Karaoke Mein Twist

Tonight's session was with the same crowd as last time (over a year ago it seems!), and again it was good clean alcohol free fun. It was in Forest Gate to boot, not that stopped me from arriving late. Oops. But anyway, Backstreet Boys, Take That and Grease were amongst all the songs given the out of key treatment.

This time, the organisers had even managed to get a selection of Bollywood songs for us to choose from. Unfortunately these didn't seem too popular; it seems that Karaoke doesn't quite work well with anything non-English. I tried one, but struggled to find a partner for the others (they even had Aao Naa, Wada Raha and My Dil Goes Mmm. Sigh). On top of that, these ones in particular didn't seem too well arranged both musically and lyrically - on selecting Atif Aslam's Bheegi Yaadein, I got the Jal version instead. Tsk.

The English stuff wasn't as of good quality as last year's either. Spandau Ballet's Gold had the wrong lyrics (honest!), and the system didn't indicate who was supposed to sing in duets like others do. I think people had to improvise more than once to make up for these inadequacies, not that it was any less enjoyable - nothing stopped the girls from brilliantly performing Spice Girls' Wannabe/Aretha Franklin's Respect.

It must have been fun though since the last bell rang a bit too quickly for most of us, even though some had been there for almost five hours. The singing had turned into a shout-off between the boys and girls (we came up tops, naturally) so perhaps it was time to call it a day.

It's a shame that we don't get to Karaoke as much as we'd all obviously like to (although I guess part of the attraction is exactly that). Having said that, there is talk of making this a regular thing, so who knows? We might even be in tune next time.