Posted on 02/07/2010 10:12:46 AM PST by Free ThinkerNY
GENERAL SANTOS, the Philippines — After a day of barbering, Rodolfo Gregorio went to his neighborhood karaoke bar still smelling of talcum powder. Putting aside his glass of Red Horse Extra Strong beer, he grasped a microphone with a habitué’s self-assuredness and briefly stilled the room with the Platters’ “My Prayer.”
Next, he belted out crowd-pleasers by Tom Jones and Engelbert Humperdinck. But Mr. Gregorio, 63, a witness to countless fistfights and occasional stabbings erupting from disputes over karaoke singing, did not dare choose one beloved classic: Frank Sinatra’s version of “My Way.”
“I used to like ‘My Way,’ but after all the trouble, I stopped singing it,” he said. “You can get killed.”
The authorities do not know exactly how many people have been killed warbling “My Way” in karaoke bars over the years in the Philippines, or how many fatal fights it has fueled. But the news media have recorded at least half a dozen victims in the past decade and includes them in a subcategory of crime dubbed the “My Way Killings.”
The killings have produced urban legends about the song and left Filipinos groping for answers. Are the killings the natural byproduct of the country’s culture of violence, drinking and machismo? Or is there something inherently sinister in the song?
Whatever the reason, many karaoke bars have removed the song from their playbooks. And the country’s many Sinatra lovers, like Mr. Gregorio here in this city in the southernmost Philippines, are practicing self-censorship out of perceived self-preservation.
Karaoke-related killings are not limited to the Philippines. In the past two years alone, a Malaysian man was fatally stabbed for hogging the microphone at a bar and a Thai man killed eight of his neighbors in a rage after they sang John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Now that.. I can kind of understand.
Good thing I know I can’t carry a tune in a bucket. Might keep me alive.
My wife even looks at me funny when I get a little too boisterous during a good old time gospel song.
LOL
Hmmmm interesting. That part of the Phils, Mindanao, supposedly has the highest concentration of Filipino Muslims.
In an unrelated story, Marxian youth-rebels have been issuing formal “denunciations” (in imitation of leftists during the Spanish Civil War) in cafe houses across America to anyone who recites Robert Frost’s, “The Road Not Taken.”
if I didn't know better I would think this is from The Onion. I work with many Philipino men and women. They back up what is contained in this article.
I’m waiting to do “Feelings, wo wo wo, feelings.” On second thought, maybe not a wise move. Or that song about Obama that Laura Ingram sometimes plays on her show, “Barack Husein Obama, he’s a true, true, friend” or something like that.
My wife knows how much I hate that song, and how much of an earworm it is. So, every now and then, she'll hum a few bars, and I'll be stuck with the damn thing in my head all day. :)
Think of the carnage if one of them warbled a Barry Manilow tune.
When I was a nightclub performer, one particular club insisted that we do “Me & Bobby McGee” at the start and end of each set. With five sets that meant singing it ten times a night, sixty times a week. It was making me crazy, so I would do it in a different genre every time; Bobby’s Boogie, Bobby’s Waltz, Bobby’s Marching Band, Bobby’s Disco, etc, etc.
Oh how I loathe that song to this day.
Mandy, oh Mandy
Wow.
Bookmarked forever.
Don’t start ... I may have to hunt you down for manilowing us.
Oh my Lord. I KILL YOU!!
Decades ago, I told our wedding band that if they played ‘Jeremiah Was a Bullfrog’ I would smash their guitars over the speakers. I meant it and they knew I meant it. The band’s leader looked a little surprised at my anti-request (I guess the song was on their normal playlist) but they did not play that song.
“Oh how I loathe that song to this day.” I worked as a bouncer in a Disco for a while. Whenever I hear Disco music I want to beat someone with a five cell Maglite.
This is a little offbeat, but too good not to ping.
Absolutely hilarious.
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