole Foods, so yeah, Whole Foods was built over
Speaker 1: the uh. So this is in Burbank right across from
Speaker 1: Warner Brothers Studios, and the owner their salth Ferraro, bought
Speaker 1: UM a bunch of these karaoke cassettes. He has started
Speaker 1: advertising like, Hey, where America's first karaoke karaoke bar. You're
Speaker 1: gonna love it. People didn't catch on at first, but
Speaker 1: they kind of took a page from the earlier days
Speaker 1: with dice K when they said, well, there are plenty
Speaker 1: of young, attractive UM actors and actresses out here, so
Speaker 1: let's just get some of those in to perform. And
Speaker 1: it took off. People like well, I want to be
Speaker 1: a star to r exactly. People started hitting the mini stage.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so this was Dimples was known as America's
Speaker 1: first karaoke bar, apparently incorrectly, but um, it certainly was
Speaker 1: America's first widely known karaoke bar because it was in
Speaker 1: l A. But it was extremely old fashioned in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways. Number One, there were no k boxes,
Speaker 1: which we'll talk about in a minute. It was you
Speaker 1: performing on stage in front of the whole bar. That's
Speaker 1: that's considered an old fashioned style karaoke bar. Number two, Um,
Speaker 1: you probably don't necessarily know every single lyric to the
Speaker 1: song you're singing, so they would hand you a book
Speaker 1: with laminated pages with the lyrics, so you would be
Speaker 1: reading from a big binder while you were trying to
Speaker 1: sing and perform at the same time. That's certainly very
Speaker 1: old fashioned. And then um also number three, Um, I
Speaker 1: think there were only two. Now that I say number three,
Speaker 1: I think it was those two that made it super
Speaker 1: old fashioned. So you perform in front of strangers, and
Speaker 1: then you had to read from a book. And so
Speaker 1: Dimples apparently really took off, and then karaoke also really
Speaker 1: took off around the world when they added something called
Speaker 1: C D plus G, which is compact disc plus graphics. Um. Oh,
Speaker 1: that was the third one. They would literally use eight
Speaker 1: tracks or cassettes of recorded karaoke music, and then all
Speaker 1: of a sudden the late eighties, you had a disc
Speaker 1: that you could buy had a whole bunch of karaoke songs,
Speaker 1: but then also it had a video component to it
Speaker 1: as well, so that you could see the lyrics on screen.
Speaker 1: And around the late eighties when karaoke as we know
Speaker 1: and love it today was was born. Yeah. I mean
Speaker 1: one of my favorite things still about karaoke is that
Speaker 1: sometimes it can still have that old school look with
Speaker 1: like a a nature scene like a waterfall behind it
Speaker 1: looks like it's like this looks like the late eighties
Speaker 1: up on screen in front of me. It's a delight. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or at least the early nineties, you know. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: that was the West Coast in New York. There was
Speaker 1: a place called sing Along that opened an eighty seven.
Speaker 1: And this was opened by I think like four people.
Speaker 1: Um Zack Smith, who was a drummer for Scandal, Um
Speaker 1: great band if you remember Scandal the Warrior, Yeah exactly, Um,
Speaker 1: and then an attorney named Mindy Burne Bomb and then
Speaker 1: Scandals manager David Donald Zuckerman. And we also should say
Speaker 1: that they sort of put it on the Western map.
