Turn Around Bright Eyes: The Rituals of Love & Karaoke

by Rob Sheffield

My girl Ally is my karaoke queen, and we have greeted a thousand dawns together with mikes in hand. We will greet many more dawns this way, unless either of us ever comes down with a throat infection or a sense of shame.

I lived downtown on John Street, right under the World Trade Center. My new neighborhood was not yet known as “ground zero.” It was merely the “financial district,” a place where nobody really lived, or even set foot except for jury duty, which meant in terms of real estate it was euphemistically described as “up and coming.” The streets reeked of dashed hopes and emptied bladders, with no view of the sky and barely any oxygen in the air. It was a bleak little neighborhood, even at the time. Getting blown up by terrorists did not sweeten its personality, believe me. Every now and then, maybe a couple of times a year, I pass through the financial district and marvel that it somehow keeps getting more depressing. They closed the Strand Bookstore Annex? Now it’s a Lot-Less Closeouts? I give up, financial district—how could you get any worse? Wait—the Dunkin’ Donuts is gone? Congratulations, financial district! You did it! And I’m so proud. Who’s a grim little hellhole? Who is? That’s right—you are!

I am not an and suddenly person. I am a gradually, reluctantly, and begrudgingly person. I look before I leap, count to ten before I pop off, all that stuff. I don’t act on my first instinct, because my first instinct is usually idiotic, so I like to think things over for as long as possible. I distrust flashes of light or moments of clarity. Stealth is my jam and guile is my butter. How much of this comes from being Catholic? A lot, I suspect. We do not give a lot of extra points to dramatic conversion narratives. The mentality has more to do with the plodding offer-it-up everyday grind, where every day has its saints and every trivial annoyance is a spiritual exercise, giving you the chance to get a few degrees incrementally holier.

A few years ago, I was at an after-party for a friend who was doing a one-man dance theater project in New York, at the Kitchen. I was making my goodbye rounds early—I had an article due the next day. He wasn’t buying my excuse. He said, “You just have to work tomorrow. I gotta be somebody!” And that totally nails the difference between performers and the rest of us. We need them to be somebody. And occasionally, we need to be them so we can be somebody, too.

There is no restaurant karaoke where anyone can hop on the stove, burn dinner, and serve it up to the other customers. Imagine a bartending equivalent. You order a Rob Roy, and I’ll pour you a cup of Shasta Raspberry Zazz and Absolut Pepper with a shot of Four Loko plus a raw oyster. Would you drink it? No way—but this is what karaoke is. There is simply no other American ritual that rewards people for doing things they suck at doing. Yet we stick around, before and after our song, cheering each other’s flaws. The only real bores in a karaoke bar are the ringers who can sing, like the eternal “Me and Bobby McGee” lady. In a karaoke bar, the closest you can come to unforgivably bad taste is competence.

Geddycorns. These are the ladies who love Rush, and they are called Geddycorns because they are rare and mythical creatures rarely witnessed with your own eyes. If you spot a female fan at a concert, you will have a story to tell. I have known a few Geddycorns in my life, and part of why they love Rush is being part of that male audience. A friend read my book Talking to Girls About Duran Duran and said the story of her life would be called Talking to Boys About Rush. All my life, Rush has been emblematic of the kind of cultural phenomenon that only appeals to testicle-havers, but it’s only in recent years that Rush have come to symbolize maleness itself. Although Rush have been around for more than forty years, they’re more popular and beloved than ever, thanks to the documentary Beyond the Lighted Stage, which is constantly on VH1 Classic in the weekend-afternoon hangover slot. Everybody I know has watched this movie at least six times, whether they like the band already or not. (It’s pretty much impossible to watch it and not like the band.) Guitarist Alex Lifeson has the best line in the movie, on their fan base: “In the early stages, it was very young, almost one hundred percent male. And then, as the years went by, it remained one hundred percent male.”