March 11, 2021 • 53 mins
Listen in and learn all about the fascinating history of everybody's favorite pastime... karaoke!
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant Chucker's Chuck tran Um. Yeah,
(00:21):
I just spice it up a little bit with some
multiple stuff. Uh. And no one else is here with us.
We're we're alone out there in the ether, um, and
this is stuff you should know. Although my prediction is, uh,
you know, we started recording a bit early today since
we're on our own. I bet guest producer Dave and
short stuff producer Dave was going to chime in about
(00:42):
five minutes. Okay, yeah, well look forward to hearing what
he says. Uh, what's your deal with karaoke? I sort
of know, but I think that people should know. We should,
we should, we should exchange stories. Okay. I like karaoke. Um.
I particularly like karaoke in the K Box, which we'll
talk about, which is basically it's a little private karaoke
(01:04):
room for you and your friends. Have some great memories
um of karaoke like that. Um. But I'll do it
in front of an audience if I get a drink
or two in me, you know, not too much. Though
you go too much, you start trying to, like, you know,
fight the piano player or something like that. Uh. Oh,
so like live karaoke. Yeah, I've mentioned it a couple
(01:25):
of times, but Sig Gold's Request Room in Manhattan is
the place to go for live piano karaoke. Um. It's
just a beautiful, wonderful place. So if you haven't been there,
go check it out. It's great, about as good as
live karaoke gets, like live instrument karaoke. Alright, so I
haven't been there. I will go still, I forget you know,
(01:46):
I thought you would have gone this past year. Right,
I haven't been there, never been in a k box,
um no, never had the private kerrie. Uh. You know,
we'll pronounce it karaoke even though it's kr a okay,
cut out, okay, cut it okay, But we're not gonna
do that. We're not because I think Dave Ruse helps
(02:07):
us out. He's like, you can pronounce it correctly, but
don't be expected to be invited out to karaoke night
with your friends anymore, right after you practice your kata
te right exactly. Uh so I um have done live
karaoke a few years ago on my birthday. We went
to the um, the one that has the rock band
(02:27):
in the Virginia Highlands. I don't know that one. Yeah,
I mean they have the full on band. It's rock
and roll live karaoke. Uh. One of the local Atlanta
DJ's English Nick is there to serve as um sort
of a backup singer, and they can mix his vocals
and more if you're really bad, because no one wants
to hear that kind of thing. But I get up
(02:48):
there and did Surrender by cheap Trick and he uh.
I saw him at one point even stand away from
the mic, and I was like, I've got this. Oh wow.
He he like went and did something else. I maybe
ate some corns tips or something, a tip of the cap.
But my deal with Karrie Karie okay, is I used
to be scared to death to try it, and that
(03:11):
was when I had severe stage fright performance anxiety, which
I completely got over because now I'm in a band
that sings in front of people. You and I get
on stage in front of people and it doesn't bother
me anymore. I think I'd still probably be a little
nervous to do like an acoustic open mic thing. Yeah,
(03:34):
and you should be for a number of reasons. But uh,
it's just funny how I used to be so scared
and really overthink karaoke, like sit in the room, anxiety sweats,
I really want to do it, but I won't put
my name down, and then you know, the night comes
and goes and I don't do it. Then I had
this guilt and bad feelings. It was. It was a thing. Oh,
(03:57):
I mean this was in my twenties and into my
early thirties. I think when I moved to l a
As when I really started. I guess it was in
my twenties because when I moved to l As, when
I uh finally did it, I was like, this is fine,
and I sing better than a lot of these people. Yeah,
it's a great feeling to to, you know, be done
(04:17):
and have the people you're with be like I had
no idea you could do that. That's really impressive. Yeah,
it's fun. Yeah, I enjoy it. Thir Do you have
a standard karaoke song that you you do or too? Yeah,
I mean I usually try to do uh And I
think we've talked about this under pressure by Queen and
Bowie and I do kind of both parts at the
same time you do like the Tibetan throat chaining kind
(04:40):
of thing. But I I have made some mistakes too.
I tried to do Foreigner as Cold as I said
a friends uh not at their wedding but wedding weekend
at a bar in Philly, and I just I was
feeling it and was like, I had forgotten how high
that song is. It was, Yeah, that can be a
problem when you like starting your range but then you forget,
Oh it keeps going up. That's a that's a real
(05:01):
karaoke problem. And actually I saw a check that if
you do that enough times you can get what it's
called karaoke polyps, which are really Yeah, it's basically like
polyps that grow on your vocal cords from straining your
vocal cords by trying to sing like a professional without
the training of a professional singer. So it can be
deadly dangerous. Maybe not the deadly part, but it can
(05:21):
be dangerous. Yeah, And I used to do the mental
gymnastics of kind of like stepping outside and going through
the song mentally real quick. Yeah, yeah, can I hit
the parts for sure? For sure? And you should, I think,
just as a responsible karaoke singer, you kind of do
need to make sure that you can sing the song, because, yeah,
it's kind of funny to you if you do a
(05:44):
bad karaoke performance. But the point of karaoke is to
like blow everybody's socks off. Like just just tear the
roof off the suckers is kind of my personal motto
every time I grab the mic. Yeah, and you know,
I've had sometimes where I've seen some performances at the
live karaoke thing. There was this country guy that clearly
(06:05):
drives in from you know, country Georgia to do this,
and he had a cowboy head on and he did
want a dead or alive. You could tell that's his deal.
He comes into the city, he crushes it, and then
goes back to the farm the next day and everyone's like,
who was that lonesome cowboy? Who was that mask stranger?
(06:26):
It's pretty cool to see an everyday person just get
up there and really kill it. Yeah, and I'm sure
that guy has to go out of town because he
probably get beat up at his town if he tried
to do that there. You know, he's kind of like this,
like being anonymous too kind of enables that karaoke Gusto,
I think as well, Yeah, so you said something earlier. Um,
(06:47):
you compared kado okay and kada te. And there's a
good reason for that because karate karta ta means empty
hand and um kado okay is actually short for kata oka.
Man I even practice this kata okayta um, which is
(07:09):
like romangi when when people in Japan take an English
word and just kind of chapaint it up a little bit.
So instead of orchestra, it's okaya and kata so it
means empty in Okaya means orchestra, so it's an empty orchestra.
And that's really what car karaoke. Kata okay is. It's
(07:30):
it's slang for empty orchestra, and it actually predates the
concept of karaoke that we think of today. Yeah, apparently
in the early fifties that was a you know, a
pit orchestra in Osaka. They said we want you know,
I'm the army. Sure what they wanted, you would assume
better wages or more bathroom breaks or something, and they
(07:52):
went on strike and the theater replaced them with a
sound system and it was from Matsuda like tronics, And
apparently as the story goes executive from Matsuda came there,
heard the system and said, it's uh, the orchestra. There's
music playing about the orchestra pit is empty, and thus
(08:13):
the term was coined empty orchestra. And that was that
was in the fifties. Um, I think nineteen fifty two
was it, Yes, so um. Karaoke as we understand it
today didn't come along for good almost two decades later.
So there was this idea that anytime you had prerecorded music,
(08:34):
especially if it was played in instead of you know,
where a live performer would play, UM, that that was
karaoke kata okay um. So it was kind of a
handy term that a guy named Desca in a way
um used when he came up with karaoke. And the
(08:54):
idea of who invented karaoke who came up with it
is not just widely settled, but for the most part,
there is like those who know site desk in a
way as the as the guy who who actually came
up with this as we understand it, Yeah, I did see.
You know, there are a couple of other people in
(09:15):
the late sixties that kind of messed around with machines
that kind of did what what the karaoke machine does.
But yeah, his story is great. He's a if you
look him up a picture, he's a pretty cool looking customer.
And in Osaka in the fifties, he was in high
school and he was a drummer in a rock band
and then tried to be a musician professionally for a
(09:38):
little while, but like so many musicians that tried that
for a little while, ended up back at home in
his late twenties, living with his parents in Kobe. Yeah,
but he gave it a good decade long try, you know,
he was out on the road. I read this really
great UM kind of mini biography or autobiography UM from
the early two thousands that was published in the appendix
(09:59):
is voice Hero to look that up. It's a really
he's just a charming guy. Um. But he he tried
it for about ten years and it just didn't work
out because most of the money was pocketed by the older,
more established musicians. UM, and it just he wasn't going anywhere.
I think he said that he realized that no matter
how much he practiced, and he really practiced, UM, he
(10:21):
would never be as good as somebody who had natural
talent and it just wasn't for him, so he decided
to try something else. But he didn't want to give
up um playing entirely. He wanted to try to make
a living somehow from playing music, and it just so
happens that his parents living in Kobe placed him at
this really particularly good spot for karaoke to begin, which
(10:44):
is Kobe, which is about thirty minutes outside of Osaka,
um where the very famous Kobe beef comes from. And
at the time in Kobe, and for a while before that,
there was a popular pastime of singalongs, which is basically
like you go to a bar a snack is what
they were called, and there'd be somebody playing a piano
(11:05):
or a guitar or something like that, and everybody would sing,
you know, popular songs along with the mini band that
was playing. Yeah, but that was like groups singing together, uh,
not like a single person either delighting or embarrassing themselves. Um.
But he got into this scene a little bit and
it was clearly a popular thing. So he's like, I'm
(11:28):
a musician. I guess he played piano too, and he
learned a few hundred really popular songs on piano and
then started performing as the accompaniments, accompaniments, accompaniment. I think
that's the Latin plural accompaniments accompany down what's the word
for the person the accompanist? Accompany is accompany minimust empotymus.
(11:53):
None of these sound right, it's accompany list Okay, that
just sounds weird to me. But you know how that
your brain just broke it did a little bit. So
he was doing this as the piano guy, the piano man,
if you will, and one day this customer comes in
who had been frequenting these nights where he was playing piano,
(12:14):
and he was like, listen, I'm a business guy. I
gotta go to a different city on the sales for
the sales meeting, and I gotta take these uh these
other people out to you know, to go out drinking
and singing after and you're my guy. I can't like,
I can only sing along with you. So would you
mind recording something for me that I can bring along?
(12:37):
And he said sure, So we recorded some stuff on
a reel to reel, gave it to him. The trip
was a big hit, and the guy came back and
said I need more of these, and that was, you know,
literally the aha moment. He grabbed desca in a way
by his lapels and shook him and said, give me more, man,
I need some more. And he did. And apparently right
at this time, as he was being shaken, Desca left
(12:59):
his body astro project elsewhere into the universe, where he
was greeted by the same entity that Um that led
to the creation of Ketchup, and the same entity has
Ketchup and karaoke under its belt because it met with
Daiskin said this is like, pay attention to what's happening
right now, invent karaoke, and dasa Um basically came back
(13:21):
to his body and said, I have I have this
great idea. I'm going to invent a machine that is
basically me what this guy wants me to do live
that I can multiply create a bunch of different machines
that do the same thing and it's going to be
the first karaoke machine ever. And that's what he did.
