Sing! Sing! Sing! Inside a Karaoke Subculture

It's strange that Ronny, who dazzles this place three nights a week with her soaring singing voice and spotlight-bright smile, makes so little of an impact when she enters the bar. She usually arrives 10 or 15 minutes before 9 p.m., which is when work starts for her, and quietly strolls across the dark red carpet, past the cheap tables with tan fake-leather chairs, her hands in the pockets of her black leather jacket. Other than the bartender and waitress, no one acknowledges her. The half dozen or fewer people scattered around the bar usually are not even local, and the regulars haven't arrived yet.

Ronny busies herself getting everything ready for the night's entertainment. Her equipment is already there - the two-disc CD+G player, the mixer, the speakers, the microphones, the small television mounted in front of the stage for displaying lyrics. She has to connect a few cables, hook the big-screen TV behind the stage to her system, and unpack the 700-plus song discs and the crates of songbooks, each binder cataloguing the 10,000 or so songs available to anyone who feels like singing tonight.

The whole process takes less than 10 minutes. After a decade of hosting karaoke nights at the Red Lion Inn in Eugene, Ore., Ronny has the setup down. Familiar faces have started arriving by the time she finishes. Tonight, for example - a Thursday night, ladies night at the Red Lion's lounge - Ronny is chatting with a young, skinny dark-haired girl wearing a black motorcycle jacket big enough to belong to a large boyfriend. They're comparing notes on another karaoke jockey who's known for needling singers from time to time.

"I was singing and I didn't really know him that well," the girl says. "He asked me if I wanted to use the cordless mic." She declined, and he expressed surprise, since in his experience women liked handheld tubes with batteries inside. "I said, 'Some of us have happy home lives and don't need batteries!' He didn't want to spar with me after that."

Ronny smiles and shakes her head, her shoulder-length red hair flowing easily with her movements. The bar is filling up slowly - two people here, another person there. Mr. Fun, the bar's unofficial mascot, has arrived. It's time to start the show.

A similar scene unfolds every Thursday through Saturday at this Red Lion Inn, just as it unfolds in other bars around Eugene, around Oregon and across the U.S. The Japanese invention known as karaoke (it translates as "orchestra minus one") has entrenched itself in American social life to the point that, in most mid-size or larger towns, it's available somewhere almost every night of the week.

Forget the reputation karaoke has as something to do when you're drunk and bored, though. For a lot of people - the Red Lion's regulars included - karaoke has become an integral part of their lives.

Take those regulars, a motley two dozen or so self-described oddballs. They range in age from early 20s to well retired. Several don't drink; those who do, do so sparingly. Many of them have above average to stunning voices. And all of them have found, on a tiny stage in the dimly lit bar of a chain hotel, a predictably safe place to spice up their predictably safe lives - at least while their songs are playing.

Ronny, the hostess, is always the first singer. Tonight she picks "Take A Chance On Me" to start things off. Mr. Fun follows with "People Are People." Then Melissa, cherub-faced, round, and dressed in a red sailor shirt with white piping, sings "Like A Virgin." Pam sings "Reason to Believe."

The Big Kahuna comes next, singing "Beyond the Sea," followed by his girlfriend Teana's rendition of "Blues in the Night" and Betty the Diva singing "Blame it on the Bossa Nova." Karen belts out "Lookin' Out My Back Door," which Ronny picked out for her. Then it's Doug's turn, and Ronny starts getting feisty.

Doug, wearing jeans, a flimsy white button-down shirt and black cowboy boots, is going to sing "Hemorrhage in My Head." It's a hard-rockin' song and he's dressed for it, but as he waits for the music to start he looks more like a shy puppy than a rock star.

"Doug's going to try out this song tonight," Ronny announces as the music starts, "and I'm going to stare at his ass in those black jeans."

Stare she does, or at least pretends to, as Doug ignores her and performs the song in his soft, unfocused, high voice. The staring-at-buttcheek thing is one of Ronny's favorite jokes, and why not? When she's standing in her KJ booth beside the stage, her head is at about ass level on most singers.

She can get away with it because the Red Lion's bar is that comfortable a place, in no small part because of Ronny's presence. The bar is come-as-you-are, a safe haven from meat markets and head games. Still, even if most patrons don't show up explicitly looking for affection, it's very much on their minds. Mr. Fun sang "people are people," which is so true, and sometimes when people are people, People Get Horny. Like Melissa. She freely admits she's "in a mood tonight," and no one is very surprised when she sings "I Touch Myself" later in the evening.