Speaker 1: But there were places already in Manhattan. There was one
Speaker 1: in Chinatown called Lotus Blossom, another one at a restaurant
Speaker 1: called Ichiban. So there were some karaoke bars in Manhattan,
Speaker 1: but kind of like with everything else there, like and
Speaker 1: you know, history says, until it's introduced to like white
Speaker 1: America doesn't exist, like it doesn't exist. Maybe we'll mention
Speaker 1: it later in a retrospective thirty years exactly. So, but
Speaker 1: it did hit it big because of sing Along? So
Speaker 1: are you saying that sing Along Sprague karaoke in America
Speaker 1: more than Dibbles did? Okay, although they did franchise. I
Speaker 1: think they opened one in Buckhead here in Atlanta as
Speaker 1: the second one, is that right? And then so sing
Speaker 1: Along Um was also this place that innovated the kJ
Speaker 1: karaoke jockey. Not I couldn't help myself. That was totally involuntary. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: but the kJ is the guy who um is like
Speaker 1: English Dan, who you know, gets everybody psyched up to
Speaker 1: come up on stage. English whoever, English Dan was a
Speaker 1: yacht rock guy. Right, I'd really like to see you tonight. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was. It was the English Dan English nick Um
Speaker 1: was a kJ English Dan was the English Um that's
Speaker 1: a great song too. Um. But so the kJ was
Speaker 1: innovative at sing alongs to and you said the second
Speaker 1: sing along was in Buckhead, right, yeah, thinking then Chicago
Speaker 1: was next. So that would have been like the early nineties,
Speaker 1: because the late eighties saw like the the beginning of
Speaker 1: the entrenchment of karaoke, and then the spread really took
Speaker 1: off in the nineties and all of a sudden, it
Speaker 1: was like pop culture everywhere. Karaoke the first time for
Speaker 1: the first time in America in the nineties. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: it's funny to go back and read, Um. I know,
Speaker 1: Dave pulled a quote from the A. J. C Here
Speaker 1: in Atlanta, but to go back and read that New
Speaker 1: York Times article sort of describing what karaoke is is
Speaker 1: really very charged. I know what I'm saying. Contemporary journalism
Speaker 1: is so helpful. I love it. It's neat because they're like,
Speaker 1: you know, people get up on stage we have never
Speaker 1: seen before, and some people are bad and some people
Speaker 1: are great, but everyone has a good time. It's yeah,
Speaker 1: and so you know, people made fun of it, but
Speaker 1: it was still an extremely popular thing to do, typically
Speaker 1: like ladies night, trivia night, karaoke night. Like. It wasn't
Speaker 1: necessarily like a karaoke bar, but it was kind of everywhere. Um.
Speaker 1: But then there were places that where karaoke bars that
Speaker 1: started to spring up to um and apparently it started
Speaker 1: to hit on hard times in the nineties, at least
Speaker 1: the trend started to die out a little bit. I'm
Speaker 1: sure grunge had something to do with that. That was
Speaker 1: kind of a sea change when Grunge came along. But
Speaker 1: then American Idol actually revived karaoke like gang Busters basically, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's a good place for a nice little
Speaker 1: uh cliffhanger. Okay, okay, well we'll leave it. See what
Speaker 1: happens did American Idol last we'll find out right after this. Well,
Speaker 1: now we're on the road driving in your truck on
Speaker 1: learn a thing or two from Josh. Can chuck it
Speaker 1: you should know, all right, Okay, chuck lay it on them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: American Idol comes on the scene. Uh, it was huge.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not sure what their ratings are like
Speaker 1: these days, but in those early years, it was like
Speaker 1: one of the biggest TV shows in the history of
Speaker 1: American television, and it apparently revived karaoke because people were
Speaker 1: seeing regular folks get up on stage and sing. And
Speaker 1: I think that just sort of coincided with um people
Speaker 1: remembering like, hey, wait a minute, this karaoke thing that
