Karaoke From a Wheelchair

Over my years of chair-dom, I've been always interested, lured, by the visage of karaoke. I always loved singing and performing as a kid, even if my voice changed for the worse after puberty. And being a quad doesn't help. I can't yell real loud, or project my voice like the lead singer of Heart. BUT....I could go the "Nora Jones" route and do softer songs that don't require a voice like that. I dunno....can someone in a chair ever be taken seriously on-stage? I've yet to see one chair-user on American Idol.

That's the great thing about karaoke. Anyone (and I mean anyone), can go on stage and belt one out. I've only done it twice since breaking my neck in '93. First time was at my Uncle's wedding reception, which was on a paddle boat. I chose to sing The B-52's "Love Shack," which by the way was a VERRRY bad idea. It's over 5 minutes long, and for a quad, by the 3 minute mark I was out of breath and skipping verses. How embarrassing! Luckily, it was a private setting and only family and friends witnessed my vocal failure :)

The second time was at a college on-campus activity. I was a sophomore in school, and in our dorm's lobby the RAs had set-up a karaoke station to get the students to socialize. I did a duet with a girl I barely knew to Grease's "Summer Nights" (I did the "Sandy" part thankfully, even though I'm a borderline Second Soprano/Alto). Naturally, my voice cracked at the high part and all the enraptured students who at that point were still enjoying my performance, got up and left. Yes, another vocal embarrassment. Ha.

So since then, I've been too scared to try the karaoke thing again. If I do find the guts however, I'll either be doing "Stay" by Lisa Loeb, "Folsom Prison Blues" by Johnny Cash, or "Serious" by my idol, Gwen Stefani.