Story: Karaoke: Edinburgh Style

I’m not quite sure what possessed my friend Matt and I to go to karaoke night at our hostel bar when we had the whole city of Edinburgh, Scotland at our feet. Capture award-winning photos of the Scottish capital? Explore and learn to appreciate hundreds of culturally significant buildings in the city? No thank you. We’re fine staying in the hostel, attending the weekly karaoke session and getting sloshed. There could have been some noble reasoning behind it. Perhaps our motivations lie in the fact we could return to the states and say, “hey, I went to a karaoke night in Edinburgh.” How many people can say that? People would have to be impressed, right? In the end, it may have simply been our lack of having any other real plans that lead us to see and hear the most memorable karaoke performance of our lives.

So on that fateful Thursday night, we headed down from our 2nd floor room to attend karaoke in the bar/main desk/concierge area. The bar walls were adorned floor to ceiling with movie and pop idol and alcohol posters. Behind the bar were hundreds of low-value international currency bills. Hanging from the ceiling were country flags, signed by the people who had worked at the hostel and went on to other ventures. It was like a frat house on crack. We approached the bar to order pints. Matt got his usual Guinness. Myself not being a Guinness drinker, I struggled to make a choice amongst the sludge of beers available to me. Being from the Pacific Northwest, I get spoiled drinking locally produced microbrews that are rich with flavor and deliciousness. Usually I don’t lower myself to the sludge of the commoners. Here I had to compromise. You want me to drink what? Ugh. The beer selection was bleak. So bleak in fact they had Budweiser on tap. On Tap. Yeah. That beer tastes horrific in the US, imagine the taste after a long trip over the pond. Did I really travel thousands of miles to get draft Bud? This alone should have persuaded us to leave. We should have gone to a classic Scottish pub with delicious cask beer that flows like a spring of liquid gold from the ground. At least if we were to over indulge in libations, some of our self-respect would remain intact knowing we drank something we held in high regard. Nevertheless, I sucked up my pride, ordered a Kronenbourg and sat down at a nearby table to take in the show that was about to start.

My mind quickly diverged from the beer conundrum to focus on the karaoke. The night began the way I’ve seen it start at every other karaoke night I’ve attended: the karaoke master sings some terrible song they’ve mastered over hundreds of previous karaoke nights. They sing it with much bravado and try to pretend like everyone is listening and enjoying them belt this song that everyone knows but no one wants to hear. I believe there is only two reasons people run karaoke nights: 1. They are hoping to be “discovered” and go onto a lucrative career. 2. They are sadists and enjoy watching people making a mockery of themselves. Our karaoke master was an overweight, young blonde haired, Scottish woman who looked like Mimi from The Drew Carey Show did her makeup. Her friend was there looking like a brunette version of the karaoke leader. The brunette friend followed up with her own ballad. I didn’t think there was much hope for either of them to go onto stardom. Not too many people were there. The two ringleaders sang another song each. Seeing their karaoke lubricant had not done much to get the crowd started in on the singing, the ladies tried to persuade other people to come up and choose a song. Slowly though people began to trickle in. Some of them were obviously regulars. I did not understand the attraction of attending a karaoke night in a hostel with a crappy bar in the middle of beautiful Edinburgh, but who was I to judge? I was sitting there myself.

An hour later, to my surprise, the place was packed. Every seat was taken and standing room was beginning to become scarce. Getting a pint took a couple minutes. Lots of the people were obviously from the hostel, but there were quite a few outsiders as well. In the corner of the bar was a group of hostelers we recognized from our room. There was about six of them putting away drinks and enjoying themselves. They went ahead and grabbed a song list book from the karaoke table. Heads bent over the table, the group began to pour over the song selection. I grabbed a book as well and began to thumb through it.

“You wanna sing something?” I said to Matt.
“Absolutely not.”
“Really? Come on. It’ll be fun.”
“NO.”
“What if I buy you more drinks?”
“No. I do not sing.”
“Fine.”

I refused to give up on the idea for the moment and kept reading through the list, suggesting songs we could sing together. Matt continued his vehement disdain for the idea, much to my dismay. I don’t consider myself a great singer. My opera career will never flourish, but I think at some points in my life I’ve been able to carry a tune. My interest waned from the songbook and focused more on the performances. Shortly after the karaoke leader announced she needed the books back so other people could look. My chance was over.

Our fellow hostel mates were putting back quite a few drinks and became the loudest table in the crowded bar. A couple of the girls got up to sing some sort of quintessential girl karaoke song like Meredith Brooks “Bitch” or Joan Jett’s “I love Rock and Roll.” There were lots of giggling and some mild attempts of singing the words on the screen when they were highlighted. It was hardly in tune and was really mostly screaming than singing. The girls finished and sat back down at the table. It was at this point karaoke-mania hit their table. Every few songs it seemed someone else from the table was going up and singing up a storm. There were solos, duets and group efforts. The table responded with boisterous applause every time. Now the night was getting interesting. It was almost worth the sub par beer we were putting back.

From the raucous hosteller table came two Asian young men. They were lit and we weren’t far behind them. They were both awkwardly tall nerdy guys sporting the typical male hosteller look: a striped long sleeve polo shirt, khaki cargo pants, and in desperate need of a hair cut. One was the lead singer holding the mic. With his slouching shoulders he grabbed a mic and stood up just in front of me, towards the back of the room in front of the giant projection screen with the words on it. He began is singing. Well, the word “singing” would be a generous word, but he was trying his best. It was a song I did not recognize at all. It oozed with all the cheese a 2nd grade 70’s hit could muster. Cheery, upbeat with a little bit of Brady Bunch thrown in for good measure. Being not much older than in his early 20s I pondered where he would have come across such a tremendous shite bomb song of the English language. And furthermore why he thought it a good idea to share his interest in this song with everyone in the bar that night. Do you remember that scene in the movie A Christmas Story where the family eats at the Chinese restaurant for Christmas dinner and the all-Chinese restaurant staff sings them the Christmas carols? Ok, imagine that kind of misspoken singing with the addition of high alcohol content in the performer.

I began to struggle with containing my laughter. Luckily with the guy’s back to me, he did not see my reaction. This performance was something for the ages. I still had no idea what he was singing but by this time the main chorus had been gone through a few times and I began to sing along as well between my fits of laughter. I kept looking back at the screen to see the words and then singing them to Matt. My mocking included my attempt at a deep voice, which lead to me looking like a fool myself. Meanwhile, Matthew ran his digital camera on video mode, capturing the absurdity both of me singing along and of our hostel mate belting out this unknown song. This was too much karaoke intensity for me. The song went on and I began to think I was not the only one in the bar struggling for civility. This was the greatest thing I’d seen in a while. There were a few people, like karaoke master’s friend, who thought nothing of it and danced around the bar while he sang. She must have had many more beers than myself or did not have a sense of humor. So the drunken screaming of the lyrics continued and so did my laughter and mockery.

But before I knew it the sweet karaoke was over and I had no more laugh in me. I stayed down in the bar for anther pint, but I have no recollection of any performances after that one. Both Matt and I knew that we had witnessed something truly special and beyond memorable that night. When I climbed into my top bunk that night, I knew only going as far as the hostel bar was not as bad of a night in Edinburgh that I thought it would be. Even with the iffy beer selection, I had a story to tell.