He came up with something called the Duke eight, which
is a great name. Yeah, it's cool looking, I mean
(13:44):
the idea and you can look at pictures of the
guy with this thing and it's you know, it's about
the size of a small guitar amp or something which
is not bad. You'd think would be the size of
like a smart car or something for the first prototype
back in the day. But it was simple. I mean,
they had amps at the time. They really just combined
a few technologies, which was an eight track player right
(14:04):
from a car, A car, a car eight track players
where they started with oh yeah and a which are
really no different than any other eight track players. I
guess that's true. Yeah, yeah, I mean maybe they worked
better in motion. I don't know, no, but that's probably
why those cars were so big, because they had to
be that big back in the day to hold the
eight track track. Uh. So, you know, it was like
(14:25):
an eight track player mixed with a you know, an
amp or a p A, a small p A. And
his ideas, you know, he called the juke e because
it was kind of like a juke box, is that
you would put money in it like a juke box
to get a certain amount of time on the clock,
which I think was kind of brilliant instead of like
a song, um like, I think the idea is that
(14:46):
people would just keep feeding it. Yeah. He actually specifically
said that he chose five minutes a hundred yen about
thirty five cents bought you five minutes of singing time
so that you'd be part way through the second song
and have to put more money and to finish the
second song. He was he was a sharp tack in
a lot of ways, well in some way, in some way.
(15:07):
Uh So I think they took a couple of months
to build each. Uh They cost him about four d
and twenty five bucks, which is about today. And he said,
I gotta get some of these tracks recorded. So he
got a bunch of his friends to record, you know,
musicians to record these instrumental tracks, started shopping it around
(15:30):
and sold all eleven of those machines and pretty quick order. Yeah,
I think. Um, I don't know if he sold them
or if he took them as like basically, um a
proof of conflict, yeah, something like that. Either way, he
did get them in eleven different clubs around Kobe, um,
(15:50):
and everybody was glad to have him there to look at.
And that was about it. They just sat there and
nobody did anything with him. Nobody knew quite what to
do with them. And even if they did, I think
it took you know how much gumption it takes in
an established karaoke place when other people are doing it.
Imagine being literally the first person to do karaoke like
you probably would. You know, it just took a little bit. So, Um,
(16:13):
Desica hired somebody, uh he said, a pretty girl in
a sexy outfit is how he put it in that
one autobiography, UM, and had her go around to all
these eleven clubs and basically like sing karaoke. And she
did it, um because he hired her too. But apparently
she came back and was like, I would do that
again just for fun. That was a lot of fun.
(16:33):
And from that point on, basically the whole concept of
karaoke took off, at least in Kobe. Yeah, there were
about two hundred of these machines uh in and around
Kobe uh in pretty short order. And I think it's
a good time to take a break. I think it
is too, because karaoke is just simmering that the lid
(16:54):
is like rattling on the pot right now. Yeah, it's
about to blow. All right, we'll be right back. Well,
(17:14):
now we're on the road, driving in your truck. Want
to learn a thing or two from Josh can Chuck.
It's stuff you should know, all right, Okay, chuck. So
there's a rendered fat spitting out the sides of the
pot and steam going everywhere. I just burned my hand
(17:35):
on it. Let's tear the lid off of this sucker,
which is tangential to my karaoke motto of tearing the
roof off the sucker. That's right. So they're going gangbusters
in Kobe, and like you said, it's not too far
from Osaka, which is a bigger city. And a couple
of entrepreneurs from Kobe said, this is great, but we
(17:56):
need to get this to Osaka, And they brought a
duke eight around kind of showed it around and it
really hit big to the tune of they were moving
about twenty five thousand of these a year pretty quickly. Yeah.
Because so remember I said that Kobe was like a
perfect place for karaoke to to kind of be incubated,
because people already did these sing alongs in Tokyo and Osaka.
(18:18):
It wasn't like that they liked watching an actual band
perform or listening to actual songs in the jukebox. Um.
But when these guys, it could not find the name
of this club, but that when they opened, essentially the
first karaoke club in Osaka. Um. I guess it just
hit at just the right chord, just the right time,
and all of a sudden, Osaka was a karaoke town,
(18:40):
and in very short order, Tokyo was as well. Um
And because it kind of blew up for the first
time in Osaka, Osaka is considered the birthplace of karaoke,
even though it really was born in Kobe, like very plainly. Yeah.
So you know you mentioned earlier that he was a
pretty sharp tack in some ways, uh and others. And
(19:02):
I'm not saying he wasn't smart, but he didn't patent
the thing. His brother in law said he really should
patent this Duke eight. He said, you know what, patent
law is really complicated here in Japan. It's super expensive. Uh.
You know, all I can patent is the business model
because all of these you know, it's just a combination
of other components that already have patents on the which
(19:24):
is you know, I guess it's just different. I know,
just from my Shark Tank viewing that in America, if
you put together these different or any different technologies and
just the right way, you can't get a patent, you know,
not always but um, I've seen patents go through where
I'm like, well, that's just this, this and this. They're like, yes,
but we can bind them in the patent offense recognized it. Yeah,
(19:46):
it's I think it's called an improvement or something like that.
And I actually read this really interesting article chuck in
a on magazine like I don't know, five six, seven
years ago, um, where it basically made the case we
stopped actually innovating we humans did back in maybe the
sixties or seventies, and that everything we've invented since then
(20:08):
it's basically just putting existing stuff together. And they used
the example of the iPhone, which basically is like, it's amazing,
it's this amazing technology, but it's you know, it's a camera,
it's also a phone, it's also your email, it's also text.
Like it's all these existing things just put together in
one convenient place. Um. And that that's a really great
(20:28):
example of how we actually stopped like creating new stuff
and just basically repurposing, repackaging existing stuff, and that hopefully
we're due for another huge technological advancement sometime soon if
we don't, um, just decline from utter decadence before we
get the chance to do that. Yeah. I remember there
was a meme a few years ago or probably a
(20:50):
little more than that, that showed up this the front
page of a radio shack magazine at or whatever, and
it was in at the bottom it said, all of
these are now on your smartphone and it was like
forty things, you know, from like tape recorders to microphones,
to cameras to uh, you know thing, what's the thing
(21:11):
that tells the temperature? The a an accompanist? But basically
everything you know on that page is now on an iPhone.
It's kind of like, well, and now I see why
Radio Scheck is no longer around. Yeah, poor Radio Scheck.
They really they did a lot there and they got
kind of dissed at the end. It was pretty great.
I love that story, it was and they had a
really cool logo too. I agreed. Um. So, so you
(21:36):
said that that he did not patent the karaoke machine
the juke a right, Yeah, I mean he made plenty
of money still though. Yeah. So yes, he's still manufactured
juke case eight and sold them and you know, he
sold tens of thousands of them a year and they
were his machine. So basically for a long time until Base,
until other competitors figured out that there wasn't a patent
(21:58):
on this thing. Um, if you wanted a karaoke machine,
you had to go to Daska in a way, right
and buy one. So yes, he definitely made money, and
he continued to make money over the decades and through
the years, selling like UM equipment or UM cd s
stuff like that. Right, So he was fine, and he
actually seems very zen about this. But it is entirely
(22:19):
clear that had he patented this, and I think this
really kind of drove home to me just how globally
popular karaoke is, he would have been a billionaire many
times over just from inventing karaoke and kicking back and
taking the royalties from the initial patent. He didn't like,
I agree, though he didn't seem like that kind of
(22:39):
guy from reading about him, it seemed because once you
do that, your job then is is fighting people in court. Yeah, yeah,
and that who wants to do that now? He didn't
seem interested in it. He also wondered, I think in
that one autobiography article, if it would have taken off
UM had had he had a patent on it, it
(23:00):
might not have just gotten as big as it was.
I think that, you know, which is a pretty an
argument in favor against intello intellectual property laws. But I
think we should do in an episode just on intellectual
property one day. Let's do it. Let's do it shot. Uh.
You know who didn't feel that way was uh, an
inventor from the Philippines name Roberto del Rosario, because he
(23:24):
did get a patent on his karaoke singalong system in
seventy five. Uh. And you know, I guess he'd I
don't know his full story, but surely he knew what
was going on with the Duke eight and knew that
he could kind of capitalize on that. He I read
a little bio on him, and apparently he claims that
he had no idea about um karaoke as far as
(23:47):
Japan is concerned, and that he invented it independently. So
who knows about that. But he's also very frequently cited
as an inventor of karaoke incorrectly. UM. And then there's
another guy too, who will meet Actually, let's meet him
right now. There's a guy named um k T kag
Come on, so ka uh is a He was a
(24:09):
Japanese businessman who happened to manufacture um karaoke machines and
the reason that he's frequently cited as the inventor of
karaokes because he and another guy named Earl Glick are
the two men who introduced karaoke to the West through
a machine debuting in two called the Singing Machine. Yeah,
(24:31):
and we should say that. Uh. You know, Dave, one
of our great writers, helped us put this together and
he got a lot of this stuff from this point
forward from a book by a man named Brian Raftery
called it Don't Stop Believing Colin How karaoke conquered the
World and changed My life. And I think this is
kind of one of the seminal books on karia. That's
the impression I have as well. Um, but you know
(24:55):
it came to America, like you said, it had been
spreading throughout Japan and obviously with international business travel in
international travel period, it's the kind of thing that eventually
made its way to the States. And uh, this film producer,
producer of Children of the Corn was, Yeah, that's sort
of his most most noteworthy movie because I mean, well
(25:17):
he respect he was, Yeah, I mean I had respect
for him, just being the head of how Roach Studios.
How Roach Studios were responsible for Laurel and Hardy and
our gang, the Little Rascals, but by the time Earl
Glick was presiding over it, it was like basically teetering
on bankruptcy and resting on its Laurels had no idea
that he produced children of the Corn. So, yeah, mad
(25:38):
respect to Earl Glick. So in nineteen eighty and again
this is a great story. I hope it really went
this way. He was on a cruise ship and he
was playing blackjack, ran out of dough and needed to
double down and needed more money because he had a
great hand apparently, and there was like you said, a
man named is it Kai or k k which is
(26:00):
short for Kiso Kisu, so k is nearby. He said,
here's three three large I can cover you on. That
gave him three grand glick one and obviously that formed
a friendship. He was like, you're you're a great guy
just to give me three thousand dollars like yeah, and
(26:20):
and k was like, you're a great guy to pay
me back exactly, And they they bonded there on the
cruise ship and when they hit Tokyo and docked. Uh.
Takagi took Mr Glick back to his office, said, Hey,
look at this karaoke thing. It's pretty great. You should
get these going in the States. And Click was like,
(26:41):
and I'm not so sure about this, but Takagi was
not to be deterred, and over the next year would
kind of send him sales figures to the point where
Click was like, hey, there's some real money to be
made here. Yeah, so so, I mean, at least in Japan.
By this time, karaoke had been like a huge since
station in Japan for a full decade, like it changed
(27:03):
the culture. Um Deska in a way basically points to
the invention of karaoke as like giving like all of
these intensely overworked Japanese office workers a way to like
blow off steam and like just feel better about themselves
that they otherwise didn't have. So it really took off
in Japan, but it was questionable whether it was going
(27:24):
to take off in America. So it wasn't like a
given thing that just because the sales figures were high
in Japan that they were going to translate into America.
