There's Got to be a Morning After

Well that happened.

The Eighth Annual Karaoke to the Death VIII went into the books about 40 hours ago, but its historical significance will reverberate for years to come. To paraphrase something I heard in some shitty movie one time, this wasn't the end. It wasn't even the beginning of the end. But it was the end of the beginning.

Early in the evening, long before the singing got underway, I gazed out over the sea of KttD fans and competitors thronging the dismal Rock It Grill. I beamed and remarked to Vrabel that this was how responsible adults must feel when they see their children foraying out into the world. Eight years after a small band of tuneless interlopers crashed a townie-infested karaoke bar to settle a bet, the KttD community had descended on the Rock It like a conquering army, girded for combat.

Before our tough-but-fair DJ "Slam" had even arrived, it was clear that this year was going to be something special. Despite the conspicuous absences of former KttD Champs Soo Doh Nim, Doc Paradox and "Lord" Bill Ramsey, the field was, by far, the deepest ever, comprising a murderers row of tone-deaf anti-melodic hacks committed to winning KttD glory, no matter what toll they exacted on the hearing and sanity of the assembled masses.

I won't spend too much time rehashing the performances. In addition to the official writeup, I'd commend readers to Cap'n Crunch's extensive, pen-and-paper generated not-quite-live blog and Jason P's stunning outsider's take on competition.

Suffice to say, what we witnessed was jaw-dropping.  No fewer than four contenders could have won, and won not only KttD VIII, but any previous KttD, save for the legendary KttD III. The performances by Emma Peel, Peter, newcomer Matyas and eventual winner Aussie Bob were the sort of musical abortions that make you question whether you want to go on living. When a local townie offered her badly inebriated boyfriend a sex act in exchange for singing along with Bob, he declined, somehow sensing through a haze of Miller Lights Lites and vocational school education that there were some lows to which even he should not sink. This was beyond bad singing. It was a polytonal sort of un-singing that had the power to deeply affect listeners' moods.

It was also the new face of KttD.

For years now, the winds of change have been blowing. When Hotrod and I started KttD, we just went up there and sang whatever crappy song came to mind. In the years that followed, we improved our research methods and training regimens, but at its core, KttD remained the same. The winner was the one who chose the lousiest song and sang it the worst. Now though, it's no longer enough to be a bad singer. You have to be a NON-singer in order to have any hope of winning this competition. The new KttD thoroughbreds are miserably tone deaf and wildly uncomfortable on stage. These savants can take any song and make it a bad one, regardless of training.

I thought I had a doozy on my hands this year with "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother." And I feel certain I sang it poorly, but I didn't come close to factoring in the final voting. Could I have done worse? Sure. In retrospect I probably should have gone with something in a higher register, where I've enjoyed most of my past success. That's an oversight I can correct in KttD IX. But what I'm beginning to wonder is whether even my theoretical "worst" performance would be bad enough to win in this modern era of KttD. I'm still as bad as I ever was, but as the stature of KttD has grown, so too has the quality of the competition. I'm starting to come to grips with the fact that maybe I just don't suck enough.