Merle Colborne
LIFESTYLE
The Friday-night crowd at the Flagons and Dragons pub in Durban’s Windermere Road have “lived-in” faces or, at least, faces that have been “stayed over in” a good few times.
Loosened by lyrics and beer, the men hug a lot and stare damply into each other’s eyes. The women smile, the way mothers might at small boys. It’s karaoke night; “this could be heaven, this could be hell”, as the Eagles sang.
Karaoke began in the Seventies in the Japanese town of Kolbe when a pub’s resident singer got laryngitis. The publican played the artiste’s backing tapes and the patrons sang the lyrics – and we don’t know if the entertainer got his voice or his gig back.
Karaoke – from two words meaning “empty” and “orchestra” – became hugely popular as people discovered the therapeutic value of just letting it all hang out. Now the Japanese can even go to private soundproof booths to sing their stress away.
But for the moment karaoke in South Africa is a public offering. Just because a fellow sounds like a security gate in need of oil, it doesn’t mean he can’t dream. And, with a crowd rooting for him, he can be a superstar for all of two minutes. With karaoke you’re supposed to make a fool of yourself. The more you do, the more they love you.
A pudgy guy in cargo pants is, for the moment, Ricky Martin, gleeful at the prospect of living La Vida Loco with a wild woman who’ll “make you take your clothes off and go dancing in the rain …”
Songwriters can learn from the on-screen lyrics. Yeah yeah yeah is big – particularly in happy songs. Sad songs go more for no no no. If things are going really badly, there’s often an oh added to the no, as in oh no, oh no, oh no. Mmmm is useful when you don’t know what the hell to say.
“Mustang Sally!” bawls a man with a voice full and authoritative as a pint of Guinness. The women in the audience oblige: “Ride, Sally, Ride.”
A young chap with an artichoke hairstyle wraps his lips around the mike for The Piano Man, with its famous chorus that ends with the words, “la la la”.
Women who choose to perform select songs that thrust a mani-cured middle finger to the world, and men. The men, meanwhile, sing mainly of loneliness and pain, and about women who don’t love them anymore.
A fellow in flip-flops and a tracksuit boasts improbably: “And I would walk 500 miles and I would walk 500 more … I’ll be the man who gets drunk next to you.”
Coincidentally and rather sweetly, he does. And gets thrown out.
A plump girl, wearing a T-shirt with
“whatever …” printed on it, is belting away at I Will Survive: “I should have changed that stupid lock … I should have made you leave your key … if I had known for just one second that you’d be back to bother me … so now go … walk out the door.” The sign hanging at the pub entrance says Closed, Please Stay Out.
The song titles are picked from files containing thousands of numbers that are passed around; performers write the reference details on a slip of paper for the DJ. By the end of the evening a small pile of crumpled papers lie next to the empty beer bottles on the floor.
A man in black chooses Daniel, by Elton John. The singer’s brother was killed in a car crash. His name was Daniel. Their father is also there, drinking beer, eating dry wors and listening with a bright brittle smile when someone breaks into Eric Clapton’s Tears in Heaven.
An East London man sings The Green, Green Grass of Home.
The man in the flip-flops and track pants is back. And an hour later he gets thrown out again, on to the pavement. I remember the words of the song he sang, about wanting to be “the man who falls down at your door …”