And at first, actually that is how it went. When
they came up with the singing Machine in two Um.
Apparently kay Takagi would demonstrated on the street and get
booed um because, as he recounted later, it seemed like
(27:45):
the American public like took offense or was generally agitated
when people who weren't professionals publicly performed music, and that
was the whole basis of karaoke. It still is. It's
reasonable though, Yeah, I mean, here's my deal, Like, if
someone there can be a certain amount of bad that's
(28:05):
still kind of entertaining and fun depends. But there's some
that's so bad where it's just you're waiting and waiting
for that song to end. It's just so painture, and
that's when that's when you boom. You need to stop this.
So there's a certain booing threshold for sure, especially when
you know that they are essentially deliberately singing badly they
(28:28):
deserve to be Yeah, yeah, Okay, that's a different thing.
If someone is just super drunk and being really obnoxious too,
and that's different. It's when they're trying and they're bad,
that's when you shouldn't boo them because you will totally
shatter their spirit forever. Yeah, So it's it's up to
you as an individual to cast that judgment at that
moment exactly. Just use it wisely, is all. That's right? Alright,
(28:53):
So the it's not taking off quite yet, he's demonstrating it,
like you said, not doing a good job, as legend
has it. Click supposedly even took it to Frank Sinatra,
who will figure in always figures in it karaoke, it
seems like, and Frank was like, no, thank you. He said,
what is this, huncle junk baby? You can you can
(29:13):
do Sammy. I'll do Frank from now and OK. That
was actually me doing a bad Phil Hartman impression of
Frank Sinatra. Well, mine is just Billy Crystal doing doing
Sammy Davis Jr. So oh, I like to think of
you doing Sammy Davis Jr. Well, it's funny because, uh,
Sammy was actually there. When Frank turned it down. He
(29:34):
was like, I don't know, Matt, you could make some
real dough with this thing. And Frank said, don't contradict me, Sammy,
not in front of Click. Boy, that's pretty good. Phil Hartman,
I think Joe Piscopo used to do it back in
the day. Was great memory. He was doing some like
(29:54):
um roundtable discussion about current topics or something, and say
O'Connor was one of the panel members, and he kept
call her the sign aide and q ball and like
she she was like trying to have this, you know,
legitimate conversation or whatever. He just kept dismissing her. Jan Hooks.
I think, yeah, yeah, it was great. Great. That was
back when he was really mad at her because she
(30:17):
tore up the picture of the pope protesting abuse and
it's like, maybe we should revisit that. Yeah, yeah, right, exactly. Yeah,
you know, I think she was kind of right on,
right on target. They're still around, I can't remember. I
was reading about her not too long ago, and I
mean she's still, if not putting out music, I think
she's an artist at least she's still creating, still creating things.
(30:39):
Uh So karaoke takes holden at least on the West coast.
And I saw some places like we're going to cover
the East Coast and the West coast. I saw that
before this even happened. The Midwest. Yeah, did you see that? No?
I was totally joking. Really, yeah. I saw an archive
New York Times article about the place we're gonna talk
(30:59):
about in man. Huh. And they said that it had
already been sort of making the rounds in the Midwest
because of Japanese autoworkers. Oh wow, that's really impressive. So
but it was in the Midwest and no one knew
about it. So yeah, So did this predate Dimples on
the West coast though, or did it kind of also
simultaneously go on in l A. Well, if Dimples, what
(31:22):
year was Dimples Dimples? I have the impression was in
the mid eighties. I would say probably let's go with eight. Five, No, no,
I'm sorry. Seven is when it really took off. Well,
the article in the New York Times was from eighty seven,
and they said that it had already been a thing
in the Midwest. Wow, that's that's really hats off to
Peka for innovating with karaoke in the US. Probably Detroit maybe,
(31:46):
I guess that's kind of where the Japanese auto manufacturing
was back then. I wonder if it was Japanese executives
coming over and talking about karaoke or American auto executives
going over to Japan and learning about karaoke, then coming
back to the Midwest and being like, let's do something tonight, right,
I put on a bunch of mufflers today exactly, I'm
(32:08):
ready to unwind and build something that's really interesting. Man,
nice nugget. So Dimple's like we mentioned, it was until
I think the mid two thousands of bar and Burbank.
From what I saw, oh is that when it closed
and in favor of a Whole Food to be built
over the top of it. The Whole Food well they're
(32:31):
multiple Whole Foods, so yeah, Whole Foods was built over
the uh. So this is in Burbank right across from
Warner Brothers Studios, and the owner their salth Ferraro, bought
UM a bunch of these karaoke cassettes. He has started
advertising like, Hey, where America's first karaoke karaoke bar. You're
(32:52):
gonna love it. People didn't catch on at first, but
they kind of took a page from the earlier days
with dice K when they said, well, there are plenty
of young, attractive UM actors and actresses out here, so
let's just get some of those in to perform. And
it took off. People like well, I want to be
a star to r exactly. People started hitting the mini stage.
(33:15):
So yeah, so this was Dimples was known as America's
first karaoke bar, apparently incorrectly, but um, it certainly was
America's first widely known karaoke bar because it was in
l A. But it was extremely old fashioned in a
lot of ways. Number One, there were no k boxes,
which we'll talk about in a minute. It was you
performing on stage in front of the whole bar. That's
(33:37):
that's considered an old fashioned style karaoke bar. Number two, Um,
you probably don't necessarily know every single lyric to the
song you're singing, so they would hand you a book
with laminated pages with the lyrics, so you would be
reading from a big binder while you were trying to
sing and perform at the same time. That's certainly very
(33:58):
old fashioned. And then um also number three, Um, I
think there were only two. Now that I say number three,
I think it was those two that made it super
old fashioned. So you perform in front of strangers, and
then you had to read from a book. And so
Dimples apparently really took off, and then karaoke also really
took off around the world when they added something called
(34:20):
C D plus G, which is compact disc plus graphics. Um. Oh,
that was the third one. They would literally use eight
tracks or cassettes of recorded karaoke music, and then all
of a sudden the late eighties, you had a disc
that you could buy had a whole bunch of karaoke songs,
but then also it had a video component to it
as well, so that you could see the lyrics on screen.
(34:43):
And around the late eighties when karaoke as we know
and love it today was was born. Yeah. I mean
one of my favorite things still about karaoke is that
sometimes it can still have that old school look with
like a a nature scene like a waterfall behind it
looks like it's like this looks like the late eighties
(35:03):
up on screen in front of me. It's a delight. Yeah,
or at least the early nineties, you know. Yeah. So
that was the West Coast in New York. There was
a place called sing Along that opened an eighty seven.
And this was opened by I think like four people.
Um Zack Smith, who was a drummer for Scandal, Um
great band if you remember Scandal the Warrior, Yeah exactly, Um,
(35:27):
and then an attorney named Mindy Burne Bomb and then
Scandals manager David Donald Zuckerman. And we also should say
that they sort of put it on the Western map.
But there were places already in Manhattan. There was one
in Chinatown called Lotus Blossom, another one at a restaurant
called Ichiban. So there were some karaoke bars in Manhattan,
(35:48):
but kind of like with everything else there, like and
you know, history says, until it's introduced to like white
America doesn't exist, like it doesn't exist. Maybe we'll mention
it later in a retrospective thirty years exactly. So, but
it did hit it big because of sing Along? So
are you saying that sing Along Sprague karaoke in America
(36:09):
more than Dibbles did? Okay, although they did franchise. I
think they opened one in Buckhead here in Atlanta as
the second one, is that right? And then so sing
Along Um was also this place that innovated the kJ
karaoke jockey. Not I couldn't help myself. That was totally involuntary. Yeah, um,
(36:32):
but the kJ is the guy who um is like
English Dan, who you know, gets everybody psyched up to
come up on stage. English whoever, English Dan was a
yacht rock guy. Right, I'd really like to see you tonight. Yeah,
it was. It was the English Dan English nick Um
was a kJ English Dan was the English Um that's
(36:56):
a great song too. Um. But so the kJ was
innovative at sing alongs to and you said the second
sing along was in Buckhead, right, yeah, thinking then Chicago
was next. So that would have been like the early nineties,
because the late eighties saw like the the beginning of
the entrenchment of karaoke, and then the spread really took
off in the nineties and all of a sudden, it
(37:17):
was like pop culture everywhere. Karaoke the first time for
the first time in America in the nineties. Yeah, And
it's funny to go back and read, Um. I know,
Dave pulled a quote from the A. J. C Here
in Atlanta, but to go back and read that New
York Times article sort of describing what karaoke is is
really very charged. I know what I'm saying. Contemporary journalism
(37:38):
is so helpful. I love it. It's neat because they're like,
you know, people get up on stage we have never
seen before, and some people are bad and some people
are great, but everyone has a good time. It's yeah,
and so you know, people made fun of it, but
it was still an extremely popular thing to do, typically
like ladies night, trivia night, karaoke night. Like. It wasn't
(38:00):
necessarily like a karaoke bar, but it was kind of everywhere. Um.
But then there were places that where karaoke bars that
started to spring up to um and apparently it started
to hit on hard times in the nineties, at least
the trend started to die out a little bit. I'm
sure grunge had something to do with that. That was
kind of a sea change when Grunge came along. But
(38:21):
then American Idol actually revived karaoke like gang Busters basically, yeah,
I think that's a good place for a nice little
uh cliffhanger. Okay, okay, well we'll leave it. See what
happens did American Idol last we'll find out right after this. Well,
(38:56):
now we're on the road driving in your truck on
learn a thing or two from Josh. Can chuck it
you should know, all right, Okay, chuck lay it on them. Yeah,
American Idol comes on the scene. Uh, it was huge.
(39:16):
I mean, I'm not sure what their ratings are like
these days, but in those early years, it was like
one of the biggest TV shows in the history of
American television, and it apparently revived karaoke because people were
seeing regular folks get up on stage and sing. And
I think that just sort of coincided with um people
remembering like, hey, wait a minute, this karaoke thing that
(39:39):
Kurt Cobain killed. Um that was kind of fun. Why
are we too cool for school now? Exactly? Because I
mean that that was I guess it kind of is
what American idol is. You've got an accompanist playing and
you're singing and that's yeah. So it kind of made
people like get back into it a little bit. So,
um that that was I think too. Thousand two was
(40:02):
the season, the first season where Kelly Clarkson beat Dr
Pepper's Little Sweet in the finals. Um, haven't you seen
that Dr peppered with Little Sweet? It was a little
sweet the run around, Yeah, just justin Guarini, Uh yeah yeah, yeah,
yeah yeah. Um. So American idol was big and then
(40:25):
that that was like regular America was like, oh yeah,
let's go karaoke, and I forgot about that and then
cool indie America, um got back into karaoke thanks to
Lost in Translation. Yeah, you know the very famous scene
in the Sofia Coppola film where Bill Murray and Scarlett
Johansson or in a k box having a lot of
(40:47):
fun on their big night out in Tokyo. And uh,
it's a really great movie and a great scene. Um,
unlike all of the scenes and the two thousand film
Duets one of the worst ever. And like, I mean,
you know, obviously there's like um Absolution, the Journey or whatever,
that Mario Lopez movie that Riff Tracks recently released. Like,
(41:08):
there's obviously really really really bad movies out there. They're
so bad they're almost unwatchable. Duets is bad, like on
a on an offensive level that that it's really hard
to put into words. It's so because they clearly sunk money, time,
effort and thought into it, and it's still so bad.
