But, it was hard, at the time, to capture those music segments from the radio stations. And there was no "Karaoke" audio tapes on the market, let along the LD/VCD/DVD, which were yet to be marketed/invented. So I forgot about it, but had planted a seed in my mind. It was not until I came to America in 1989 (before June 4th, so I was not one of those in the Tian An Men square, but was really tempted to go back there when I saw things on TV), I picked up Karaoke again. Karaoke got popular in the States (mostly in the Asian / Chinese communities) since the early 90's. I got the first exposure at an undergrad student party organized by ABC kids. The shining Laser Disk (LD) struck me so much, and fertilized the seed long sleeping in my mind, that I decided at the moment I would get the system. But, as a poor graduate student, I can't afford the stuff (yeah, my wife and I did get TA/RA assistantships from the Physics Dept at Stony Brook, but still can't justify any luxury expenses). I came up with a plan. I would buy one component at a time. The first thing is a home theater sound system, which can be used for listening to music, watching movies, etc. Sound systems don't depreciate as much as the fashionable things like Karaoke machine. I spent $600 on a pair of tower speakers (Definitive DP7), $400 on a mid-high range home receiver / amplifier (PIONEER VSX-5900S). And of cause I hooked up my stereo VCR to the amp, and added a pair of low end small speakers for the surrounding channels. I got a nice home theater in place at that point.
Since the Karaoke machines were expensive at the time, and I didn't like the built-in mixer (low sound quality), I had other plans. I bought a discounted display LD player from PC Richard & Son for less than $300, and then bought a separate 4-channel mixer for $200 (BMB Digital Echo Processor DEP-3300II). The cheapest Karaoke machine (= LD player + built-in mixer) at the time was over $600. Since LDs were expensive (more than $30 a piece), a couple of friends who like Karaoke got together, and rented LDs from Flushing. I would copy the rented LDs to VHS tapes (actually twice, one w/ the singing, one w/o). The LD price went down in a year or so, and that's when I started collecting them. I got ~30 LDs between 93 to 97. Since each LD holds ~30 songs (double sided), I got ~900 titles in my collection. Another thing is that, I paid attention to the quality of the LDs, and bought large percentage of "original singers / MTV" edition. They are usually more expensive, but totally worth the money if you're semi-serious about the quality. I hope one day I can demonstrate the different between my collection and the Karaoke machine in terms of quality. Obviously, the current Karaoke machine can hold a lot more titles, and it's easy to find the songs you like to sing. But the quality of the classic LDs are so much better. BTW, here is my collection: http://www.oocities.org/yingchao_zhang/Karaoke/ . As you can see, it's just as easy to find your favorit songs from the sorted list as from today's Karaoke machine that comes with a song list book. :)
My friends and I had Karaoke parties on the regular basis for a few years. In the summer of 1995, my wife and I moved to Manhattan, where we lived in upper east side in the high rises of Rockefeller Univ (my wife was a postdoc there). I did one year postdoc at Columbia (nuclear physics) before dropped my dream of becoming a physics professor and became an IT guy. BTW, whenever there is a non-Chinese American asks me why I left the field of nuclear physics, my typical response is, "I didn't want become another victim like Wen-Ho Lee!" Between 95 and 98 (the year my twins were born), I became the designated Karaoke host for the Chinese communities in that area (Rockefeller Univ, Cornell Medical School, and Sloan-Kettering Cancer Institute), and was invited by one of the Hua Xia Chinese schools to host their New Year party's Karaoke session. They were willing to pay me $200, but I had to reject them because it was the end of 98, and my twins were less than half year old. I also participated 97 Karaoke contest organized by World Journal and its TV station. I didn't get into the final round, but it was an interesting and learning experience.
My Karaoke activities pretty much stopped since the birth of my twins in summer 1998. I didn't sing Karaoke at all since moving to West Windsor, New Jersey in Dec 2000. After my twins entered Plainsboro Chinese School (PCS) in 2002, I went to a couple of parties at the school, but were unimpressed with the Karaoke setup and organization (excuse me), and didn't come forward to sing. I "showed off" a little bit at the school's Chorus group party in Xu Fang & Laurie's house (my wife and I were invited because all four of us are USTC alumni), and got PCS Principle Shaolin Liu and other people's attention. I was asked to joint he chorus group, but I was not interested (excuse me again). At the same time, since summer 2003, I started spending more time on live music in my basement (at nights after my twins went to sleep, and my wife fell into sleep with them), and felt that it was a lot more fun than Karaoke. That's when I decided to show off my one-man-band after Shaolin asked me to sing a song on the Nov 2003 Hua Xia Arts Show (I thought singing along with music from tape or CD - essentially "Karaoke" on stage - was not acceptable).
Perhaps you know the rest of the history, but may not know that I almost decided not going on stage. The reason was that, I asked Yang Qing, the producer of the show, about the live music mic / guitar plug-in and mixer systems. She told me to come in early in the afternoon to work out with the DJ. I took my vent load of stuff to High School North at 3 pm, as she instructed, but found I was the only one there. People started showing up after 4 pm. But I could hardly talk to the DJ (hired from HSN, who was busy taking CDs and tapes for other programs). At the end, they told me that my guitar cannot be plugged into their sound system directly. I said I was not going to play in that case. Other people stepped in to convince me to use a mic to pick up the sound from my guitar. I didn't like it at all, but decided to stay, 'cause I didn't want to damage the PCS' reputation :).
I gained a lot through my Karaoke activities - learned hundreds of pop songs (mostly from Taiwan and Hong Kong, but a lot from Mainland as well in later years), experimented with different singing styles, getting a better feeling about background music and performance. The involvement with live music in recent years gave me a different perspective about Karaoke. I see it more as a self-entertainment and fun thing other than a music activity. Even so, I still prefer not being part of those "bad" Karaoke events (low quality sound systems / low quality background music / bad DJ or mix) no matter how fun it seems. I don't mind hosting Karaoke parties from time to time, and will impose my quality control for sure. But I wouldn't consider doing this on the regular basis as my part time activities. I am getting more serious about becoming an amateur musician, having live music gigs here and there from time to time.
Speaking of "bad" Karaoke experiences, I found a few common mistakes people make that made the "audience" feel "bad". The number one mistake is that, people often prefer turning up the vocal volume, a lot more than the background music. When you listen to songs from the record, you hear a balanced mix (about 30 ~ 60% voice, and the rest music, depending the style, mood, and arrangement, etc.) When you go to a "typical" Karaoke party, you step outside the house for a moment and all you can hear is the singer's voice! It's wrong in two senses. (1) The end result is not balanced and thus can not be good. (2) When the singer can't hear the background music, he or she may sing in the wrong tune, and he or she has to follow the rhythm of the song by looking at the lyrics and color change on the TV screen, which in itself a BIG problem. Why? Because (a) the change of color of the lyrics on the screen often does not reflect the timing of that particular part of lyrics and the music. And (b) When a singer gets used to seeing the screen and singing, he or she pays less attention to the music, and becomes more and more dependent on the TV screen, and can no longer sing along with just music, from record or from live instrument. Well, this may not be a "problem" for someone who just want to have some "fun" from Karaoke (mean while people like me have to live through the "pain" to listen to them). For anyone who really enjoy singing and want to sing well, and let other people enjoy it (at least to some degree) as well, you MUST learn to sing Karaoke without looking at the screen. Well, you can look at the lyrics, but PLEASE don't get into the habit of paying attention to the change of color and following it. A better alternative is to have printed lyrics hold in your hand and sing along with the music.
When I get some free time, I'll write about other problems I observed in Karaoke parties. Until then, happy singing!