Speaker 1: Kurt Cobain killed. Um that was kind of fun. Why
Speaker 1: are we too cool for school now? Exactly? Because I
Speaker 1: mean that that was I guess it kind of is
Speaker 1: what American idol is. You've got an accompanist playing and
Speaker 1: you're singing and that's yeah. So it kind of made
Speaker 1: people like get back into it a little bit. So,
Speaker 1: um that that was I think too. Thousand two was
Speaker 1: the season, the first season where Kelly Clarkson beat Dr
Speaker 1: Pepper's Little Sweet in the finals. Um, haven't you seen
Speaker 1: that Dr peppered with Little Sweet? It was a little
Speaker 1: sweet the run around, Yeah, just justin Guarini, Uh yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah. Um. So American idol was big and then
Speaker 1: that that was like regular America was like, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: let's go karaoke, and I forgot about that and then
Speaker 1: cool indie America, um got back into karaoke thanks to
Speaker 1: Lost in Translation. Yeah, you know the very famous scene
Speaker 1: in the Sofia Coppola film where Bill Murray and Scarlett
Speaker 1: Johansson or in a k box having a lot of
Speaker 1: fun on their big night out in Tokyo. And uh,
Speaker 1: it's a really great movie and a great scene. Um,
Speaker 1: unlike all of the scenes and the two thousand film
Speaker 1: Duets one of the worst ever. And like, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, obviously there's like um Absolution, the Journey or whatever,
Speaker 1: that Mario Lopez movie that Riff Tracks recently released. Like,
Speaker 1: there's obviously really really really bad movies out there. They're
Speaker 1: so bad they're almost unwatchable. Duets is bad, like on
Speaker 1: a on an offensive level that that it's really hard
Speaker 1: to put into words. It's so because they clearly sunk money, time,
Speaker 1: effort and thought into it, and it's still so bad.
Speaker 1: Like these other bad movies, somebody just pooped it out
Speaker 1: in like a couple of months. This is like a
Speaker 1: huge major motion picture and it's so bad that it's
Speaker 1: it almost like ticks me off just thinking about how
Speaker 1: bad that movie was and that it got released. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I never saw it. Um, if you don't know what
Speaker 1: we're talking about. This is the movie directed by Bruce Paltrow,
Speaker 1: starring his daughter, Gwyneth, Huey Lewis, Paul g Marty, Andre Brower,
Speaker 1: Scott Speedman, a bunch of people and it's literally about karaoke.
Speaker 1: And I watched the trailer today and now I have
Speaker 1: that stupid cruising song in my head and so yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that Geico commercial where they're on the moon gives me
Speaker 1: flashbacks of duets because that's like the main song that
Speaker 1: they sing in it. Yeah, I do have to say
Speaker 1: there's one thing where I didn't know is Bruce Paltrow
Speaker 1: that directs it. But um, there's a shot where Huey
Speaker 1: Lewis and I think Gwyneth Paltrow checking into a hotel
Speaker 1: and the it's like like the scene ends and Gwyneth
Speaker 1: Paltrow leaves the shot and Huey lose to stands there
Speaker 1: and he spikes the camera and blinked a couple of times,
Speaker 1: and you see more clearly than you ever possibly could,
Speaker 1: how blank it is inside of Hughey Lewis's head. You
Speaker 1: just see it. And maybe he's not blank all the time,
Speaker 1: but for that moment, he was totally blank. And it's great.
Speaker 1: It's one of the great shots of all time. But
Speaker 1: that movie just that's it's it's worthwhile. The whole movie
Speaker 1: is worthwhile just to see that one shot. But is
Speaker 1: it's so bad? I love Huey Lewis too, Yeah, me too.
Speaker 1: Nothing again, you gotta see it. But but loss in
Speaker 1: translation was the exact opposite of do what So that
Speaker 1: scene was Yes, yeah, it made it cool and hip again,
Speaker 1: like you said, and um, it was already kind of
Speaker 1: picking up steam anyway. But that definitely was like, well,
Speaker 1: a Bill Murray and wear an inside out T shirt
Speaker 1: and get up there and sing what was it Elvis Costello?