(41:29):
Like these other bad movies, somebody just pooped it out
in like a couple of months. This is like a
huge major motion picture and it's so bad that it's
it almost like ticks me off just thinking about how
bad that movie was and that it got released. Yeah,
I never saw it. Um, if you don't know what
we're talking about. This is the movie directed by Bruce Paltrow,
(41:50):
starring his daughter, Gwyneth, Huey Lewis, Paul g Marty, Andre Brower,
Scott Speedman, a bunch of people and it's literally about karaoke.
And I watched the trailer today and now I have
that stupid cruising song in my head and so yeah, yeah,
that Geico commercial where they're on the moon gives me
flashbacks of duets because that's like the main song that
(42:11):
they sing in it. Yeah, I do have to say
there's one thing where I didn't know is Bruce Paltrow
that directs it. But um, there's a shot where Huey
Lewis and I think Gwyneth Paltrow checking into a hotel
and the it's like like the scene ends and Gwyneth
Paltrow leaves the shot and Huey lose to stands there
and he spikes the camera and blinked a couple of times,
(42:35):
and you see more clearly than you ever possibly could,
how blank it is inside of Hughey Lewis's head. You
just see it. And maybe he's not blank all the time,
but for that moment, he was totally blank. And it's great.
It's one of the great shots of all time. But
that movie just that's it's it's worthwhile. The whole movie
(42:57):
is worthwhile just to see that one shot. But is
it's so bad? I love Huey Lewis too, Yeah, me too.
Nothing again, you gotta see it. But but loss in
translation was the exact opposite of do what So that
scene was Yes, yeah, it made it cool and hip again,
like you said, and um, it was already kind of
picking up steam anyway. But that definitely was like, well,
(43:17):
a Bill Murray and wear an inside out T shirt
and get up there and sing what was it Elvis Costello?
I don't remember what he's saying. I think he did peace,
love and understanding. Uh so that put it back on
the map. And now I guess we need to talk
a little bit about just the industry side of it,
because you know, when you're putting hundreds and hundreds of
(43:39):
songs out performed by different people, like these aren't the
original versions there recorded by you know, uh, session players
and session singers, because you always have that you know,
sort of background track going. And there's a lot of
money going, I mean karaoke. It's like a ten billion
dollar in stree or something, and everyone gets a cut.
(44:02):
Like if you wrote the song or perform the song,
or if you have the publishing rights to the song.
Everyone has to say it's okay to have my my
song recorded for karaoke, and it's okay to have it performed,
and each one there are different moneys that people have
to pay. Yeah, there's a mechanical fee to actually record
the song. There's a synchronization fee to um sync up
(44:24):
the lyrics with it, any kind of video presentation. Um,
there's a performance fee if it's not done in a
K box, which I don't even know if we said
a K box is just a little soundproof room that
you can rent that's a private room for you and
your friends or whatever to perform karaoke, and so you're
not doing it in front of strangers. You don't have
to wait for other people to go. You just go
as often as you want. It is and then it's
(44:46):
also it's just way more fun. And most karaoke places
have k boxes now. Um, but if you're if you're
not in a K box, if it's in front of people,
you probably have to also pay a performance fee as well.
Not you the karaoke person, but either the venue or
the kJ or the company that's actually directing this because
time was you used to have to get an eight
(45:06):
track and everything was very tightly regulated. Now there's centralized
servers basically that existing countries around the world that have
these huge databases of karaoke songs to where if you
go into a karaoke place, it's just hitting up a computer,
probably in the Philippines or Malaysia or something like that,
and it's sending back that song and the lyrics with
it UM onto your video screen and through the sound system.
(45:29):
So to keep up with all of that is really
really difficult, And there's a lot of UM lawsuits that
were that were UM filed. Probably the biggest one with
Sony Music suing KTS Karaoke. They sued him for like
one point to five billion dollars for copyright infringement. Yeah,
I mean there's been plenty of lawsuits UM. And the
(45:50):
same goes with and eat jukeboxes, and anytime you have
a venue where people perform music, if there are cover
songs performed and stuff, uh it to you know, it's
a sort of a legal quagmire. And like you said,
even more complicated these days when you can be UM
sort of off book and just do like a YouTube
version on a Wednesday night at the bar and sort
(46:13):
of be off grid as far as people uh seeking
money are concerned. But if you're a legit karaoke club,
obviously you're doing it right. Or have a legit real
karaoke night with a company coming in, they're doing it right,
as in paying all the artists and stuff like that.
But there are you know, some artists who have never
(46:33):
signed away their rights. I think Springsteen is one. There
are some people who used to, but now the songs
have been removed, um like if you print songs. Bon Jovi, Aba,
Coldplay have removed certain songs. Um maybe because of complications
or because they couldn't get everyone on board. But if
you used to sing a song and you come back
(46:54):
a few years later and it's not available, that maybe
why probably is So what's weird is that you would
think would kill karaoke, but the burgeoning of the Internet
and YouTube and just basically people creating karaoke songs at
their house and being able to in like a home
studio with just their laptop has actually kept it going.
(47:14):
So karaoke doesn't seem to be going anywhere, although it
does seem to be getting more and more removed from
the group. There's a new thing called wankara, which is
a solo karaoke singing box. There's room for one person
in there, and that's all the rage in Japan right now.
From what I understand. Maybe it's just like a practice. Nope,
(47:35):
it's just I just want to sing because I want
to sing. That's what it's been. I mean, you know,
I bet, I'm sure there's been a person who's like,
before I try my chops in front of people on Gon,
rent one of these for my show. But I think
there's also people who are like, all I want to
do is wan car. I don't want to talk to
any of you. Uh. There are home karaoke machines, obviously
(47:56):
you can buy. There are apps now. Uh. One of
the great delights of my life is when my brother
sends me a smule song s m U l E.
It's a singing app where he will be sitting in
traffic and no record a full song and my brother's
sing a better singer to me, and he'll just send me,
like you know, I'll just get a text and it's attached,
(48:18):
like here's a smule from Scott Bryant. I've not heard
of that. It's great. I mean, I have it too,
I don't use it much, but he's he's kind of
a smule king and you can connect with other people
to do duets and stuff like that you don't even know.
So there's a whole community around it. So um, we
I know we've talked about it before, but we can't
stop until we talk about my Way killings and violence
(48:40):
in general around karaoke because there has been Yeah, there
there was something called the my Way killings, which we
talked about in our is tone Deafness hereditary um episode um.
But at least six people have been killed in the
Philippines during or after a performance of my Way, Frank
(49:00):
Sinatra's song my Way, UM. And there's all sorts of
interpretations of why that my Way is a really popular
song and so you know, and bar fights happened, so
it just was coincidence. Other people are like, no, they
really take my Way very seriously in the Philippines and
if you sing it tone deaf, you're in trouble. Um.
But it wasn't just my Way, apparently. John Denver's take
(49:21):
Me Home Country Roads is one of the bloodiest songs
of all time, right? Is that a murder trigger? I
guess there was a guy in Thailand who killed eight
of his neighbors, eight party goers at his next to
our neighbor's house, one of whom was his brother in
law because they would not stop singing and they sang
take Me Home, Country Roads, and he went over and
(49:42):
shot them all dead. I mean, clearly other stuff going
on there. Yeah, he seemed a little high strung, but
like it was the karaoke that had had pushed him
over the edge for sure. Yeah. What do you think
Frank would say about the my Way killings? You're gonna
lighten up sometimes, baby. I'll tell you what they don't
(50:03):
kill people two men is Mr Bojangles. You got that, right, Sammy?
Uh yeah. And you know we should also mention too
that it is huge in the Philippines, Like anywhere you go,
almost in public, there might be it's sort of like
the go into Nevada and you know there's a slot
(50:25):
machine like every time you turn around, except there's someone singing.
In the Philippines, Yeah, I mean, it's just it's huge.
And Asia in general, you mean has this great story
about how she would kind of, you know, go duck
out and go to lunch and sing karaoke and go
back to work afterward. Here there good stuff. Um, so
(50:46):
you got anything else? Nothing else? All right? Well, if
you want to know more about karaoke, just get up
there and do it. It's not going to kill you,
and you're gonna be happy that you did. And since
I said you're gonna be happy, that means it's time
for a listener mail of course. Uh. This is from
a new fifteen year old fan. Hey, guys, big fan
(51:07):
of the show, writing to say, Hi, just turned fifteen.
I'm from California. I started listening in December, so I'm
fairly new, but you guys so quickly become my number
one show. Multiple times. I've heard y'all say that you
lose listeners around high school. About it here to assure
you that there are high school listeners out here anyway.
A big reason why I love the show is because
all the seemingly boring topics you cover. There's so many
(51:29):
ordinary things that we take for granted that have uh
such an interesting history, like bar codes, for instance. That
has been one of my favorite episodes so far. I'm
glad that Natalie saying this because that's something that we
love about the show is our episodes like ballpoint pens
and bar codes. You know, yeah that seemed boring but
turn out to be fascinating. Love it. Just today I
(51:50):
was asked for a random fact. I was able to
talk about the failure of the Pony Express thanks to you, guys.
I also want to say thank you to everyone and
stuff you should know for keeping the show so enthralling
yet educational and like so many other listeners have helped
me through the tough times. I can always counting you
for laughter, education and tangents, one of my favorite parts
of the show. Uh and then a final little, very
kind correction, and we welcome those. It's been very unkindlyly.
(52:18):
Uh Yeah. So it almost feels like there's a new
breed of listener who's like, look, I don't know who
you jerks are, but I think you're jerks. And here's
everything I think that you're a jerk about. There's been
a lot of that. I think it's uh, I don't
know what it is. Maybe the pandemic wearing on people here.
It could be we've gone two waves of that though,
where we'll get like a new swath of listeners and
(52:40):
then like six months later we'll hear from a lot
of them again and be like, look, I'm really sorry
about that first email. I really I can't do without
you guys. Yeah, you still don't know what you're talking
about a lot of the times, but but I find endearing.
Now it's weird, uh. She Natalie listened to the Walrus episode.
I'm sure you got email about this, but wanted to
make sure you knew the beach creatures by the Hearst
(53:00):
Castle that you thought were sea lions are elephant seals.
And that is Natalie last name redacted. And she says,
p s. Don't be dumb. Was a great series. It
was nice. I don't know that anyone else ever wrote
in to correct that, So thanks a lot, Natalie. Nicely done. Totally. Um,
that was a great email, Natalie, perfectly done. Welcome to
the fold and good luck with high school. If you
(53:21):
want to be like Natalie and get in touch with this,
you can send us an email, wrap it up, spank
it lightly on the bottom, and send it off to
Stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should
Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more
podcasts for my Heart Radio visit the iHeart Radio app,
Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant Chucker's Chuck tran Um. Yeah,
(00:21):
I just spice it up a little bit with some
multiple stuff. Uh. And no one else is here with us.
