Saving Karaoke

Do you remember taking Spanish class in high school or college? I grew up speaking just English and I was one of those people who found it difficult to learn another language. I was never a cunning linguist and I always struggled to conjugate verbs correctly and never remembered which words were masculine or feminine. I had a problem with a certain student named Jonathan Villagomez, who already knew how to speak Spanish. A lot of people were quick to come to his defense by claiming that there's nothing wrong with honing your existing language skills by taking a structured Spanish class. I prefer not to piss in a cup and tell people that it's lemonade. Who are we fooling here? Come on!

I find that the same type of thing is happening to karaoke in Chicago's gay bars. I went to Roscoe's with my special guy friend, "Ezekiel," in time to catch the first round of karaoke hosted by Chicago's own Honey West, and was excited to sing a fun little song. We wanted to sing "Islands in the Stream," but were shocked to learn that it wasn't in the song book. I didn't have time to complain about that because the person who was up on stage was singing extremely well and it caught me off guard. The next six people who sang after that also had pleasing voices.

What really got me was the fact that most of them had their eyes closed throughout the song and had carefully planned hand gestures. I think I saw one of them order a hot tea from the bar because it was good for his throat. Clearly they were not amateurs.

When people hear the word 'karaoke,' images of liquored-up office girls belting out a Michael Bolton song come to mind. It used to be a lot of fun seeing shy boys and girls being prodded by their friends to sing a song on stage with promises of complimentary buttery nipples if he or she was able to get through without butchering the song. Now I and all of the other people who are tone deaf are even more apprehensive about participating in what used to be a fun and campy national gay pastime because all of the people with formal voice training are hogging up the microphone.

Here are three suggestions that I've come up with to save Chicago gay karaoke:

• Refine the song selection - There should be less depressing songs by artists who we've never heard of and more songs for the artists who have the most drag impersonators. I've seen a lot of Dolly Parton, Stevie Nicks, and Amy Winehouse drag queens out on the streets, but we can only choose from one or two of their songs when we want to karaoke. What's up with that?

• Enforce a mandatory drink minimum for each song - I'd like to see all of the American Idol hopefuls perform their rendition of "My Way" after downing shots of Jack Daniels. Songs should be performed the way the original artist performed them.

• Add "Islands in the Stream" to all karaoke bar song books - Madrigal's had this in their selection until they closed down. Now you're lucky if you even find a bar that has anything by either Kenny Rogers, Dolly Parton, or the Bee Gees. It's possibly the most perfect song in the world and I'm pretty sure that it has the power to heal certain skin conditions if sung correctly.