Monday, March 02, 2009

I Can Do This--Confessions From An Ego Maniac

This Ain't Me, But Close Enough...


Sometime about 20 years ago I was wandering around Orlando, Florida on a business trip, and after the conference and the formal dinner stuff had ended I found myself sitting at a place where they had "Laser Karaoke"--something purported to have at the time been imported by the Japanese as a secret weapon to finish fighting WWII.

Having a couple of Jack Daniels worth of courage in my belly, I waited my turn and then jumped up in front of the microphone and proceeded to die a slow death doing an old R&B classic song "If You don't Know Me By Now" then covered by a band called "Simply Red."

Fortunately when it was all over with I was three hundred miles away from home and as far as I know it today there were no witnesses in the room that still know my address or phone number.

In spite of that dismal intro experience, I was intrigued by the concept and ever since then I've spent a good deal of time learning to publicly perform various songs by artists like Jimmy Buffett, James Taylor, Willy Nelson which are within my vocal range and today I'm proud to report that I can pretty much hang with the best of them in any given venue.

Any way...I was staggering around the interent looking at Johnny Cash and Ray Charles songs this evening and in a fit of Googling I started looking for video of people doing songs I sing as "covers" to the original artists.

Check out this guy playing the piano and doing the one hit wonder song "Brandy" by the 1970's group "Looking Glass":



Somebody give me an "Amen"...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

What we all would like to see is Virgil doing the old standard classic from Jimmy Buffett "Why Don't We Get Drunk". It's sort of an anthem from our neck of the woods in LA.
Your fellow redneck
Rick