Oh, well if you insist...

Perhaps due to the strength and ubiquity of the music industry, casual public singing in the United States has in many places fallen by the wayside. Karaoke offers most of us little more than an opportunity to wink and nudge at one another after a couple of beers over our common lack of talent. Not so in northeast Asia, where noraebang culture is alive and well, and people’s trills and vibratos are as sharpened and honed as a samurai’s. I never quite seem to understand just how my Korean friends trick me into getting up in a tiny teched-out room and doling out another dose of ‘Bad Medicine’, but I my best to explain how Janis Joplin and the Violent Femmes form a part of my national heritage.