Before that, though, Kevin starts a small group to line dancing with his performance of "Strokin'," a song about endurance sex. Kevin takes some liberties with the lyrics: "Oh duracell duracell duracell duracell duracell ohhhh you little bunny!" he sings, confident that no one within earshot has a proprietary interest in the Energizer battery icon.
Laura, a 30-something blonde, joins Kevin on stage about halfway through his song. She stands to his left and dances, and when he reaches the part about "stroke it with my mouth" she pumps a fist in front of her face and rolls her tongue along the inside of her cheek so that it looks like she's - well, like, she's, you know. Strokin'.

****

Ronny's married. Of the Red Lion group, she's pretty much the only one. Her husband, Russ, usually spends the early part of the evening sitting impassively at a front table, moving only when his wife calls him to sing - either "All Shook Up" or "Little Red Riding Hood." The only other person accorded this treatment is Karen, a longtime patron. Ronny knows what songs she knows and picks among them according to the mood of the room.

Everyone else consults one of the mammoth song binders, finds a song, and writes his or her name, the name of the song and its catalog number on a slip of paper, which goes into a basket Ronny duct-tapes to the counter in front of her equipment. Everyone seems to do this differently. Dennis Dubya leans back in his chair, crosses his legs and leafs through the book while it rests on his lap, all the while looking like a CEO scrutinizing a quarterly report. Doug spreads the book out on a table and pores over it, his face inches away, as if he were a schoolboy lost in a lesson. Mr. Fun quickly and efficiently finds the song he wants, be it in the book or among the discs in his personal collection, then waits until he's called to sing to take his next request up to the booth.

Not everyone has a nickname, but anyone who wants one can have one - just write it on your slip instead of your real name, and Ronny will call it out. Dennis Dubya has also sung under the names Dennis W. Bush and Dennis bin Laden. The Big Kahuna is Hawaiian; Betty the Diva has the requisite smoky voice and smooth manner, and looks a little like Rose from The Golden Girls. John sings under the name "John Clinton" because of his resemblance to a certain former president. A friend of Mr. Fun's called him that one night at another karaoke place, and he embraced the title.

It's not that anyone here pulls a Michael Jackson and mutates from an offstage introvert into an onstage dynamo (except for Ronny, kind of, but she is a trained actress). When he sings, Mr. Fun is still Mike, the quiet geeky computer worker who doesn't look you in the eye when you talk to him. Doug doesn't morph into Rob Thomas or Eddie Vedder when he steps to the mic and croons one of the tortured love songs he favors.

These people aren't embracing an alternative identity so much as stepping out of their everyday one for a few minutes. Once Ronny calls your name and pushes play, the music marches forward, the lyrics are scrolling and you're the one with the microphone, up there in front of everyone. There's no time to think about the mortgage or the job stress or the fact that you haven't been laid since God knows when - you've got to hit that note.

Now.

******

"I'm sorry to do this to you again," Ronny says to Karen over the microphone as she cues up "Dancing Queen." "But we need this song." Karen obliges.

Karen always stands on the right side of the stage and leans against the railing as she sings, eyes closed, voice booming out of the amplifiers. It's a powerful, mature voice, a lot like Grace Slick's, tremulous vibrato and all.

The similarity to a rock star ends there. Karen is thick-bodied and on the upper end of middle age, always dressing in shapeless dark clothing and sandals. Her hair is short, falling in brown curls that bounce when she throws back her head in hearty laughter. She arrives around 10, greets Ronny, plops down with a Coke at a table with whatever regulars are around and learns all about their lives.

Karen started frequenting the Red Lion in 1993 with a guy she knew who went there a lot. He faded out, but she kept coming, drawn back by the square-peg camaraderie and the independence of karaoke. She can show up by herself, sing by herself, sit by herself if it comes to that, although she's rarely without friends. Usually she's with a group that's pulled several tables together in the middle of the room, and she's always at a table - the barstools are for tourists and outsiders.

She still sings her first karaoke songs frequently - "All I Have To Do Is Dream," "Leaving On A Jet Plane," "White Rabbit." Though she sings along with almost every tune Ronny plays, when she performs she sticks to the songs of her youth - "When I'm 64," "Lookin' Out My Back Door."

