One singer’s failure, another’s success!
Your intrepid reporter attempted to qualify at one of the the semi finals for the “Karaoke Entertainer of the Year Contest“, put on by Star Media last night. The venue was WPLJ’s in Walnut Creek, on Wednesday night, September 30th. The KJ duties were admirably performed by Nan of “Bring Your Own Voice Karaoke“. This particular semifinal was for the R&B/Soul category. This category includes jazz, rap, hip hop, etc.
Considering there were 16 venues and three singers qualified from each venue to advance to the semifinals, there could potentially have been as many as 54 singers at WPLJ’s last night! In fact, only 14 contestants showed up, of which only 13 stayed around long enough to perform. Out of those 13, eight were selected to advance to the finals with two alternates, meaning 10 out of the 13 advanced to the finals in one way or another. Doing a little math, and noting that my name was not announced among the list of those advancing, it seems I was in the bottom three.
The lesson from this is either that I am way, way worse than I thought I was, or that the talent performing at last night’s venue really was that good. To find out for sure, you’d probably have to ask others who were present, but I really do believe that I didn’t stink that badly, and that the rest of the talent really was that good.
And so, while disappointed, I don’t really feel bad, because even being included in a group that talented (and trust me, no one there sucked) was a fairly large honor.
Due to having placed in the top three in a couple of other categories, I have an opportunity to try again, but the reality of it is that even though I’m a fairly decent singer, I’m not sure that I’d have any better chance at any other venue, or in any other genre.
If you’re interested in checking out one of the semi finals, you can find the venue locations for your part of the greater bay area on the contest website. You might want to poke your head in to see what it’s like to hear a bunch of really good singers all in a row, uninterrupted by the usual atonal, arrhythmic, drunk.
Posted: October 2nd, 2009 under Random Bits, Where to Karaoke.