Fun In Bogo City, Seaside BBQ & Video Karaoke

Karaoke In The Philippines

A couple of nights ago we met up with Greg and Ilyn at the seaside BBQ in Bogo City and had a few beers and some BBQ.  Pork chops for me, chicken and rice for Jessie.  I really wanted to go to the disco since they had a band but Ilyn wanted to go to karaoke so off we went.  I didn’t really care.  Jessie and  I will try the disco sometime though i doubt we’ll be dancing.  Karaoke was probably a better choice since it was more interactive.

Karaoke The Philippine National Pastime?

Greg and Ilyn kept feeding the machine with a 5 peso coin and Ilyn would sing.  Greg whisper while he was singing while watching concert videos where the point is really to watch instead of singing.  I looked for Alice Cooper but of course, there were no concert scenes.

The concert selections are MP3s and are video of concert or MTV videos.  For these the idea really isn’t to sing and the words are not displayed on the machine.  With true karaoke the songs are midi and thus sound horrible but the words scroll across the screen.  This is a major past time here in the Philippines.  I hope to get one.  I think Jessie will enjoy it even if she wont sing on the mic.  It is a good way to get the family together.  This combination of Video and Karaoke is called Videoke in The Philippines.

In the bars, the machines will generally score you.  I think they detect if you sing at the right time.  I doubt it is highly accurate. The idea, is to get people to compete and thus spend more money.  Playing to our egos is a good way to make money it would seem, regardless of which side of the earth one is on.

This  was my first experience with video karaoke bar, though I’ve been around karaoke at Jessie’s family’s home.  It was fun to watch and most of them were not shy.  One of them could even sing.  They did have some Alice Cooper midi songs for Karaoke but I didn’t have enough nerve to give it a try.  If I could do it right and act like Alice Cooper and scream it out, then I’d be happy to do it.

While walking the streets of Bogo it is not unusual to hear someone singing on  a mic and usually off key.  Sometimes it is pretty painful to listen to but after eight months I can tune it out now.  It seems to bother Jessie more than it does me though.

I took my video camera that night and got some good footage but due to my limited computer setup, I can’t work with the video yet.  I don’t have the hard drive space to work with more than one video at a time.  I started to take both cameras but I knew Jessie would fuss LOL so I didn’t do it.

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