Speaker 1: I don't remember what he's saying. I think he did peace,
Speaker 1: love and understanding. Uh so that put it back on
Speaker 1: the map. And now I guess we need to talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about just the industry side of it,
Speaker 1: because you know, when you're putting hundreds and hundreds of
Speaker 1: songs out performed by different people, like these aren't the
Speaker 1: original versions there recorded by you know, uh, session players
Speaker 1: and session singers, because you always have that you know,
Speaker 1: sort of background track going. And there's a lot of
Speaker 1: money going, I mean karaoke. It's like a ten billion
Speaker 1: dollar in stree or something, and everyone gets a cut.
Speaker 1: Like if you wrote the song or perform the song,
Speaker 1: or if you have the publishing rights to the song.
Speaker 1: Everyone has to say it's okay to have my my
Speaker 1: song recorded for karaoke, and it's okay to have it performed,
Speaker 1: and each one there are different moneys that people have
Speaker 1: to pay. Yeah, there's a mechanical fee to actually record
Speaker 1: the song. There's a synchronization fee to um sync up
Speaker 1: the lyrics with it, any kind of video presentation. Um,
Speaker 1: there's a performance fee if it's not done in a
Speaker 1: K box, which I don't even know if we said
Speaker 1: a K box is just a little soundproof room that
Speaker 1: you can rent that's a private room for you and
Speaker 1: your friends or whatever to perform karaoke, and so you're
Speaker 1: not doing it in front of strangers. You don't have
Speaker 1: to wait for other people to go. You just go
Speaker 1: as often as you want. It is and then it's
Speaker 1: also it's just way more fun. And most karaoke places
Speaker 1: have k boxes now. Um, but if you're if you're
Speaker 1: not in a K box, if it's in front of people,
Speaker 1: you probably have to also pay a performance fee as well.
Speaker 1: Not you the karaoke person, but either the venue or
Speaker 1: the kJ or the company that's actually directing this because
Speaker 1: time was you used to have to get an eight
Speaker 1: track and everything was very tightly regulated. Now there's centralized
Speaker 1: servers basically that existing countries around the world that have
Speaker 1: these huge databases of karaoke songs to where if you
Speaker 1: go into a karaoke place, it's just hitting up a computer,
Speaker 1: probably in the Philippines or Malaysia or something like that,
Speaker 1: and it's sending back that song and the lyrics with
Speaker 1: it UM onto your video screen and through the sound system.
Speaker 1: So to keep up with all of that is really
Speaker 1: really difficult, And there's a lot of UM lawsuits that
Speaker 1: were that were UM filed. Probably the biggest one with
Speaker 1: Sony Music suing KTS Karaoke. They sued him for like
Speaker 1: one point to five billion dollars for copyright infringement. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there's been plenty of lawsuits UM. And the
Speaker 1: same goes with and eat jukeboxes, and anytime you have
Speaker 1: a venue where people perform music, if there are cover
Speaker 1: songs performed and stuff, uh it to you know, it's
Speaker 1: a sort of a legal quagmire. And like you said,
Speaker 1: even more complicated these days when you can be UM
Speaker 1: sort of off book and just do like a YouTube
Speaker 1: version on a Wednesday night at the bar and sort
Speaker 1: of be off grid as far as people uh seeking
Speaker 1: money are concerned. But if you're a legit karaoke club,
Speaker 1: obviously you're doing it right. Or have a legit real
Speaker 1: karaoke night with a company coming in, they're doing it right,
Speaker 1: as in paying all the artists and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: But there are you know, some artists who have never
Speaker 1: signed away their rights. I think Springsteen is one. There
Speaker 1: are some people who used to, but now the songs
Speaker 1: have been removed, um like if you print songs. Bon Jovi, Aba,
Speaker 1: Coldplay have removed certain songs. Um maybe because of complications
Speaker 1: or because they couldn't get everyone on board. But if
Speaker 1: you used to sing a song and you come back
Speaker 1: a few years later and it's not available, that maybe
Speaker 1: why probably is So what's weird is that you would
Speaker 1: think would kill karaoke, but the burgeoning of the Internet
Speaker 1: and YouTube and just basically people creating karaoke songs at
Speaker 1: their house and being able to in like a home
Speaker 1: studio with just their laptop has actually kept it going.
