Gary Flockhart: It's My Way or the funeral parlour way in karaoke-land

Published on Friday 19 February 2010 10:25

AN American friend once asked me to take him to a karaoke bar in Leith to hear his supposedly classy crooning first hand.

I could see why he didn't want to go solo. As soon as we walked into the dive bar, we could see that the natives weren't exactly what you'd call friendly.

Actually, scratch that thought. It was like walking into one of those wild west bars that you see in cowboy films, where the whole place stops what they're doing and turns around to stare.

At this point I should tell you that karaoke isn't my idea of a good night. Yes, I can see why it's a fun-filled evening for many folks, and I can understand why groups of drunken friends have such a laugh getting on stage for their opportunity to show their pals they can be the next Pop Idol.

The problem is, as much fun as they seem to be having, most of them just can't sing, and it really starts to grate after the same old faces have been up several times.

So anyway, it's fair to say I didn't want to be there. Still, I could see why my American friend wanted me along; Leith bars are quite often not the most welcoming place for the singing tourist (we've all seen Trainspotting, right?).

My American friend wasn't exactly what you would call good that night – that's putting it kindly – but the main thing is no-one wanted to kill him.

Had he been singing the same Frank Sinatra number in the Philippines rather than at the foot of Leith Walk, however, things may have been very different.

Who knew that karaoke could be such a dangerous activity, until it was reported recently that within the last decade or so in South-East Asia as many as a dozen karaoke singers may have been killed for doing it badly?

According to the New York Times, it seems to be Ol' Blue Eyes – or rather his classic song My Way – that's been the major instigator for the killings.

Strange but possibly true, it's reckoned that if one of the locals deems you to have sung that particular song badly, or if you break karaoke etiquette in any number of ways, there's a chance you will end up dead (I've heard some truly bad singers in time, but this seems a tad extreme).

As a result of the alleged murders, which the press in Philippines have dubbed the 'My Way Killlings', some karaoke bars have taken the song off their available songsheets. And the killings have worried regulars to Filipino karaoke bars so much that many won't even contemplate singing Sinatra's My Way.

Speaking about the whole unsavoury affair recently, amateur singer Rodolfo Gregorio said: "The trouble with My Way is that everyone knows it and everyone has an opinion. I used to like My Way, but after all the trouble I have stopped singing it. You can get killed."

But it doesn't begin and end with Sinatra – bad karaoke renditions of other singers' songs have been blamed deaths in South-East Asia too. In the last two years a Malaysian man was fatally stabbed for hogging the mic at a bar (this is considered bad etiquette), while a Thai man killed eight of his neighbours after they sang John Denver's Take Me Home, Country Roads.

Seems like they take what's supposedly a bit of harmless fun far too seriously over there, huh.

As for my American friend, well, his way may have been the wrong way, but all he got for it was heckled mercilessly by the locals. Ultimately, we got out of the bar in one piece.