K IS FOR KARAOKE

The first time I ever sang karaoke was at a friend's wedding reception.  I loved it.  However, I didn't become an avid karaoke singer until I married my now ex-husband.  Together we found a place that did karaoke six nights a week... not that we could go six nights a week.  However, there is a big difference between a club that exclusively does karaoke and karaoke that happens in a restaurant a few hours one night a week.  I say this as someone who had participated in both events.

If you will recall my previous post on college majors, I did choose Music initially in college.  There is a reason for that.  I love music.  I love singing.   I was that  girl who danced around singing into her hairbrush.  Sometimes I forget the power that music has to make me feel amazing inside.  Music is a cure for the blues.  Putting in a CD, scrolling through YouTube and singing along to my favorites, or plugging in my IPOD are all good alternatives to karaoke.  In fact, YouTube is my practice forum before I go sing karaoke anywhere.  It is always good to run through a song a few times and YouTube almost always has a Lyric Video to help a person out!

I sing karaoke for fun.  I also sing a WIDE variety of songs.  In fact, it can be a long time before I recycle a song.  I am not one of those people who sings the same song over and over until it is perfect.  There are many people who run the karaoke circuit who sing the same four to six songs every time you hear them.  Granted, they sound pretty darn good on those songs, but those are the only songs they ever sing.  (It is something of *yawnfest* for the regulars.)  There are those who sing to impress and those who sing for the rollicking good fun of it.  I fall into the latter category.  My songs aren't perfect.  I do strive to entertain while I am singing.  And if I manage to land on a really terrible version of a song that I thought I could sing, I have been known to apologize after... I once said, "This sounded much better in the car." The entire bar laughed.  That was at the Real Karaoke Place.  Anyway, karaoke fans always give you points just for getting up there and trying.

I have been trying for the last three hours to upload a video of me singing last week at a local restaurant from my IPOD onto this blog.  Zero success.  So, I tried to upload it onto Photobucket.  The upload also failed there.  Apparently, it is trapped in my IPOD forever to be shared with no one EVER.  This actually speaks volumes about my understand of everything "techy."  It took me a very long time to figure out how to even work the camera in the IPOD.  So, there you go.

Karaoke Rating ~ Passion

You gotta laugh.

Many blogs are covering this BIG day in one way or another.  Yes, it is Martin Luther King Day.  But, that isn't the real buzz.  It is the day of the Coronation, peeps.  Apparently Jimmy Kimmel had a bit on his show several days ago where his crew walked around in the streets quizzing people about the Inauguration this year.  What did they think?  How did it compare to last time around?  They even asked about specific made-up events to get the reaction of the populace.  Almost everyone loved it.  Thought it was amazing, awesome, incredible, best-ever, totally beat the "event" 4 years ago, and totally expect the President to do even better this time around.  Did anyone know the event had not yet happened?  Nope.  Totally explains how we are here if you ask me.  This is not part of the funny portion of this blog.  Seriously.  Not funny.


So, let's fast forward to today. The day. I couldn't watch it again. I did some blog reading. Then I spent the better part of the day in bed with a migraine. However, I did find one blog that decided to take the humorous approach. Maybe that is best. This blog is a big fan of Bad Lip Reading. Prior to this blog, I had never seen any YouTube videos that put together clips featuring humorous clips of Bad Lip Reading. Now, I am becoming a fan. I even enjoyed a clip on Bad Lip Reading recently that was all sports stuff. Yeah, I like Bad Lip Reading. Who knew?

So, what does have our President have to say on this momentous day?  Take a look:


Now that was funny, right? Bad Lip Reading is funny. It just sucks all my stress away. Laughter does that. Let's say what the Vice President has to say:



Bawahahahaha. Now, that one was so good it was a bit freaky. There were times I would swear it was actually him.

Bad Lip Reading. My newest YouTube obsession.

Happy MLK Day everyone.

NEED YOU STRONGER DON'T CHANGE

Saturday has rolled around once more. Amazing how that happens. Like clockwork. For those of you new to the blogging world, this is the day where more people are actually doing something. They are not writing blogs and/or reading them. That opens up all sorts of freedom to those who choose to write blogs over the weekend. Your audience is fairly limited, so you can really go for it. Speak your mind. Say what you need to say. Go ahead... unburden yourself.

As for me, today is the day where I share music with the masses that hop, skip, jump, or accidentally fall down the rabbit hole, and end up at this blog. Wheeee. I even have some vague format for this day. However, I can and do break my own rules. Nothing is written in stone here. Here's the overall deal: I choose one song that is inspirational to me right now in this moment. Then, I choose one artist or band from the 80s that rocked MTV. I find it disturbing that MTV really doesn't play music anymore. The M in the TV is for Music. It is not for reality TV or anything else. That is just dumb. Back in the 80s, it was pretty much all videos all the time. It was awesome. So, we are time traveling to revisit some of that incredible amazingness, just to see what these groundbreaking artists did with this new form of musical expression. Some of them just used vids of themselves in concert. For the most part, we won't be looking at that. That is not a creative form of expression peeps!

Now, that we have the whole "what this thing is about" ironed out, let's move on to my inspirational song for today. This is gonna be a strange one. Usually the song just comes to me. In this case, it was a feeling. I have been feeling lousy and that ticks me off, so I wanted a kick some butt sort of song. Mostly I wanted to be Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I go through these phases. No, I pretty much always want to be Buffy. I just don't talk about it. So, I cruised through youtube watching Buffy videos until I found one that was sufficiently down and dirty that it worked for me. So, here we go... Don't forget to turn off my music player at the botttom of the page.





