It was February. It was biting cold and pitch black. Squinting in moon light, I locked my front door and walked down a concrete staircase, feeling the outline of a handrail. I could hear the sound of waves crashing over the shore; pebbles hissed as water returned to the sea.
Twenty years ago I lived in a small seaside resort called Jaywick Sands due to a combination of laziness, incompetence and luck. At the time I was a postgraduate student at the University of Essex, and I had left sorting out accommodation until it was too late. Luckily, the accommodation service was able to help; they offered a flat that was twelve miles away from the university campus. Thankfully, I had a car and was a driver. Somehow, I had fallen on my feet: I had had my own balcony and sea view - and I was a student!
Six friends from London visited me at my bachelor ‘apartment’; we were all going to a pub I had never been to before. We all stumbled in and were hit by humid warmth. Within minutes, we soon realised that we had walked into the middle of a karaoke night. We were faced with a collective dilemma: should we head off to another pub, sit it out, or join in? We decided to join in. I say, ‘we’ quite loosely, as what I really mean is that my so called ‘mates’ insisted on putting my name down for a range of songs, some of which I had never heard of before.
I sang the songs to the best of my ability and I was surprised by everyone’s reaction; my mates cheered me on as two elderly couples (who made up our entire audience) clapped appreciatively. It was one of those nights when everything was perfect: it was a gloriously happy time, and I discovered that I was able to do something that I never thought I would ever do.
I felt a tingle of excitement when I realised that I had to go to another karaoke night. Although I had been through this bizarre exercise in positive public humiliation twice before, I had never regained the feeling of excitement or the accolades that I received in my debut performance.
The Meetup was held in a part of London called Tooting. All I know about Tooting was that it had a very silly name and it featured in a seventies TV comedy show called ‘Citizen Smith’. After searching for the pub and looking at a map, I realised that the easiest way to go was by motor scooter. I could clearly see the main arteries I had to follow: the south circular, and the road that went all the way to the south coast. It was a pretty easy ride.
The night was run by a lovely woman called Sharon introduced me to all other members; all of whom were women.
‘Are you going to sing?’ Sarah, another group member, asked.
I had been given a pen and a ‘track slip’, and told to choose something from the ‘music folders’.
‘I’m not sure if I will… I’ve just come down to say hello, really’ I replied, suddenly becoming nervous.
There were thousands of songs to choose from, all neatly organised alphabetically according to artist. The karaoke DJ had his equipment set up at the front of the pub: there were two television screens, a mixing desk and two sets of lights that illuminated the floor and ceiling. The DJ put on a track and started to sing a Sinatra number to make sure everything was working.
Satisfied that everything was working, the DJ called for Sharon. ‘Come on!’ Joanne, another member of the group shouted. ‘Let’s give her some support!’ gesturing that we should all follow her. We all made our way to the illuminated ‘dance area’ to give Sharon as much support as we could muster.
Sharon admirably belted out the first number of the evening. Although it was a bit rough around the edges, she did a pretty solid job. Her timing was good and she was roughly in tune, which was more than I could say for the next singer.
One by one, we all got up, in various states of inebriation and sang our hearts out. I sang two karaoke standards: ‘I’m on the way to Amarillo’ by Tony Christie, and ‘Daydream Believer’ by the Monkees. As I took the microphone from the DJ, there was a small part of me that asked the question: ‘what on earth are you doing, man?!’, but then it suddenly didn’t matter anymore, because the track had started.
I then had two worries: the first that I really didn’t know the song well enough to do a good job (and be able to sensibly second-guess the lyrics as they appeared on the television screens), and secondly, that I might not be able to hit the high notes.
Both of these fears materialised. I didn’t know the songs as well as I thought I did, and I couldn’t hit the first few high notes. To cover up my obvious inadequacies, I used bluster; I sang with gusto, improvised ridiculous hand gestures with the intention of trying to get ‘the audience’ to sing along, and stamped my feet at appropriate points during the chorus. When my first track came to an end, everyone clapped and cheered. I had prevailed, even though all the regular drinkers appeared to be thoroughly disinterested in the painful spectacle they had just witnessed.
As I walked towards the back of the room, basking in my unexpected success and my delusions, Rachel, a fellow group member and karaoke accomplice whispered, ‘you’re a dark horse, Chris; I wasn’t expecting that!’
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