Guerrilla Karaoke

Bonjour.

As you may have read in the past, Doug and I host Karaoke every Wednesday at Firehouse Lounge in Austin, TX. We now also host it at Shakespeare’s on Tuesdays. Tazeroke, which started as a one time event, has now become a weekly event. Yep, we electrocute people every week with an 800k volt stun baton. Somehow no one has shut us down yet.

Anyway.

After Karaoke we always go to Magnolia Cafe. We’ve made friends with everyone who works there, but particularly two waitresses, Cindi and Kara. Since they’re our friends, we want them to come sing Karaoke with us. But… obviously… they work on our karaoke nights.

The solution? Bring karaoke to them.

Cindi brought a little karaoke machine from home. We burnt a CD with some of our favorite songs and headed to Magnolia after Karaoke.

The restaurant was pretty full. It was the typical after bar crowd, plus a few police officers. I wasn’t sure how much they’d like the karaoke. We set up the machine and began our first song – Shake That by Nate Dogg and Eminem. Todd provides a soulful Nate Dogg rendition and I rap Eminem’s lyrics.

I can’t sing, so I always do rap. Plus I don’t like much of that non rap stuff.

Despite reasonably offensive lyrics, people seem to enjoy the karaoke. Even one of the police officers was bobbing his head a bit. They applaud when we finish.

Then DJ Doug kills it with Folsom Prison Blues by Johnny Cash. He has a bunch of good songs he sings, but that’s one of his best ones.

Todd does This DJ by Warren G. I provide a little backup, but I don’t know the lyrics very well.

Finally my solo performance. I sing Hypnotize by Notorious B.I.G. with Kara and DJ Doug singing the chorus with me. One table in the back gets really into it and sings along from their table.

As people left they thanked us for singing Karaoke. Never underestimate the enjoyment people get from having something different happen to them.

Here’s a video of me singing Hypnotize. We didn’t video the rest, unfortunately.