Last week a group of us ended up in one of the most surreal karaoke lounges anywhere in the world where one expects to see midgets and the candy coloured clown performing as if in a scene from “Twin Peaks”, or “Blue Velvet”. It’s all very David Lynch film noire.
Instead, in this pretty much well-hidden joint, people get up to sing with a half-dead ‘live’ band where the youngest member must be pushing sixty with their own moment to shine being when performing without amateurs onstage- and sounding better depending on how much of whatever you’ve consumed.
While waiting for the bill, they launched into “Rolling In The Deep”. While hootchie mamas and their equally hootchie dates did the cha cha in front of me, I was- again- swept up by the song- its lyrics, its melody and, most important of all, its honesty.
It is one of THE best FUCK OFF songs.
It didn’t matter that the Filipina singer was massacring the song as what was going through my head was the original Adele version- proof positive that the reason we can accept all these tediously boring copycat singers and bands is because we love and respect the original songs, which they so often manage to totally mangle.
But we forgive these musical slices of cheese as it’s harmless fun and just a funky night out taking a walk on the wild side, and not exactly about real emotions, or music as an art form, which is lost on many.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQBa2pTr9GU
It’s also why we accept those horrible copyists on television talent shows who, one week can be Whitney, the next week, Rihanna, and, the week after, the entire cast of Glee who are copyists, anyway.
But, I guess as long as one doesn’t cross over to “sacred territory” and copy the Beatles, the Stones, Dylan, Lennon or anything by Led Zeppelin – except for “Stairway To Heaven”, which is the precursor to murdering “Hotel California”- we’re on safe terrain.
Today we live in a world falling apart at the seams where no one and pretty much anything is not what it appears.
Money CAN buy you “love and marriage”, and there’s no fool like an old fool.
It’s easy to turn a blind eye to a woman who’s “done the math”, and has decided to sell herself for the financial security she needs to dig herself out of the hole she’s created for herself.
It’s survival of the conniving kind.
Today is also a time where many seem to believe they’re entitled to favours- to take and take and take, but never give back unless it goes into a weird IOU ledger they carry with them in their self-centred heads.
The days of helping out friends with anything comes with a price tag.
Maybe this is why the creative product is, more and more, becoming a solo project and not a team effort.
As George Harrison once sang, it’s all “I Me Mine”, and where selfishness has become second nature to many who have no qualms about living a lie, and remaining thick skinned about it.
With songs, we still have some semblance of honesty- those songs that go on in our heads about real love as we lie in bed in some loveless charade of a marriage.
Songs can reach out and inspire us to be better people.
Songs have the power to make us “re-learn” how to enjoy life without the mansion on the hill and the tedious task of Keeping Up With The Joneses and the Chans, the Wongs, the Kardashians and keeping up pretences.
It’s in the songs, baby.
The truth is in those songs that matter- those songs that live only with you- and with an intense, vulnerable honesty, where their truth sets you free, even if it’s in the darkness, and no one hears that silent scream.
Hans Ebert Chairman and CEO We-Enhance Inc and Fast Track Global Ltd www.fasttrack.hk
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