We're we're alone out there in the ether, um, and
this is stuff you should know. Although my prediction is, uh,
you know, we started recording a bit early today since
we're on our own. I bet guest producer Dave and
short stuff producer Dave was going to chime in about
(00:42):
five minutes. Okay, yeah, well look forward to hearing what
he says. Uh, what's your deal with karaoke? I sort
of know, but I think that people should know. We should,
we should, we should exchange stories. Okay. I like karaoke. Um.
I particularly like karaoke in the K Box, which we'll
talk about, which is basically it's a little private karaoke
(01:04):
room for you and your friends. Have some great memories
um of karaoke like that. Um. But I'll do it
in front of an audience if I get a drink
or two in me, you know, not too much. Though
you go too much, you start trying to, like, you know,
fight the piano player or something like that. Uh. Oh,
so like live karaoke. Yeah, I've mentioned it a couple
(01:25):
of times, but Sig Gold's Request Room in Manhattan is
the place to go for live piano karaoke. Um. It's
just a beautiful, wonderful place. So if you haven't been there,
go check it out. It's great, about as good as
live karaoke gets, like live instrument karaoke. Alright, so I
haven't been there. I will go still, I forget you know,
(01:46):
I thought you would have gone this past year. Right,
I haven't been there, never been in a k box,
um no, never had the private kerrie. Uh. You know,
we'll pronounce it karaoke even though it's kr a okay,
cut out, okay, cut it okay, But we're not gonna
do that. We're not because I think Dave Ruse helps
(02:07):
us out. He's like, you can pronounce it correctly, but
don't be expected to be invited out to karaoke night
with your friends anymore, right after you practice your kata
te right exactly. Uh so I um have done live
karaoke a few years ago on my birthday. We went
to the um, the one that has the rock band
(02:27):
in the Virginia Highlands. I don't know that one. Yeah,
I mean they have the full on band. It's rock
and roll live karaoke. Uh. One of the local Atlanta
DJ's English Nick is there to serve as um sort
of a backup singer, and they can mix his vocals
and more if you're really bad, because no one wants
to hear that kind of thing. But I get up
(02:48):
there and did Surrender by cheap Trick and he uh.
I saw him at one point even stand away from
the mic, and I was like, I've got this. Oh wow.
He he like went and did something else. I maybe
ate some corns tips or something, a tip of the cap.
But my deal with Karrie Karie okay, is I used
to be scared to death to try it, and that
(03:11):
was when I had severe stage fright performance anxiety, which
I completely got over because now I'm in a band
that sings in front of people. You and I get
on stage in front of people and it doesn't bother
me anymore. I think I'd still probably be a little
nervous to do like an acoustic open mic thing. Yeah,
(03:34):
and you should be for a number of reasons. But uh,
it's just funny how I used to be so scared
and really overthink karaoke, like sit in the room, anxiety sweats,
I really want to do it, but I won't put
my name down, and then you know, the night comes
and goes and I don't do it. Then I had
this guilt and bad feelings. It was. It was a thing. Oh,
(03:57):
I mean this was in my twenties and into my
early thirties. I think when I moved to l a
As when I really started. I guess it was in
my twenties because when I moved to l As, when
I uh finally did it, I was like, this is fine,
and I sing better than a lot of these people. Yeah,
it's a great feeling to to, you know, be done
(04:17):
and have the people you're with be like I had
no idea you could do that. That's really impressive. Yeah,
it's fun. Yeah, I enjoy it. Thir Do you have
a standard karaoke song that you you do or too? Yeah,
I mean I usually try to do uh And I
think we've talked about this under pressure by Queen and
Bowie and I do kind of both parts at the
same time you do like the Tibetan throat chaining kind
(04:40):
of thing. But I I have made some mistakes too.
I tried to do Foreigner as Cold as I said
a friends uh not at their wedding but wedding weekend
at a bar in Philly, and I just I was
feeling it and was like, I had forgotten how high
that song is. It was, Yeah, that can be a
problem when you like starting your range but then you forget,
Oh it keeps going up. That's a that's a real
(05:01):
karaoke problem. And actually I saw a check that if
you do that enough times you can get what it's
called karaoke polyps, which are really Yeah, it's basically like
polyps that grow on your vocal cords from straining your
vocal cords by trying to sing like a professional without
the training of a professional singer. So it can be
deadly dangerous. Maybe not the deadly part, but it can
(05:21):
be dangerous. Yeah, And I used to do the mental
gymnastics of kind of like stepping outside and going through
the song mentally real quick. Yeah, yeah, can I hit
the parts for sure? For sure? And you should, I think,
just as a responsible karaoke singer, you kind of do
need to make sure that you can sing the song, because, yeah,
it's kind of funny to you if you do a
(05:44):
bad karaoke performance. But the point of karaoke is to
like blow everybody's socks off. Like just just tear the
roof off the suckers is kind of my personal motto
every time I grab the mic. Yeah, and you know,
I've had sometimes where I've seen some performances at the
live karaoke thing. There was this country guy that clearly
(06:05):
drives in from you know, country Georgia to do this,
and he had a cowboy head on and he did
want a dead or alive. You could tell that's his deal.
He comes into the city, he crushes it, and then
goes back to the farm the next day and everyone's like,
who was that lonesome cowboy? Who was that mask stranger?
(06:26):
It's pretty cool to see an everyday person just get
up there and really kill it. Yeah, and I'm sure
that guy has to go out of town because he
probably get beat up at his town if he tried
to do that there. You know, he's kind of like this,
like being anonymous too kind of enables that karaoke Gusto,
I think as well, Yeah, so you said something earlier. Um,
(06:47):
you compared kado okay and kada te. And there's a
good reason for that because karate karta ta means empty
hand and um kado okay is actually short for kata oka.
Man I even practice this kata okayta um, which is
(07:09):
like romangi when when people in Japan take an English
word and just kind of chapaint it up a little bit.
So instead of orchestra, it's okaya and kata so it
means empty in Okaya means orchestra, so it's an empty orchestra.
And that's really what car karaoke. Kata okay is. It's
(07:30):
it's slang for empty orchestra, and it actually predates the
concept of karaoke that we think of today. Yeah, apparently
in the early fifties that was a you know, a
pit orchestra in Osaka. They said we want you know,
I'm the army. Sure what they wanted, you would assume
better wages or more bathroom breaks or something, and they
(07:52):
went on strike and the theater replaced them with a
sound system and it was from Matsuda like tronics, And
apparently as the story goes executive from Matsuda came there,
heard the system and said, it's uh, the orchestra. There's
music playing about the orchestra pit is empty, and thus
(08:13):
the term was coined empty orchestra. And that was that
was in the fifties. Um, I think nineteen fifty two
was it, Yes, so um. Karaoke as we understand it
today didn't come along for good almost two decades later.
So there was this idea that anytime you had prerecorded music,
(08:34):
especially if it was played in instead of you know,
where a live performer would play, UM, that that was
karaoke kata okay um. So it was kind of a
handy term that a guy named Desca in a way
um used when he came up with karaoke. And the
(08:54):
idea of who invented karaoke who came up with it
is not just widely settled, but for the most part,
there is like those who know site desk in a
way as the as the guy who who actually came
up with this as we understand it, Yeah, I did see.
You know, there are a couple of other people in
(09:15):
the late sixties that kind of messed around with machines
that kind of did what what the karaoke machine does.
But yeah, his story is great. He's a if you
look him up a picture, he's a pretty cool looking customer.
And in Osaka in the fifties, he was in high
school and he was a drummer in a rock band
and then tried to be a musician professionally for a
(09:38):
little while, but like so many musicians that tried that
for a little while, ended up back at home in
his late twenties, living with his parents in Kobe. Yeah,
but he gave it a good decade long try, you know,
he was out on the road. I read this really
great UM kind of mini biography or autobiography UM from
the early two thousands that was published in the appendix
(09:59):
is voice Hero to look that up. It's a really
he's just a charming guy. Um. But he he tried
it for about ten years and it just didn't work
out because most of the money was pocketed by the older,
more established musicians. UM, and it just he wasn't going anywhere.
I think he said that he realized that no matter
how much he practiced, and he really practiced, UM, he
(10:21):
would never be as good as somebody who had natural
talent and it just wasn't for him, so he decided
to try something else. But he didn't want to give
up um playing entirely. He wanted to try to make
a living somehow from playing music, and it just so
happens that his parents living in Kobe placed him at
this really particularly good spot for karaoke to begin, which
(10:44):
is Kobe, which is about thirty minutes outside of Osaka,
um where the very famous Kobe beef comes from. And
at the time in Kobe, and for a while before that,
there was a popular pastime of singalongs, which is basically
like you go to a bar a snack is what
they were called, and there'd be somebody playing a piano
(11:05):
or a guitar or something like that, and everybody would sing,
you know, popular songs along with the mini band that
was playing. Yeah, but that was like groups singing together, uh,
not like a single person either delighting or embarrassing themselves. Um.
But he got into this scene a little bit and
it was clearly a popular thing. So he's like, I'm
(11:28):
a musician. I guess he played piano too, and he
learned a few hundred really popular songs on piano and
then started performing as the accompaniments, accompaniments, accompaniment. I think
that's the Latin plural accompaniments accompany down what's the word
for the person the accompanist? Accompany is accompany minimust empotymus.
(11:53):
None of these sound right, it's accompany list Okay, that
just sounds weird to me. But you know how that
your brain just broke it did a little bit. So
he was doing this as the piano guy, the piano man,
if you will, and one day this customer comes in
who had been frequenting these nights where he was playing piano,
(12:14):
and he was like, listen, I'm a business guy. I
gotta go to a different city on the sales for
the sales meeting, and I gotta take these uh these
other people out to you know, to go out drinking
and singing after and you're my guy. I can't like,
I can only sing along with you. So would you
mind recording something for me that I can bring along?
(12:37):
And he said sure, So we recorded some stuff on
a reel to reel, gave it to him. The trip
was a big hit, and the guy came back and
said I need more of these, and that was, you know,
literally the aha moment. He grabbed desca in a way
by his lapels and shook him and said, give me more, man,
I need some more. And he did. And apparently right
at this time, as he was being shaken, Desca left
(12:59):
his body astro project elsewhere into the universe, where he
was greeted by the same entity that Um that led
to the creation of Ketchup, and the same entity has
Ketchup and karaoke under its belt because it met with
Daiskin said this is like, pay attention to what's happening
right now, invent karaoke, and dasa Um basically came back
(13:21):
to his body and said, I have I have this
great idea. I'm going to invent a machine that is
basically me what this guy wants me to do live
that I can multiply create a bunch of different machines
that do the same thing and it's going to be
the first karaoke machine ever. And that's what he did.
