Put a little Rama Lama Ding Dong in your life

I like to sing. That doesn't mean I can sing, but I like to do it anyway. I started singing when I was a kid just to keep myself company. There were a few records to listen to in my house; Joan Armatrading, Bob Seger, Billy Joel, The Eagles and some odd 45's one of which I wrote about last week. I sang along with all of them. I was good. As good as any seven year old can be. This is pre-puberty singing when every small boy can sing like Mariah Carey.

The real influence on me - well on my willingness to sing - came from my grandmother on my mother's side. She is the queen bee of fruitcakery in every way. Never shy, or at a loss for something to say, she loved to be provocative whenever a juicy opportunity presented itself. She saw dullness in life everywhere she looked and wanted to do everything she could to color the dullness with something. I liked that about her. One of the best stories about her involves her going to church and singing. The entire church had just started into "Amazing Grace" and she decided that it needed a little spicing up. Whenever the song found a pause - such as after the line, "How sweet the sound," she would add a, "Cha cha cha," with just a wee bit of volume to it to make sure others heard it. She was very popular in the church. She never went back. I liked that about her too.

When she was short of "Cha cha's," she could be counted on to find suitable replacements that were equally enjobyable. She was fond of wailing. Not really singing, or making sense, she just wailed during a song to make them sound more morose. I remember her driving along and listening to Olivia Newton John and instead of singing along with the song, she just wailed over the lyrics in key. I don't remember the song but I now equate Olivia Newton John with wailing sounds.

My other favorite memory of my grandmother is her tendency to order food in drive thru windows that wasn't on the menu. Spaghetti at McDonalds, Brussel Sprouts at Burger King. And when they didnt' have it, she would chastise them for it. Then she would order a ridiculously large order of food and drive off without picking it up or paying for it. She hated fast food, but she loved to order things. I loved that about her. (I hate fast food passionately. FYI: I don't consider Winstead's fast food)

She also had a double mastectomy and wore latex breasts in her bra. She loved to go dancing in college bars and when young men would start dancing with her, she would pull out her breasts and hand them to the young man to hold until she was done dancing. She loved that.

I'm a bit like her in the respect that I have a hard time keeping things to myself that I know I should. I like discord in public settings and I enjoy entertaining myself at the expense of public protocol and pretense. I am part loon after-all so it's expected of me to do these things from time to time to prove my heritage. One of my favorite thing to do is to sing. My favorite thing is to sing songs outside of their normal genre and give them a new beat or sound; Rap songs sound better with a country twang. Modern pop music always sounds better in Elvis' voice. And everything is more acceptable when it's sung like it's from an opera.

A friend of mine has said that I wake up with a different random song in my head everyday. Until he pointed it out, I hadn't noticed. Now I do. It's very weird. I just have some random song stuck in my head and I can't help singing it all day long. My iPod is filled with all the songs I wake up singing. It's a great collection of songs and I can sing them all. That's 1300 songs.

Of course not all songs require what I like to call, "retooling." Some songs are genius on their own and I do everything I can to sing them exactly they are presented to me, or I just can't sing them any other way. Sometimes this works out especially if the singer's voice isn't that hard for me to mimic. But if the singer is exceptionally talented then I just butcher the song. It's hard to sing a popular song in your own voice. Every time I hear Ray Lamontagne's voice - at first I think he's a woman - but then I ask myself how long it took him before he figured out he could sing like that. I love his voice. He might be a girl, I don't know.

I think I can sing like Tom Petty (But everyone can sing like Tom Petty), Bob Dylan, Kermit the Frog, Elvis, and when I'm sick, Marianne Faithful. There are a lot of other singers I wish I could sing like not because I like their voices per se, but because I like a song or two of theirs and I sing along with their songs every time I hear them. I think I am singing them well, but the reaction I get from the people around me tells me that I am probably wailing like my grandmother used to do.

I was in a band or two in my youth but it was a punk band each time and the emphasis wasn't on singing in key, or making sure I got the lyrics right, or really anything other than being intense and sexy. And I will confess that I sang, seriously, at a wedding. I don't know whose wedding it was, but a friend of mine asked me to sing a duet with her for this wedding an I agreed. I hated it, she hated it. The bride really hated it. FYI, the two songs I sang at the wedding were "Unchained Melody" by the Righteous Brothers, and "Endless Love" by Lionel Ritchie. It pains me to think of that wedding as I am writing this down now. Oh, I was also in my high school choir but only for two months.

With all of this stellar musical background, I was able to find a job as a Karoake Jockey during the Karoake craze in the early and mid-ninties. During that time I discovered which artists I could mimic better than others, Lionel Ritchie was one of the better ones, while Rod Stewart was not. When you have six million songs at your disposal you have a lot of time to discover what you can or can't sing. I used to sit around empty bars and practice for hours trying to find songs that would stir up my crowds and get them involved. You probably won't be surprised to learn that any chance John Q Public America gets to show off their talent level, they'll do it. Even if it means risking embarrassing themselves. Their is no great reward without great risk! Karoake is by far the best way to get someone you love to embarrass themselves for your amusement. If you can't sing, then it's probably not a good idea for you to pick the Scorpion's "Rock you like a Hurricane" as your song to sing in front of your friends, coworkers or people you are trying to sleep with. The most common Karoake songs during my tenure were, for men; "A County Boy Can Survive", "Love Shack", "My Way" and "Jessie's Girl." And for women; "The Rose", "Lucky Star", "What's Up?" and "I Love Rock n Roll."

You have to be a little crazy to be a singer. It also helps to be a little talented too, though this doesn't always seem to be the case with today's pop music. I'm not super up to date with the who's who in pop music, but I know that with auto-tune everyone thinks they can be a star. Nothing says, "I have no soul or talent whatsoever" like auto-tune. I'm sure when these songs hit the Karaoke machines that the auto-tune machine will overheat on an hourly basis.

I like to sing. I appreciate it when people say I can sing and that it doesn't hurt their ears. But I think I sing for the same reason my grandmother sang, I do it because it's out of place in our society. You may be thinking to yourself, "That can't be! Singing is everywhere in our society," and I would have to tell you nay. That's not true. Singing is like humping, you can only do it in the right circumstances otherwise people are going to be dismayed. If you think singing is acceptable, I challenge you to sing the next time you're shopping for groceries. Start singing as you enter the store and don't stop until you've loaded your groceries into the car. See how the people react to you. They'll think you're mad. And while some of you might be upset by the attention, I am not. It is truly liberating.

Cha cha cha.