So she sings on karaoke nights and then returns to her life, which consists of being a landlord, dealing with dizzy spells and double vision, sometimes sleeping 20 hours a day, and thinking about going back to school for a doctorate in psychology. Karen is a happy woman, but like her life, she often seems unfocused, hazy. It's easy to imagine her last several years blurring into one continuous day and one continuous night, punctuated perhaps by certain odd moments that differentiate one week or month from another.

One night, for example, Michelle, who lives in Karen's house with her boyfriend Eric, decided Karen needed to start her own cult. She's eccentric enough to make a good cult leader, the reasoning went, and her place is out in the country - remote, that is, and easy to fortify.

"I do have a cannon," Karen said.

"That," mused Michelle, "is all you need."

The only person around more than Karen is Ronny, who's getting paid to put on the show. Ronny started at the Red Lion as a customer, singing with her fellow thespians from the Very Little Theater while a woman who encouraged booing ran the booth. Ronny's uninhibited energy attracted some attention, and the bar booted the other woman and put in the redhead. Since then, she's worked hard to foster a nurturing environment - there's applause for every singer just for making the effort, and first-timers are made to feel particularly special.

"Oh - are you a virgin?" she'll say, or maybe, "Is this your first time doing karaoke?" and when the answer is yes, she announces, "Virgin, everyone!" Some novices take to the stage easily, waving arms in the air and emoting with abandon. Most, though, shuffle nervously from one foot to the other and keep their eyes glued to the TV screen.

When they finish and head back to the safety of the table, Ronny always has one more comment.

"Great job," she'll say. "It was my pleasure to deflower you."

******

And, at last, there is Mr. Fun.

Mr. Fun favors 80s pop tunes from the likes of Talking Heads and the Human League, singing them in a thin, slightly nasal voice that's mostly on pitch and absolutely perfect for "Electric Avenue." He's come a long way since singing "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" and the "Brady Bunch" theme at his deflowering several years ago.

Robustly pear-shaped and looking like an oversized 10-year-old (boyish face, hair that's slicked down and tousled at the same time), he's the Red Lion's most recognizable regular. When he arrives for the evening and walks across the lounge to say hi to Ronny, whispers of "That's Mr. Fun" follow him. One time a pretty girl at a neighboring table tried to get his attention as he flipped through a songbook before the show: "Mr. Fun," she said. "Men At Work." Another time a table of strangers greeted him as he headed for the pinball machine. "Mr. Fun!" they said. He lumbered past them and responded while making eye contact with the mirror on the back wall. "My reputation .... uh, my reputation is spreading," he said, laughing slightly and nervously. "Kind of like a social disease."

His routine is to arrive around 9 p.m., get a soft drink, give Ronny a bear hug, grab a songbook, pick out some tunes either from there or from his own disc collection (which he carries in a worn, book-sized CD wallet), and play pinball until called to sing. On the pinball machine, the top four scores belong to "FUN," and the bartenders pour his drink without him even asking for it.

Tonight is different, though. He doesn't show up until after 10 and forgoes the hug. He's also a little more animated than usual, his eyes brighter behind his thick glasses, his gestures more boisterous. When he sings "Karma Chameleon," one of his standards, he puts extra oomph into it, like he's rediscovering the song after several years. And instead of playing pinball when he's done, he walks to the table in the back where his new girlfriend is sitting, a young lady introduced to him by Eric and Michelle and courted over the past few weeks right in this very bar.

Brian is up after Mr. Fun. Sauntering to the stage, his floppy straight brown hair stylishly mussed, Brian looks like a cross between the young versions of Andrew McCarthy and Emilio Estevez.

"I'm going to butcher this, so deal with it," he proclaims, then waits for his song to begin. And waits. And waits.

Ronny somehow cues up "Old Time Rock 'n' Roll," which is wrong. As she scrambles to find the right tune, she calls for a joke - anything to fill this dead airtime while she flips through her discs and Brian stands on stage and the audience listens to the amplifiers hum.

Finally a voice pipes up: "Mickey's in divorce court. He says, 'Your honor, I didn't say Minnie is insane. I said she's f****** Goofy!'"

Groans and giggles. Then Ronny starts "Your Song," which is what Brian wanted. It's not clear whether Brian is a virgin. Although he's a new face, Ronny seems to know him.

She's noticed him, at least, because she motions for Karen to join her in staring at Brian's ass.

He butchers the song. Everyone claps.

He'll be back.