Karaoke Kraziness!

by Will 'The Cranky Music Man' Golightly

I have heard the stupidest thing ever, bar none. There’s this group, you see, called SheDaisy. No, the name is not the stupid part. Maybe they’re a country act, I’m not sure; but what I do know is that they have sued a karaoke company. Am I making myself clear? A KARAOKE COMPANY.

We’ve all heard about Napster. Everyone and their mother are suing for copyright violations these days, but to my knowledge this is the first of the post-Napster karaoke wars. It may be a new page in the history of music legislation, but more likely it’s the god damned most idiotic thing a group and its lawyers have ever done. SheDaisy filed a suit against a New York karaoke-music manufacturer because the company did not get permission to use SheDaisy’s name, lyrics, and likeness.

Have any of you ever been to a karaoke club? From what I can tell it’s mostly drunken 20somethings singing hits from the ‘80s and dancing very, very poorly. The thought of tens of thousands of kids sitting at their computers and downloading your song for free, when they’re not perusing their porn bookmarks of course, is understandably terrifying to musicians. But how scary is the idea that some guy is trying to get his date into bed by singing "I Want Your Sex" better than the last five karaoke participants?

The website cdnow.com, where I would buy my CDs if I weren’t crippling the music industry at this very moment by downloading the new version of "Lady Marmalade", reports that SheDaisy believes it is "finally an appropriate time to bring awareness to the world of karaoke and their illegal practices." Stick it to the man, sister! I figured the world of karaoke was dead after I saw Gwenyth Paltrow’s Duets, but clearly I was wrong.

I didn’t mean to go on so long about SheDaisy, whom I’ve never even heard of, but for some reason it has really bugged the hell out of me. I wanted to mention that the stepdaughter of Johnny Cash and actual daughter of June Carter Cash was arrested, along with Tom Petty’s bass player, for stealing a car and having a boatload of drugs in tow. Then there was the fact that Marky Mark Whalberg’s next movie, Metal God, was based on the story of Judas Priest’s new, and much more heterosexual, singer being picked out of a cover band to tour the country with them. Oh, except that enough details have been changed to keep the band from suing the pants off Warner Bros. Pictures. And finally I wanted to laugh publicly at Courtney Love, who is trying to keep a song by her late husband off Nirvana’s tentatively planned box set, coming soon to a store near you. But these things will have to wait for another day. Right now I’m going to take a shower and sing along to any song I want to.