He came up with something called the Duke eight, which
is a great name. Yeah, it's cool looking, I mean
(13:44):
the idea and you can look at pictures of the
guy with this thing and it's you know, it's about
the size of a small guitar amp or something which
is not bad. You'd think would be the size of
like a smart car or something for the first prototype
back in the day. But it was simple. I mean,
they had amps at the time. They really just combined
a few technologies, which was an eight track player right
(14:04):
from a car, A car, a car eight track players
where they started with oh yeah and a which are
really no different than any other eight track players. I
guess that's true. Yeah, yeah, I mean maybe they worked
better in motion. I don't know, no, but that's probably
why those cars were so big, because they had to
be that big back in the day to hold the
eight track track. Uh. So, you know, it was like
(14:25):
an eight track player mixed with a you know, an
amp or a p A, a small p A. And
his ideas, you know, he called the juke e because
it was kind of like a juke box, is that
you would put money in it like a juke box
to get a certain amount of time on the clock,
which I think was kind of brilliant instead of like
a song, um like, I think the idea is that
(14:46):
people would just keep feeding it. Yeah. He actually specifically
said that he chose five minutes a hundred yen about
thirty five cents bought you five minutes of singing time
so that you'd be part way through the second song
and have to put more money and to finish the
second song. He was he was a sharp tack in
a lot of ways, well in some way, in some way.
(15:07):
Uh So I think they took a couple of months
to build each. Uh They cost him about four d
and twenty five bucks, which is about today. And he said,
I gotta get some of these tracks recorded. So he
got a bunch of his friends to record, you know,
musicians to record these instrumental tracks, started shopping it around
(15:30):
and sold all eleven of those machines and pretty quick order. Yeah,
I think. Um, I don't know if he sold them
or if he took them as like basically, um a
proof of conflict, yeah, something like that. Either way, he
did get them in eleven different clubs around Kobe, um,
(15:50):
and everybody was glad to have him there to look at.
And that was about it. They just sat there and
nobody did anything with him. Nobody knew quite what to
do with them. And even if they did, I think
it took you know how much gumption it takes in
an established karaoke place when other people are doing it.
Imagine being literally the first person to do karaoke like
you probably would. You know, it just took a little bit. So, Um,
(16:13):
Desica hired somebody, uh he said, a pretty girl in
a sexy outfit is how he put it in that
one autobiography, UM, and had her go around to all
these eleven clubs and basically like sing karaoke. And she
did it, um because he hired her too. But apparently
she came back and was like, I would do that
again just for fun. That was a lot of fun.
(16:33):
And from that point on, basically the whole concept of
karaoke took off, at least in Kobe. Yeah, there were
about two hundred of these machines uh in and around
Kobe uh in pretty short order. And I think it's
a good time to take a break. I think it
is too, because karaoke is just simmering that the lid
(16:54):
is like rattling on the pot right now. Yeah, it's
about to blow. All right, we'll be right back. Well,
(17:14):
now we're on the road, driving in your truck. Want
to learn a thing or two from Josh can Chuck.
It's stuff you should know, all right, Okay, chuck. So
there's a rendered fat spitting out the sides of the
pot and steam going everywhere. I just burned my hand
(17:35):
on it. Let's tear the lid off of this sucker,
which is tangential to my karaoke motto of tearing the
roof off the sucker. That's right. So they're going gangbusters
in Kobe, and like you said, it's not too far
from Osaka, which is a bigger city. And a couple
of entrepreneurs from Kobe said, this is great, but we
(17:56):
need to get this to Osaka, And they brought a
duke eight around kind of showed it around and it
really hit big to the tune of they were moving
about twenty five thousand of these a year pretty quickly. Yeah.
Because so remember I said that Kobe was like a
perfect place for karaoke to to kind of be incubated,
because people already did these sing alongs in Tokyo and Osaka.
(18:18):
It wasn't like that they liked watching an actual band
perform or listening to actual songs in the jukebox. Um.
But when these guys, it could not find the name
of this club, but that when they opened, essentially the
first karaoke club in Osaka. Um. I guess it just
hit at just the right chord, just the right time,
and all of a sudden, Osaka was a karaoke town,
(18:40):
and in very short order, Tokyo was as well. Um
And because it kind of blew up for the first
time in Osaka, Osaka is considered the birthplace of karaoke,
even though it really was born in Kobe, like very plainly. Yeah.
So you know you mentioned earlier that he was a
pretty sharp tack in some ways, uh and others. And
(19:02):
I'm not saying he wasn't smart, but he didn't patent
the thing. His brother in law said he really should
patent this Duke eight. He said, you know what, patent
law is really complicated here in Japan. It's super expensive. Uh.
You know, all I can patent is the business model
because all of these you know, it's just a combination
of other components that already have patents on the which
(19:24):
is you know, I guess it's just different. I know,
just from my Shark Tank viewing that in America, if
you put together these different or any different technologies and
just the right way, you can't get a patent, you know,
not always but um, I've seen patents go through where
I'm like, well, that's just this, this and this. They're like, yes,
but we can bind them in the patent offense recognized it. Yeah,
(19:46):
it's I think it's called an improvement or something like that.
And I actually read this really interesting article chuck in
a on magazine like I don't know, five six, seven
years ago, um, where it basically made the case we
stopped actually innovating we humans did back in maybe the
sixties or seventies, and that everything we've invented since then
(20:08):
it's basically just putting existing stuff together. And they used
the example of the iPhone, which basically is like, it's amazing,
it's this amazing technology, but it's you know, it's a camera,
it's also a phone, it's also your email, it's also text.
Like it's all these existing things just put together in
one convenient place. Um. And that that's a really great
(20:28):
example of how we actually stopped like creating new stuff
and just basically repurposing, repackaging existing stuff, and that hopefully
we're due for another huge technological advancement sometime soon if
we don't, um, just decline from utter decadence before we
get the chance to do that. Yeah. I remember there
was a meme a few years ago or probably a
(20:50):
little more than that, that showed up this the front
page of a radio shack magazine at or whatever, and
it was in at the bottom it said, all of
these are now on your smartphone and it was like
forty things, you know, from like tape recorders to microphones,
to cameras to uh, you know thing, what's the thing
(21:11):
that tells the temperature? The a an accompanist? But basically
everything you know on that page is now on an iPhone.
It's kind of like, well, and now I see why
Radio Scheck is no longer around. Yeah, poor Radio Scheck.
They really they did a lot there and they got
kind of dissed at the end. It was pretty great.
I love that story, it was and they had a
really cool logo too. I agreed. Um. So, so you
(21:36):
said that that he did not patent the karaoke machine
the juke a right, Yeah, I mean he made plenty
of money still though. Yeah. So yes, he's still manufactured
juke case eight and sold them and you know, he
sold tens of thousands of them a year and they
were his machine. So basically for a long time until Base,
until other competitors figured out that there wasn't a patent
(21:58):
on this thing. Um, if you wanted a karaoke machine,
you had to go to Daska in a way, right
and buy one. So yes, he definitely made money, and
he continued to make money over the decades and through
the years, selling like UM equipment or UM cd s
stuff like that. Right, So he was fine, and he
actually seems very zen about this. But it is entirely
(22:19):
clear that had he patented this, and I think this
really kind of drove home to me just how globally
popular karaoke is, he would have been a billionaire many
times over just from inventing karaoke and kicking back and
taking the royalties from the initial patent. He didn't like,
I agree, though he didn't seem like that kind of
(22:39):
guy from reading about him, it seemed because once you
do that, your job then is is fighting people in court. Yeah, yeah,
and that who wants to do that now? He didn't
seem interested in it. He also wondered, I think in
that one autobiography article, if it would have taken off
UM had had he had a patent on it, it
(23:00):
might not have just gotten as big as it was.
I think that, you know, which is a pretty an
argument in favor against intello intellectual property laws. But I
think we should do in an episode just on intellectual
property one day. Let's do it. Let's do it shot. Uh.
You know who didn't feel that way was uh, an
inventor from the Philippines name Roberto del Rosario, because he
(23:24):
did get a patent on his karaoke singalong system in
seventy five. Uh. And you know, I guess he'd I
don't know his full story, but surely he knew what
was going on with the Duke eight and knew that
he could kind of capitalize on that. He I read
a little bio on him, and apparently he claims that
he had no idea about um karaoke as far as
(23:47):
Japan is concerned, and that he invented it independently. So
who knows about that. But he's also very frequently cited
as an inventor of karaoke incorrectly. UM. And then there's
another guy too, who will meet Actually, let's meet him
right now. There's a guy named um k T kag
Come on, so ka uh is a He was a
(24:09):
Japanese businessman who happened to manufacture um karaoke machines and
the reason that he's frequently cited as the inventor of
karaokes because he and another guy named Earl Glick are
the two men who introduced karaoke to the West through
a machine debuting in two called the Singing Machine. Yeah,
(24:31):
and we should say that. Uh. You know, Dave, one
of our great writers, helped us put this together and
he got a lot of this stuff from this point
forward from a book by a man named Brian Raftery
called it Don't Stop Believing Colin How karaoke conquered the
World and changed My life. And I think this is
kind of one of the seminal books on karia. That's
the impression I have as well. Um, but you know
(24:55):
it came to America, like you said, it had been
spreading throughout Japan and obviously with international business travel in
international travel period, it's the kind of thing that eventually
made its way to the States. And uh, this film producer,
producer of Children of the Corn was, Yeah, that's sort
of his most most noteworthy movie because I mean, well
(25:17):
he respect he was, Yeah, I mean I had respect
for him, just being the head of how Roach Studios.
How Roach Studios were responsible for Laurel and Hardy and
our gang, the Little Rascals, but by the time Earl
Glick was presiding over it, it was like basically teetering
on bankruptcy and resting on its Laurels had no idea
that he produced children of the Corn. So, yeah, mad
(25:38):
respect to Earl Glick. So in nineteen eighty and again
this is a great story. I hope it really went
this way. He was on a cruise ship and he
was playing blackjack, ran out of dough and needed to
double down and needed more money because he had a
great hand apparently, and there was like you said, a
man named is it Kai or k k which is
(26:00):
short for Kiso Kisu, so k is nearby. He said,
here's three three large I can cover you on. That
gave him three grand glick one and obviously that formed
a friendship. He was like, you're you're a great guy
just to give me three thousand dollars like yeah, and
(26:20):
and k was like, you're a great guy to pay
me back exactly, And they they bonded there on the
cruise ship and when they hit Tokyo and docked. Uh.
Takagi took Mr Glick back to his office, said, Hey,
look at this karaoke thing. It's pretty great. You should
get these going in the States. And Click was like,
(26:41):
and I'm not so sure about this, but Takagi was
not to be deterred, and over the next year would
kind of send him sales figures to the point where
Click was like, hey, there's some real money to be
made here. Yeah, so so, I mean, at least in Japan.
By this time, karaoke had been like a huge since
station in Japan for a full decade, like it changed
(27:03):
the culture. Um Deska in a way basically points to
the invention of karaoke as like giving like all of
these intensely overworked Japanese office workers a way to like
blow off steam and like just feel better about themselves
that they otherwise didn't have. So it really took off
in Japan, but it was questionable whether it was going
(27:24):
to take off in America. So it wasn't like a
given thing that just because the sales figures were high
in Japan that they were going to translate into America.
