Hipster Karaoke

7/3/2013 - Portland, OR

Portland is trying to elevate karaoke to an "art form." 

I expected to see the best karaoke of my life: hipster divas performing some of my favorite indie rock / pop songs. Maybe I arrived too early, but that wasn't the case. The first few songs included the Foo Fighters, Judas Priest, Lionel Richie, and Megadeth. Those are not mainstream karaoke songs, but they're also not the weird indie Pitchfork music that I expected. 

I planned to sing A-Punk, by Vampire Weekend. The song has the three important qualities of a karaoke song: easy, short, and upbeat. It even has potential for audience participation, with an "ohhh ohhh ohhh" or a "hey hey hey." Unfortunately, when I showed up, the songbook contradicted what I had read on the website: A-Punk was unavailable. My practice was for nothing, and I had to make a quick choice.

Scanning through my iPhone, it seemed my favorite obscure bands' songs would be too long (LCD Soundsystem), the wrong mood (The National), too difficult to do without serious practice (Sigur Ros), or absent from the songbook (Animal Collective, Dirty Projectors). Then I was surprised to see a pretty long list of Deerhoof songs in their songbook. I can't sing anything like Deerhoof's lead singer Satomi Matsuzaki, but I thought I could do something interesting with the song. I decided I'd get as far away from the original performance as I could: I'd bust out a Lou Reed-style Deerhoof song.

It kinda worked. It was not my best performance, but at least it was unique. The hipsters clapped politely and said nice job when I was finished.