Speaker 1: So karaoke doesn't seem to be going anywhere, although it
Speaker 1: does seem to be getting more and more removed from
Speaker 1: the group. There's a new thing called wankara, which is
Speaker 1: a solo karaoke singing box. There's room for one person
Speaker 1: in there, and that's all the rage in Japan right now.
Speaker 1: From what I understand. Maybe it's just like a practice. Nope,
Speaker 1: it's just I just want to sing because I want
Speaker 1: to sing. That's what it's been. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: I bet, I'm sure there's been a person who's like,
Speaker 1: before I try my chops in front of people on Gon,
Speaker 1: rent one of these for my show. But I think
Speaker 1: there's also people who are like, all I want to
Speaker 1: do is wan car. I don't want to talk to
Speaker 1: any of you. Uh. There are home karaoke machines, obviously
Speaker 1: you can buy. There are apps now. Uh. One of
Speaker 1: the great delights of my life is when my brother
Speaker 1: sends me a smule song s m U l E.
Speaker 1: It's a singing app where he will be sitting in
Speaker 1: traffic and no record a full song and my brother's
Speaker 1: sing a better singer to me, and he'll just send me,
Speaker 1: like you know, I'll just get a text and it's attached,
Speaker 1: like here's a smule from Scott Bryant. I've not heard
Speaker 1: of that. It's great. I mean, I have it too,
Speaker 1: I don't use it much, but he's he's kind of
Speaker 1: a smule king and you can connect with other people
Speaker 1: to do duets and stuff like that you don't even know.
Speaker 1: So there's a whole community around it. So um, we
Speaker 1: I know we've talked about it before, but we can't
Speaker 1: stop until we talk about my Way killings and violence
Speaker 1: in general around karaoke because there has been Yeah, there
Speaker 1: there was something called the my Way killings, which we
Speaker 1: talked about in our is tone Deafness hereditary um episode um.
Speaker 1: But at least six people have been killed in the
Speaker 1: Philippines during or after a performance of my Way, Frank
Speaker 1: Sinatra's song my Way, UM. And there's all sorts of
Speaker 1: interpretations of why that my Way is a really popular
Speaker 1: song and so you know, and bar fights happened, so
Speaker 1: it just was coincidence. Other people are like, no, they
Speaker 1: really take my Way very seriously in the Philippines and
Speaker 1: if you sing it tone deaf, you're in trouble. Um.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't just my Way, apparently. John Denver's take
Speaker 1: Me Home Country Roads is one of the bloodiest songs
Speaker 1: of all time, right? Is that a murder trigger? I
Speaker 1: guess there was a guy in Thailand who killed eight
Speaker 1: of his neighbors, eight party goers at his next to
Speaker 1: our neighbor's house, one of whom was his brother in
Speaker 1: law because they would not stop singing and they sang
Speaker 1: take Me Home, Country Roads, and he went over and
Speaker 1: shot them all dead. I mean, clearly other stuff going
Speaker 1: on there. Yeah, he seemed a little high strung, but
Speaker 1: like it was the karaoke that had had pushed him
Speaker 1: over the edge for sure. Yeah. What do you think
Speaker 1: Frank would say about the my Way killings? You're gonna
Speaker 1: lighten up sometimes, baby. I'll tell you what they don't
Speaker 1: kill people two men is Mr Bojangles. You got that, right, Sammy?
Speaker 1: Uh yeah. And you know we should also mention too
Speaker 1: that it is huge in the Philippines, Like anywhere you go,
Speaker 1: almost in public, there might be it's sort of like
Speaker 1: the go into Nevada and you know there's a slot
Speaker 1: machine like every time you turn around, except there's someone singing.
Speaker 1: In the Philippines, Yeah, I mean, it's just it's huge.