And at first, actually that is how it went. When
they came up with the singing Machine in two Um.
Apparently kay Takagi would demonstrated on the street and get
booed um because, as he recounted later, it seemed like
(27:45):
the American public like took offense or was generally agitated
when people who weren't professionals publicly performed music, and that
was the whole basis of karaoke. It still is. It's
reasonable though, Yeah, I mean, here's my deal, Like, if
someone there can be a certain amount of bad that's
(28:05):
still kind of entertaining and fun depends. But there's some
that's so bad where it's just you're waiting and waiting
for that song to end. It's just so painture, and
that's when that's when you boom. You need to stop this.
So there's a certain booing threshold for sure, especially when
you know that they are essentially deliberately singing badly they
(28:28):
deserve to be Yeah, yeah, Okay, that's a different thing.
If someone is just super drunk and being really obnoxious too,
and that's different. It's when they're trying and they're bad,
that's when you shouldn't boo them because you will totally
shatter their spirit forever. Yeah, So it's it's up to
you as an individual to cast that judgment at that
moment exactly. Just use it wisely, is all. That's right? Alright,
(28:53):
So the it's not taking off quite yet, he's demonstrating it,
like you said, not doing a good job, as legend
has it. Click supposedly even took it to Frank Sinatra,
who will figure in always figures in it karaoke, it
seems like, and Frank was like, no, thank you. He said,
what is this, huncle junk baby? You can you can
(29:13):
do Sammy. I'll do Frank from now and OK. That
was actually me doing a bad Phil Hartman impression of
Frank Sinatra. Well, mine is just Billy Crystal doing doing
Sammy Davis Jr. So oh, I like to think of
you doing Sammy Davis Jr. Well, it's funny because, uh,
Sammy was actually there. When Frank turned it down. He
(29:34):
was like, I don't know, Matt, you could make some
real dough with this thing. And Frank said, don't contradict me, Sammy,
not in front of Click. Boy, that's pretty good. Phil Hartman,
I think Joe Piscopo used to do it back in
the day. Was great memory. He was doing some like
(29:54):
um roundtable discussion about current topics or something, and say
O'Connor was one of the panel members, and he kept
call her the sign aide and q ball and like
she she was like trying to have this, you know,
legitimate conversation or whatever. He just kept dismissing her. Jan Hooks.
I think, yeah, yeah, it was great. Great. That was
back when he was really mad at her because she
(30:17):
tore up the picture of the pope protesting abuse and
it's like, maybe we should revisit that. Yeah, yeah, right, exactly. Yeah,
you know, I think she was kind of right on,
right on target. They're still around, I can't remember. I
was reading about her not too long ago, and I
mean she's still, if not putting out music, I think
she's an artist at least she's still creating, still creating things.
(30:39):
Uh So karaoke takes holden at least on the West coast.
And I saw some places like we're going to cover
the East Coast and the West coast. I saw that
before this even happened. The Midwest. Yeah, did you see that? No?
I was totally joking. Really, yeah. I saw an archive
New York Times article about the place we're gonna talk
(30:59):
about in man. Huh. And they said that it had
already been sort of making the rounds in the Midwest
because of Japanese autoworkers. Oh wow, that's really impressive. So
but it was in the Midwest and no one knew
about it. So yeah, So did this predate Dimples on
the West coast though, or did it kind of also
simultaneously go on in l A. Well, if Dimples, what
(31:22):
year was Dimples Dimples? I have the impression was in
the mid eighties. I would say probably let's go with eight. Five, No, no,
I'm sorry. Seven is when it really took off. Well,
the article in the New York Times was from eighty seven,
and they said that it had already been a thing
in the Midwest. Wow, that's that's really hats off to
Peka for innovating with karaoke in the US. Probably Detroit maybe,
(31:46):
I guess that's kind of where the Japanese auto manufacturing
was back then. I wonder if it was Japanese executives
coming over and talking about karaoke or American auto executives
going over to Japan and learning about karaoke, then coming
back to the Midwest and being like, let's do something tonight, right,
I put on a bunch of mufflers today exactly, I'm
(32:08):
ready to unwind and build something that's really interesting. Man,
nice nugget. So Dimple's like we mentioned, it was until
I think the mid two thousands of bar and Burbank.
From what I saw, oh is that when it closed
and in favor of a Whole Food to be built
over the top of it. The Whole Food well they're
(32:31):
multiple Whole Foods, so yeah, Whole Foods was built over
the uh. So this is in Burbank right across from
Warner Brothers Studios, and the owner their salth Ferraro, bought
UM a bunch of these karaoke cassettes. He has started
advertising like, Hey, where America's first karaoke karaoke bar. You're
(32:52):
gonna love it. People didn't catch on at first, but
they kind of took a page from the earlier days
with dice K when they said, well, there are plenty
of young, attractive UM actors and actresses out here, so
let's just get some of those in to perform. And
it took off. People like well, I want to be
a star to r exactly. People started hitting the mini stage.
(33:15):
So yeah, so this was Dimples was known as America's
first karaoke bar, apparently incorrectly, but um, it certainly was
America's first widely known karaoke bar because it was in
l A. But it was extremely old fashioned in a
lot of ways. Number One, there were no k boxes,
which we'll talk about in a minute. It was you
performing on stage in front of the whole bar. That's
(33:37):
that's considered an old fashioned style karaoke bar. Number two, Um,
you probably don't necessarily know every single lyric to the
song you're singing, so they would hand you a book
with laminated pages with the lyrics, so you would be
reading from a big binder while you were trying to
sing and perform at the same time. That's certainly very
(33:58):
old fashioned. And then um also number three, Um, I
think there were only two. Now that I say number three,
I think it was those two that made it super
old fashioned. So you perform in front of strangers, and
then you had to read from a book. And so
Dimples apparently really took off, and then karaoke also really
took off around the world when they added something called
(34:20):
C D plus G, which is compact disc plus graphics. Um. Oh,
that was the third one. They would literally use eight
tracks or cassettes of recorded karaoke music, and then all
of a sudden the late eighties, you had a disc
that you could buy had a whole bunch of karaoke songs,
but then also it had a video component to it
as well, so that you could see the lyrics on screen.
(34:43):
And around the late eighties when karaoke as we know
and love it today was was born. Yeah. I mean
one of my favorite things still about karaoke is that
sometimes it can still have that old school look with
like a a nature scene like a waterfall behind it
looks like it's like this looks like the late eighties
(35:03):
up on screen in front of me. It's a delight. Yeah,
or at least the early nineties, you know. Yeah. So
that was the West Coast in New York. There was
a place called sing Along that opened an eighty seven.
And this was opened by I think like four people.
Um Zack Smith, who was a drummer for Scandal, Um
great band if you remember Scandal the Warrior, Yeah exactly, Um,
(35:27):
and then an attorney named Mindy Burne Bomb and then
Scandals manager David Donald Zuckerman. And we also should say
that they sort of put it on the Western map.
But there were places already in Manhattan. There was one
in Chinatown called Lotus Blossom, another one at a restaurant
called Ichiban. So there were some karaoke bars in Manhattan,
(35:48):
but kind of like with everything else there, like and
you know, history says, until it's introduced to like white
America doesn't exist, like it doesn't exist. Maybe we'll mention
it later in a retrospective thirty years exactly. So, but
it did hit it big because of sing Along? So
are you saying that sing Along Sprague karaoke in America
(36:09):
more than Dibbles did? Okay, although they did franchise. I
think they opened one in Buckhead here in Atlanta as
the second one, is that right? And then so sing
Along Um was also this place that innovated the kJ
karaoke jockey. Not I couldn't help myself. That was totally involuntary. Yeah, um,
(36:32):
but the kJ is the guy who um is like
English Dan, who you know, gets everybody psyched up to
come up on stage. English whoever, English Dan was a
yacht rock guy. Right, I'd really like to see you tonight. Yeah,
it was. It was the English Dan English nick Um
was a kJ English Dan was the English Um that's
(36:56):
a great song too. Um. But so the kJ was
innovative at sing alongs to and you said the second
sing along was in Buckhead, right, yeah, thinking then Chicago
was next. So that would have been like the early nineties,
because the late eighties saw like the the beginning of
the entrenchment of karaoke, and then the spread really took
off in the nineties and all of a sudden, it
(37:17):
was like pop culture everywhere. Karaoke the first time for
the first time in America in the nineties. Yeah, And
it's funny to go back and read, Um. I know,
Dave pulled a quote from the A. J. C Here
in Atlanta, but to go back and read that New
York Times article sort of describing what karaoke is is
really very charged. I know what I'm saying. Contemporary journalism
(37:38):
is so helpful. I love it. It's neat because they're like,
you know, people get up on stage we have never
seen before, and some people are bad and some people
are great, but everyone has a good time. It's yeah,
and so you know, people made fun of it, but
it was still an extremely popular thing to do, typically
like ladies night, trivia night, karaoke night. Like. It wasn't
(38:00):
necessarily like a karaoke bar, but it was kind of everywhere. Um.
But then there were places that where karaoke bars that
started to spring up to um and apparently it started
to hit on hard times in the nineties, at least
the trend started to die out a little bit. I'm
sure grunge had something to do with that. That was
kind of a sea change when Grunge came along. But
(38:21):
then American Idol actually revived karaoke like gang Busters basically, yeah,
I think that's a good place for a nice little
uh cliffhanger. Okay, okay, well we'll leave it. See what
happens did American Idol last we'll find out right after this. Well,
(38:56):
now we're on the road driving in your truck on
learn a thing or two from Josh. Can chuck it
you should know, all right, Okay, chuck lay it on them. Yeah,
American Idol comes on the scene. Uh, it was huge.
(39:16):
I mean, I'm not sure what their ratings are like
these days, but in those early years, it was like
one of the biggest TV shows in the history of
American television, and it apparently revived karaoke because people were
seeing regular folks get up on stage and sing. And
I think that just sort of coincided with um people
remembering like, hey, wait a minute, this karaoke thing that
(39:39):
Kurt Cobain killed. Um that was kind of fun. Why
are we too cool for school now? Exactly? Because I
mean that that was I guess it kind of is
what American idol is. You've got an accompanist playing and
you're singing and that's yeah. So it kind of made
people like get back into it a little bit. So,
um that that was I think too. Thousand two was
(40:02):
the season, the first season where Kelly Clarkson beat Dr
Pepper's Little Sweet in the finals. Um, haven't you seen
that Dr peppered with Little Sweet? It was a little
sweet the run around, Yeah, just justin Guarini, Uh yeah yeah, yeah,
yeah yeah. Um. So American idol was big and then
(40:25):
that that was like regular America was like, oh yeah,
let's go karaoke, and I forgot about that and then
cool indie America, um got back into karaoke thanks to
Lost in Translation. Yeah, you know the very famous scene
in the Sofia Coppola film where Bill Murray and Scarlett
Johansson or in a k box having a lot of
(40:47):
fun on their big night out in Tokyo. And uh,
it's a really great movie and a great scene. Um,
unlike all of the scenes and the two thousand film
Duets one of the worst ever. And like, I mean,
you know, obviously there's like um Absolution, the Journey or whatever,
that Mario Lopez movie that Riff Tracks recently released. Like,
(41:08):
there's obviously really really really bad movies out there. They're
so bad they're almost unwatchable. Duets is bad, like on
a on an offensive level that that it's really hard
to put into words. It's so because they clearly sunk money, time,
effort and thought into it, and it's still so bad.
