Turn Down the Music and Read: Turn Around Bright Eyes

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Turn Down the Music and Read: Turn Around Bright Eyes

Around these book-loving, music-loving parts, a new book by Rob Sheffield is always cause for celebration. There are so few writers who mesh their deeply ingrained love of music with humor and poignancy quite the way Sheffield does. If you read either of his earlier memoirs, Love is a Mix Tape or Talking to Girls About Duran Duran, you know exactly what I’m talking about. (If you didn’t: what the heck? You read Midlife Mixtape so I promise you, you’ll relate. Go do that, then come back here.)

In his latest book, TURN AROUND BRIGHT EYES: The Rituals of Love and Karaoke (HarperCollins, 2013) the Rolling Stone writer trains his sites on the Japanese entertainment form that seems to transmogrify everyone it touches into Steve Perry (at least in their own minds.) Structured like a playlist from a long, long night at a karaoke parlor, Sheffield once again uses individual songs as the starting point for wide-ranging reveries about the journey he’s taken since Love is a Mix Tape ended (no spoilers here.)

My own familiarity with karaoke is rather limited, at least as compares with Sheffield. There was the business trip to Tokyo in ’97 where I spent the whole week terrified that my Japanese businessmen counterparts would force me to sing karaoke with them. Then on the Friday night, when they still hadn’t asked, I begged them to take me to a karaoke parlor and blew their minds with my mastery of some Young MC raps. At least I think that’s why they sat there, stunned. It may have been the sight of their American product manager beat boxing in a tweed business suit and L’eggs pantyhose.

Beyond that, there was only the annual karaoke fundraiser for our elementary school at which I was always brought in as the first singer in order to disabuse newcomers from the notion that any actual singing talent was required. There, at least, Sheffield and I seem to have something in common. He freely and proudly cops to having a horrific voice, but it appears that hasn’t stopped him or even slowed him down when it comes to enjoying a night of singing in his chosen NYC establishment (named, of course, Sing Sing.)

But Sheffield is an able guide to the mystical world of karaoke. His observations about what makes a good karaoke song, why it grew in popularity so quickly, how the Karaoke Scene elbowed out the Slow Clap scene in movies, what Rod Stewart must have been thinking when he moved into recording old standards pulled me in and made me feel knowledgeable. Not a better singer, certainly, but a more informed bad singer of karaoke.

As always, there are laughs and enough musical references to make you scramble for your Pandora/YouTube/ITunes to play whatever song it is he’s writing about. But where Sheffield’s books always come alive is when he writes about his family. This time he gives us glimpses of his quirky, supportive parents that make it entirely believable that this romantic guy whose heart was broken in the worst way and at a very young age will nonetheless keep moving forward, believing in second chances.

Honestly, you just want to take the whole Sheffield family, plus his wife Ally, into a bear hug at the end of the book.

But that would be weird. So instead, how about I give away a copy of the book, courtesy of Rob himself? If you’d like a chance to win, just answer the question that Rob always poses to rockers when interviewing them for Rolling Stone, thereby eliciting some of the most unguarded and enthusiastic responses: what’s your karaoke jam?

I’ll pick a winner (US entrants only please) using Random.org on Friday, Sep 7 at 5 pm PST.

As Morrissey says: Sing Your Life.