Hello little miss Martha,

I’m starting this one off with a song - “I can’t help falling in love wiiiiiiiith you”. Now why is it that the majority of songs are written about love. nn said to me it is so much easier to add meaning to a song when its about love, than say, a bottle of half empty coke on the coffee table.. that is unless the half empty coke is a metaphor for lost love. Love and song are a very good match, the sirens sung to make men fall in love with them, elton john writes songs to make others fall in love with each other and so on. Songs make love and visa versa. And this leads us on to…

KAREOKE! The word karaoke means the song without vocals. The origin of this genius is thought to come from a small bar in japan which was too small to fit a band. The band recorded their music onto tape and the singer would sing along.

Anyone reading this most probably has sung along to their favourite band, while driving in your car, or with mister mop or miss hairbrush, in bedroom abandonment. It is liberating. I have to be careful, for I find myself singing aloud to my ipod while cycling home. Not exactly a very comforting sound for a passerby - my screeching voice, sirening out of the darkness, signaled by a red flashing light.

The japanese are crazy for this, and devote alot of attention and development to create such technology as the tsuushin karaoke, a midi compatable machine, and james bond stylee places such as this. My one regret about visiting tokyo was that we were on the brink of visiting a well known karaoke tower, which could have been here, or here. So when the chance to go here arose, i was not going to let screeching bonding antics get away again.

I’d like to take a Discovery Channel break here and discuss the origin of song. Anthropologists cannot explain why we can sing. Some explain that song came first, then language. Others suggest that singing was a way for our ancient relatives to maintain pair and group bonding. There is something rather sweet about imagining my great x1000 hairy ancester singing to his current squeeze.

And back to the main feature. Well its true. Singing breaks down barriers. It makes the world a happier place. And it really doesn’t matter weather you can hit the right note.The evidence

tunefuls of love
vv