Okay, now that I am all warm and gooey from the inside out, we can move on to the rest of our Inspirational Music Marathon. Let me just towel off. That was quite a workout. And I need a drink. Be right back and then we can proceed. Is anyone else sweating? It is HOT in here.

Okay, I am back. It didn't occur to me until last night that I had not even thought about the 80s artist that I was going to feature today. Rutro. That is bad. I usually have a handle on this much sooner. However, there are so many to choose from that it really is not tough. My friend Megan came to mind ~ again ~ once I decided on... wait for it... INXS. I will take this moment to strongly encourage new readers, or old readers who missed the blog on Megan, and her stellar musical knowledge, to go back to this blog and read it. In addition to being informative, it cracks me up.

Megan was the first person to introduce me to INXS. We listened to Shabooh Shoobah and Listen Like Thieves regularly as we drove around town. She might have had some of their other records, too, but those are the ones that come to mind. At the time, that was considered to be somewhat alternative or new wave. It wasn't getting any radio play in the US. I still don't know how Megan ran them down. However, she listened to a LOT of music that was foreign to my ears, but was always super cool.

The first song that introduced most people to INXS (here in the US) was What You Need. They followed that up with what has to be one of the best records of all time, in my opinion: KICK. I confess I did do some reading about this, but only because I was curious! I normally do no research on these things and rely strictly on my memory. If I am wrong, I really don't care. I am not declaring myself to be an expert on this subject. Apparently the record label didn't want to release KICK and fought them all the way down the line. The plan with KICK was to have every song on it be so good that it could be released as a single. In my opinion, they succeeded. However, Atlantic Records had other ideas...

They hated it, absolutely hated it. They said there was no way they could get this music on rock radio. They said it was suited for black radio, but they didn't want to promote it that way. The president of the label told me that he'd give us $1 million to go back to Australia and make another album.
—Chris Murphy, manager

Well, the album got made despite Atlantic's idiocy. I am sure that they claimed all the glory after it was such a resounding success. Ah well. That is just the way it goes. I played KICK so often that I think I wore the music right off of the tape. It was a freaking awesome record. I call them all records, no matter what form you buy them in. They are still records. Saves confusion. In this case, it was a cassette.

KICK was such an amazing record that the next one must have felt overwhelming. INXS went on to release four more records before lead singer, Michael Hutchence died. None of the records reached the level of success that KICK garnered. The last was aptly titled ELEGANTLY WASTED. It was how I felt about Michael's death when I heard about it: all of that talent and charisma just gone. Poof.

I had a very difficult time just choosing one video from KICK. It was so much fun just watching them. However, I wanted you to see one of the videos pre-KICK, so that you could see the difference. And I do take a bit of divine pleasure, once again, in saying to those of you who missed MTV when it was actually good, you really missed something GOOD. Thank the powers at be for youtube. Where would we be without youtube???? I really do think that they have laced youtube with crack. I am becoming more certain by the day...

This is Need You Tonight. It was one of SEVEN songs that charted on this amazing album... KICK.




Well, that was all kinds of fun for me, and brought back lots of really great memories. I hope that you enjoyed a similar walk down memory lane, or found a brand new path full of musical joy!


image found at www.weheartit.com

TAKING A DETOUR FROM ROME

We'll get back to Rome tomorrow. What this means is that I don't feel like writing today. Do you ever have one of those days? No. Ha. I don't believe you. I have been thinking about doing this for some time, actually. What is this, you ask? Well, I have come to "know" some of you blogging buddies fairly well and there are certain "things" that make me think of you. So, from time to time, as I get to know each of you better I will take a detour, and have a HERE'S TO YOU day.

The best (or worst) part is that I am not going to explain why I chose 'whatever" for each of you. If, you watch your footage and are scratching your head at the end, well that means I didn't do a very good job. However, all is not lost. You can email me at rarichards68@gmail.com and ask me what I was thinking when I chose that particular piece of footage off of youtube and connected it to you. And then I will tell you. Then I will start sending up prayers that I haven't offended the crap out of whoever is on the receiving end of that email....lol. Because, honestly, I will tell you right now... I admire all of you enormously so I really hope that doesn't happen. However, I am notorious for chewing on my feet. I do believe it is called Foot In Mouth Syndrome in medical circles.

Now, if you have been a blogging friend forever and you didn't get singled out this time ~ and are feeling a little bit offended ~ here's the deal: 1) I couldn't find the footage I wanted and I had to have this ONE SPECIFIC THING or, 2) The footage that I wanted was in my brain somewhere, but I couldn't quite find it. That means that I hadn't mentally nailed the perfect thing yet.

Once again, please turn off my music player at the bottom of the screen and turn up the volume on your computer. Oh, and just because it doesn't have your name on it, it doesn't mean you can't watch it.... In fact, I hope you do:-)

This one is for Chris, at A Deliberate Life:




This one is for Lira, The Struggling Actress:



This one is for Liza, at Middle Passages:



This one is for Purple Cow, at Australian in Athens (FYI: I have others, so you will get hit again):



This one is for Phoenix, at Res Ipsa Loquitur:



This one is for The Working Actress:




This one is for everyone, just because I think it is hilarious:




And this one is for me:



Now, I have my thinking cap on for the rest of you, and am still looking for specific clips for some of you.... So, be on the lookout. There is youtube footage out there with your name on it!