Return to The Goat
My son doesn’t go back to school until Wednesday, so I got one more free Sunday night. So I made it to The Goat again... and was it ever awesome. This is the first venue I’ve hit twice... and even if I don’t make Karaoke night again for a while, I definitely want to make The Goat a frequent destination.
With no late Cowboys game to interfere, Carmen was just about done setting up when I got there just before 9pm. Like the last time, there weren’t very many people at the bar at that “early” hour. Calling 9pm “early” is still a strange concept for me, since I’m likely as not to be in bed by then. Knowing that Carmen doesn’t have pre-printed Karaoke slips, I brought one from home — “Born to Run” by Bruce Springsteen, a song I did pretty well at the New Year’s Party (which I still owe a writeup about! [Edit: here it is!]).
“Looks like you’ll be first and warm ‘em up”, Carmen told me. “Yikes,” I said, or something equally loquacious. She said she could put someone ahead of me if I wanted, but I told her it was fine — I wouldn’t be able to stay late anyway. She kindly said “Oh, we’ll be sure to get you in” — to which I replied, “No, no no no, I’m *not* telling the DJ what to do, I know better than that!” She laughed and said I knew the rules. “I’ve done my research,” I told her. And that’s the honest truth — I read the Karaoke Tips at Totally Twisted Karaoke’s site before the company party, and I reviewed the Karaoke 10 Commandments and Most Overdone Songs at DFWKaraoke.com before going out into the wild.
The backup band was in the house again, keyboard and drums. In fact, the keyboard player was at the bar when I went up for my first Tequila Sunrise, and recognized me from last week! That’s not necessarily a good thing — you can be memorably bad on stage — but it seemed he had a good impression, even though I only sang two songs and the other talent was simply extraordinary. I’m terrible at recognizing people... I didn’t realize it was the keyboard player who was complimenting me until Carmen called me up. Sure enough, he was on the ivories behind me.
So I did go first, with “Born to Run”. It’s so different with a backup band! It went ok, but I learned that on some songs, you can NOT smile. This is one of them... it needs intensity, anger, hard emotions. You almost need to grit your teeth to get the right feeling into the song — “Come on Wendy, tramps like us, baby we were born to run!” But despite the occasional smile (mostly if I didn’t like how I came on on a verse), it was good.
Since there were only a few people there, my turn came up again in no time. This time, I went for something slow, one that I hadn’t done before — “After the Lovin’” by Englebert Humperdink. I need to add that one to the song list, because it was fun and sweet. I came up *again* after just a few songs — I had actually hoped to do “Baby Blue” by Badfinger, but she didn’t have it. So I followed it up with “Kryptonite” by 3 Doors Down, which got the growing crowd going pretty nicely.
By this point, I had already downed the two Tequila Sunrises I was allowing myself. Since I didn’t grab a belly full before going to the bar, I got some bar food — a Zero bar and a pack of Doritos. At 10:30, I switched to Coke (they don’t have Dr Pepper — the only real flaw in an otherwise perfect diamond). But Coke and Doritos don’t do much to help the voice!
Up again, as the bar started to fill, I went for “Touch Me in the Morning” by Diana Ross. But the disc was pitched WAY different from the original — Carmen offered to change it, and I considered it, but I know that’s not really going to help — and she was getting a lot of folks dropping off slips at this point. I got past the intro and managed to find the key, right at the bottom of my range. I tried to channel Barry White a bit, and it seemed to work. And to my surprise, the crowd gave me a great round of applause after! In fact, a pretty lady sitting next to me offered to buy me a drink — I told her I was flattered, but I needed to stick to Coke, so I could get to work. She allowed that she might outta learn something from me on that score.
About 11, the bar set up a doorman to check IDs, and Carmen shifted to busy-time mode. She acknowledged the regulars, and later reminded folks that waiting is to be expected! But I was leaving soon anyway, after one more song. I picked “That Was Yesterday”, by Foreigner — a song that hit the charts in 1985 but never made it to the top, so it’s seldom heard on the radio. It caught the crowd’s attention right away! Hands in the air, yay. But it’s deceptively high... I was not at *all* happy with the refrain. I blame the Doritos. But nobody seemed to care. The keyboard player asked who originally sang the song, Ms. Carmen said a bunch of nice things that I didn’t hear when the song was over — I just didn’t realize that she was talking about me — and I got high fives all around.
I stayed for a few more songs, but I had to head out. I could have stayed all night, easily, even if my spot never came up again. One guy, a regular named “David”, started as early as me and did several great slow songs. The rest of the “regulars” had only just started, and judging from last week, they were going to be awesome. They’re singing now, as I type this at midnight, and I wish I were there! But I have responsibilities, miles to go before I sleep, all that jazz. But next time I have a Sunday night free, I’m definitely going to spend it at The Goat.