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Karaoke stars
By Carrie | February 29, 2008
Do you enjoy singing in the shower, but sometimes forget the lyrics? Would you like to enjoy the fun of karaoke without the embarrassment in performing in front of strangers?
Enter Star Karaoke. This fine Raleigh establishment, located way in the back of a small ethnic shopping center on Capital Boulevard, might at first glance appear to be a front for some kind of illegal activity. You walk in the place, only to encounter a few rows of rooms (with doors - think doctor’s office) and a bar all the way in the back. Surely this isn’t a place for Friday night fun.. or is it?
Turns out you can rent one of these rooms for your own private karaoke party! (This is a quite common type of establishment in Asia called a Karaoke Box.) Sure, the controls to the machine are completely in Korean, but the (somewhat) friendly karaoke master dude will show you the buttons to add, stop, and start a song. Who knows what the rest of those buttons on that remote are for? And who really cares?
Let the karaoke party begin. Your room is equipped with comfortable couches, a table for holding your drinks, and even a DISCO BALL! For the rhythm-oriented karaoke stars, a tambourine is provided to showcase your percussion talent. Two binders full of songs house an index of artful musical pieces, but be sure to browse the English section and put in the number correctly, or you might end up trying to sing something in Korean.
Perhaps the best part of this setup is that you are not forced to sing the entire song. Forget how Bohemian Rhapsody goes? Realize that you do not have the vocal range of Christina Aguilera? Just fast forward to the next song on the list. The only downfall to this is that your friends can also “boo” you off of the song by fast forwarding to the next song. Apparently the guys did not appreciate Belinda’s and my rendition of Summer Lovin‘ from the musical Grease. Sigh.
What really ended up happening is that we all sang EVERY song, so in reality, you never had the performance anxiety of going on stage. An unfortunate effect of this is that all of our voices were completely hoarse at the end of the night, despite our best attempts to soothe them with sake (which - buyer beware, seemed extremely expensive).
All in all, it’s a fairly inexpensive evening out. The charge for the room was about $20/hour (as far as we could figure… it seemed like they made up the price in all their shadiness). All this means is that the more people you bring, the better and cheaper your karaoke experience will be!
Topics: around the triangle |
February 29th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
Heck yeah! Yay karaoke! I told some of the ladies at work about it and they’re totally interested in coming next time. Haha. Maybe if there are more girls we can override the fast forwarding of girlier songs. (Did we even really sing it before it was fast forwarded?)
March 4th, 2008 at 8:44 am
Sounds like fun! How on earth did you ever discover this place?!
March 4th, 2008 at 9:43 am
We have Belinda’s connections to the Korean community to thank for this discovery. Now we just need to find someone that can speak Korean so we can get discounts on the rates. LOL.