Karaoke Mondays
Whittier Bar
January 29, 2024
The Whittier Bar’s front door is emblazoned with an all-caps warning: NO BUMMERS. It’s a good reminder for a Monday, anyway, and it’s a good reminder for karaoke hopefuls, too. Every one of the thirty or so people attending the bar’s long-running Karaoke Monday, most of whom seemed to know each other, took heed.
Whittier is something of a safe haven for musical weirdos, experimenters, and dive bar lovers anyway. A calendar stacked with band names like Constant Peril, Witch Vomit, and Throat Piss might seem a misalignment with a karaoke residency, but in fact, it is actually just right. Whittier’s karaoke is the elemental form of its braggadocious older brother, the professional tribute band. It removes all barriers to the stage save for being 21, loving a song enough to know it by heart, and being willing to stay out late on a Monday night. Abandon all bummers, ye weirdos who enter here.
The art itself is a great equalizer, where the “best” and “worst” are subjective, and everyone in the room has equal opportunity for crowd-pleasing. It’s a parade of singers with a rainbow of motivations—Attention! Alcohol! Just really loves glam rock! The playlist on any given night is bound to be an anomaly, a disheveled love letter to songs so disparate in style and content that even the kookiest algorithm couldn’t put it together. This particular Monday night’s collective was a whopper in that regard.
First up: a passionate rendition of Billy Joe Shaver’s “Honky Tonk Heroes” sung without onscreen lyrical assistance—one of the dangers of running karaoke via YouTube search. I’m a metal ignoramus, but if the next song wasn’t by Motörhead, it should be. The person who sang it left the bar right afterward, having apparently only come in to drop a speed metal bomb on everyone, which to me is equal parts a Monday and a metal thing to do. The next selection was Prince and the New Power Generation’s “Diamonds and Pearls,” a track only I seemed able to identify, based on the quizzical looks in the crowd. I expected this plus Motörhead (?) to be the most peculiar pairing of the night, and I was wrong.
Good Charlotte’s “Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous” prompted a group singalong, a testament to the you-just-never-know quality of what embeds a song in someone’s brain in perpetuity. This was followed by an honest-to-god aria, a straight-up impressive take on “Music of the Night” from Phantom of the Opera, not just sung but performed in earnest, without a smile, next to a bewildered karaoke host whose shirt read, among other things, “EAT SHIT.”
The crowd sprinkled in some songs I’ve never heard, a couple of Beatles tunes, a medium-deep INXS cut, and Rush’s “Anthem.” Congratulations to that would-be Geddy Lee for being the only one whose song I could successfully Shazam—during the mezzo-soprano vocals.
Notably, the whole bar cheered for every performer: the ultimate karaoke kindness, whether or not they’d been paying much attention to the performance itself. It was the coziest, most welcoming night you can have under the glow of a huge lighted sign that says SCUM. Eat shit, Mondays, am I right?
The Pickup's reviews are published with support from The Online Journalism Project.