(41:29):
Like these other bad movies, somebody just pooped it out
in like a couple of months. This is like a
huge major motion picture and it's so bad that it's
it almost like ticks me off just thinking about how
bad that movie was and that it got released. Yeah,
I never saw it. Um, if you don't know what
we're talking about. This is the movie directed by Bruce Paltrow,
(41:50):
starring his daughter, Gwyneth, Huey Lewis, Paul g Marty, Andre Brower,
Scott Speedman, a bunch of people and it's literally about karaoke.
And I watched the trailer today and now I have
that stupid cruising song in my head and so yeah, yeah,
that Geico commercial where they're on the moon gives me
flashbacks of duets because that's like the main song that
(42:11):
they sing in it. Yeah, I do have to say
there's one thing where I didn't know is Bruce Paltrow
that directs it. But um, there's a shot where Huey
Lewis and I think Gwyneth Paltrow checking into a hotel
and the it's like like the scene ends and Gwyneth
Paltrow leaves the shot and Huey lose to stands there
and he spikes the camera and blinked a couple of times,
(42:35):
and you see more clearly than you ever possibly could,
how blank it is inside of Hughey Lewis's head. You
just see it. And maybe he's not blank all the time,
but for that moment, he was totally blank. And it's great.
It's one of the great shots of all time. But
that movie just that's it's it's worthwhile. The whole movie
(42:57):
is worthwhile just to see that one shot. But is
it's so bad? I love Huey Lewis too, Yeah, me too.
Nothing again, you gotta see it. But but loss in
translation was the exact opposite of do what So that
scene was Yes, yeah, it made it cool and hip again,
like you said, and um, it was already kind of
picking up steam anyway. But that definitely was like, well,
(43:17):
a Bill Murray and wear an inside out T shirt
and get up there and sing what was it Elvis Costello?
I don't remember what he's saying. I think he did peace,
love and understanding. Uh so that put it back on
the map. And now I guess we need to talk
a little bit about just the industry side of it,
because you know, when you're putting hundreds and hundreds of
(43:39):
songs out performed by different people, like these aren't the
original versions there recorded by you know, uh, session players
and session singers, because you always have that you know,
sort of background track going. And there's a lot of
money going, I mean karaoke. It's like a ten billion
dollar in stree or something, and everyone gets a cut.
(44:02):
Like if you wrote the song or perform the song,
or if you have the publishing rights to the song.
Everyone has to say it's okay to have my my
song recorded for karaoke, and it's okay to have it performed,
and each one there are different moneys that people have
to pay. Yeah, there's a mechanical fee to actually record
the song. There's a synchronization fee to um sync up
(44:24):
the lyrics with it, any kind of video presentation. Um,
there's a performance fee if it's not done in a
K box, which I don't even know if we said
a K box is just a little soundproof room that
you can rent that's a private room for you and
your friends or whatever to perform karaoke, and so you're
not doing it in front of strangers. You don't have
to wait for other people to go. You just go
as often as you want. It is and then it's
(44:46):
also it's just way more fun. And most karaoke places
have k boxes now. Um, but if you're if you're
not in a K box, if it's in front of people,
you probably have to also pay a performance fee as well.
Not you the karaoke person, but either the venue or
the kJ or the company that's actually directing this because
time was you used to have to get an eight
(45:06):
track and everything was very tightly regulated. Now there's centralized
servers basically that existing countries around the world that have
these huge databases of karaoke songs to where if you
go into a karaoke place, it's just hitting up a computer,
probably in the Philippines or Malaysia or something like that,
and it's sending back that song and the lyrics with
it UM onto your video screen and through the sound system.
(45:29):
So to keep up with all of that is really
really difficult, And there's a lot of UM lawsuits that
were that were UM filed. Probably the biggest one with
Sony Music suing KTS Karaoke. They sued him for like
one point to five billion dollars for copyright infringement. Yeah,
I mean there's been plenty of lawsuits UM. And the
(45:50):
same goes with and eat jukeboxes, and anytime you have
a venue where people perform music, if there are cover
songs performed and stuff, uh it to you know, it's
a sort of a legal quagmire. And like you said,
even more complicated these days when you can be UM
sort of off book and just do like a YouTube
version on a Wednesday night at the bar and sort
(46:13):
of be off grid as far as people uh seeking
money are concerned. But if you're a legit karaoke club,
obviously you're doing it right. Or have a legit real
karaoke night with a company coming in, they're doing it right,
as in paying all the artists and stuff like that.
But there are you know, some artists who have never
(46:33):
signed away their rights. I think Springsteen is one. There
are some people who used to, but now the songs
have been removed, um like if you print songs. Bon Jovi, Aba,
Coldplay have removed certain songs. Um maybe because of complications
or because they couldn't get everyone on board. But if
you used to sing a song and you come back
(46:54):
a few years later and it's not available, that maybe
why probably is So what's weird is that you would
think would kill karaoke, but the burgeoning of the Internet
and YouTube and just basically people creating karaoke songs at
their house and being able to in like a home
studio with just their laptop has actually kept it going.
(47:14):
So karaoke doesn't seem to be going anywhere, although it
does seem to be getting more and more removed from
the group. There's a new thing called wankara, which is
a solo karaoke singing box. There's room for one person
in there, and that's all the rage in Japan right now.
From what I understand. Maybe it's just like a practice. Nope,
(47:35):
it's just I just want to sing because I want
to sing. That's what it's been. I mean, you know,
I bet, I'm sure there's been a person who's like,
before I try my chops in front of people on Gon,
rent one of these for my show. But I think
there's also people who are like, all I want to
do is wan car. I don't want to talk to
any of you. Uh. There are home karaoke machines, obviously
(47:56):
you can buy. There are apps now. Uh. One of
the great delights of my life is when my brother
sends me a smule song s m U l E.
It's a singing app where he will be sitting in
traffic and no record a full song and my brother's
sing a better singer to me, and he'll just send me,
like you know, I'll just get a text and it's attached,
(48:18):
like here's a smule from Scott Bryant. I've not heard
of that. It's great. I mean, I have it too,
I don't use it much, but he's he's kind of
a smule king and you can connect with other people
to do duets and stuff like that you don't even know.
So there's a whole community around it. So um, we
I know we've talked about it before, but we can't
stop until we talk about my Way killings and violence
(48:40):
in general around karaoke because there has been Yeah, there
there was something called the my Way killings, which we
talked about in our is tone Deafness hereditary um episode um.
But at least six people have been killed in the
Philippines during or after a performance of my Way, Frank
(49:00):
Sinatra's song my Way, UM. And there's all sorts of
interpretations of why that my Way is a really popular
song and so you know, and bar fights happened, so
it just was coincidence. Other people are like, no, they
really take my Way very seriously in the Philippines and
if you sing it tone deaf, you're in trouble. Um.
But it wasn't just my Way, apparently. John Denver's take
(49:21):
Me Home Country Roads is one of the bloodiest songs
of all time, right? Is that a murder trigger? I
guess there was a guy in Thailand who killed eight
of his neighbors, eight party goers at his next to
our neighbor's house, one of whom was his brother in
law because they would not stop singing and they sang
take Me Home, Country Roads, and he went over and
(49:42):
shot them all dead. I mean, clearly other stuff going
on there. Yeah, he seemed a little high strung, but
like it was the karaoke that had had pushed him
over the edge for sure. Yeah. What do you think
Frank would say about the my Way killings? You're gonna
lighten up sometimes, baby. I'll tell you what they don't
(50:03):
kill people two men is Mr Bojangles. You got that, right, Sammy?
Uh yeah. And you know we should also mention too
that it is huge in the Philippines, Like anywhere you go,
almost in public, there might be it's sort of like
the go into Nevada and you know there's a slot
(50:25):
machine like every time you turn around, except there's someone singing.
In the Philippines, Yeah, I mean, it's just it's huge.
And Asia in general, you mean has this great story
about how she would kind of, you know, go duck
out and go to lunch and sing karaoke and go
back to work afterward. Here there good stuff. Um, so
(50:46):
you got anything else? Nothing else? All right? Well, if
you want to know more about karaoke, just get up
there and do it. It's not going to kill you,
and you're gonna be happy that you did. And since
I said you're gonna be happy, that means it's time
for a listener mail of course. Uh. This is from
a new fifteen year old fan. Hey, guys, big fan
(51:07):
of the show, writing to say, Hi, just turned fifteen.
I'm from California. I started listening in December, so I'm
fairly new, but you guys so quickly become my number
one show. Multiple times. I've heard y'all say that you
lose listeners around high school. About it here to assure
you that there are high school listeners out here anyway.
A big reason why I love the show is because
all the seemingly boring topics you cover. There's so many
(51:29):
ordinary things that we take for granted that have uh
such an interesting history, like bar codes, for instance. That
has been one of my favorite episodes so far. I'm
glad that Natalie saying this because that's something that we
love about the show is our episodes like ballpoint pens
and bar codes. You know, yeah that seemed boring but
turn out to be fascinating. Love it. Just today I
(51:50):
was asked for a random fact. I was able to
talk about the failure of the Pony Express thanks to you, guys.
I also want to say thank you to everyone and
stuff you should know for keeping the show so enthralling
yet educational and like so many other listeners have helped
me through the tough times. I can always counting you
for laughter, education and tangents, one of my favorite parts
of the show. Uh and then a final little, very
kind correction, and we welcome those. It's been very unkindlyly.
(52:18):
Uh Yeah. So it almost feels like there's a new
breed of listener who's like, look, I don't know who
you jerks are, but I think you're jerks. And here's
everything I think that you're a jerk about. There's been
a lot of that. I think it's uh, I don't
know what it is. Maybe the pandemic wearing on people here.
It could be we've gone two waves of that though,
where we'll get like a new swath of listeners and
(52:40):
then like six months later we'll hear from a lot
of them again and be like, look, I'm really sorry
about that first email. I really I can't do without
you guys. Yeah, you still don't know what you're talking
about a lot of the times, but but I find endearing.
Now it's weird, uh. She Natalie listened to the Walrus episode.
I'm sure you got email about this, but wanted to
make sure you knew the beach creatures by the Hearst
(53:00):
Castle that you thought were sea lions are elephant seals.
And that is Natalie last name redacted. And she says,
p s. Don't be dumb. Was a great series. It
was nice. I don't know that anyone else ever wrote
in to correct that, So thanks a lot, Natalie. Nicely done. Totally. Um,
that was a great email, Natalie, perfectly done. Welcome to
the fold and good luck with high school. If you
(53:21):
want to be like Natalie and get in touch with this,
you can send us an email, wrap it up, spank
it lightly on the bottom, and send it off to
Stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should
Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more
podcasts for my Heart Radio visit the iHeart Radio app,
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