Speaker 1: And Asia in general, you mean has this great story
Speaker 1: about how she would kind of, you know, go duck
Speaker 1: out and go to lunch and sing karaoke and go
Speaker 1: back to work afterward. Here there good stuff. Um, so
Speaker 1: you got anything else? Nothing else? All right? Well, if
Speaker 1: you want to know more about karaoke, just get up
Speaker 1: there and do it. It's not going to kill you,
Speaker 1: and you're gonna be happy that you did. And since
Speaker 1: I said you're gonna be happy, that means it's time
Speaker 1: for a listener mail of course. Uh. This is from
Speaker 1: a new fifteen year old fan. Hey, guys, big fan
Speaker 1: of the show, writing to say, Hi, just turned fifteen.
Speaker 1: I'm from California. I started listening in December, so I'm
Speaker 1: fairly new, but you guys so quickly become my number
Speaker 1: one show. Multiple times. I've heard y'all say that you
Speaker 1: lose listeners around high school. About it here to assure
Speaker 1: you that there are high school listeners out here anyway.
Speaker 1: A big reason why I love the show is because
Speaker 1: all the seemingly boring topics you cover. There's so many
Speaker 1: ordinary things that we take for granted that have uh
Speaker 1: such an interesting history, like bar codes, for instance. That
Speaker 1: has been one of my favorite episodes so far. I'm
Speaker 1: glad that Natalie saying this because that's something that we
Speaker 1: love about the show is our episodes like ballpoint pens
Speaker 1: and bar codes. You know, yeah that seemed boring but
Speaker 1: turn out to be fascinating. Love it. Just today I
Speaker 1: was asked for a random fact. I was able to
Speaker 1: talk about the failure of the Pony Express thanks to you, guys.
Speaker 1: I also want to say thank you to everyone and
Speaker 1: stuff you should know for keeping the show so enthralling
Speaker 1: yet educational and like so many other listeners have helped
Speaker 1: me through the tough times. I can always counting you
Speaker 1: for laughter, education and tangents, one of my favorite parts
Speaker 1: of the show. Uh and then a final little, very
Speaker 1: kind correction, and we welcome those. It's been very unkindlyly.
Speaker 1: Uh Yeah. So it almost feels like there's a new
Speaker 1: breed of listener who's like, look, I don't know who
Speaker 1: you jerks are, but I think you're jerks. And here's
Speaker 1: everything I think that you're a jerk about. There's been
Speaker 1: a lot of that. I think it's uh, I don't
Speaker 1: know what it is. Maybe the pandemic wearing on people here.
Speaker 1: It could be we've gone two waves of that though,
Speaker 1: where we'll get like a new swath of listeners and
Speaker 1: then like six months later we'll hear from a lot
Speaker 1: of them again and be like, look, I'm really sorry
Speaker 1: about that first email. I really I can't do without
Speaker 1: you guys. Yeah, you still don't know what you're talking
Speaker 1: about a lot of the times, but but I find endearing.
Speaker 1: Now it's weird, uh. She Natalie listened to the Walrus episode.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you got email about this, but wanted to
Speaker 1: make sure you knew the beach creatures by the Hearst
Speaker 1: Castle that you thought were sea lions are elephant seals.
Speaker 1: And that is Natalie last name redacted. And she says,
Speaker 1: p s. Don't be dumb. Was a great series. It
Speaker 1: was nice. I don't know that anyone else ever wrote
Speaker 1: in to correct that, So thanks a lot, Natalie. Nicely done. Totally. Um,
Speaker 1: that was a great email, Natalie, perfectly done. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the fold and good luck with high school. If you
Speaker 1: want to be like Natalie and get in touch with this,
Speaker 1: you can send us an email, wrap it up, spank
Speaker 1: it lightly on the bottom, and send it off to
Speaker 1: Stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should
Speaker 1: Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts for my Heart Radio visit the iHeart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.