karaoke cherry, that is
this one needs some backstory. When I was coming up with the name for the blog, I dithered mightily. My good friend Lauren was advocating a more comprehensible title, while I tend to go for mysterious and multilayered. For a minute I was gonna call it Adventures in High Contrast Living, my reigning motto and the title of a photozine I've been doing since 1999. But dokuchan (meaning "beloved poison") won out for simplicity and vagueness, plus it has been on my cellphone for years, in the place where your name is supposed to go.
I am super into the high contrast living. Live in a tent, work at a gas station then take off to DJ in Japan. Take care of retarded people for a year then shoot the cover of LA Weekly. Etc. This is a perfect example. I've known Sean since he was 19 and playing in a friends band. I never took pictures of him because poor kid, he gets hassled all the time, what with being offspring of Infamous Rock Royalty Duo. But this momentous event needed to be documented. I think Stephen Dorff took the picture. I was staying at his (Sean's) house for a day or two on a visit to new york, so I could kick it with Yuka. But she didn't want to go out that night.
Sean took me to Moomba, at the time (summer 2000) the whatever-ist club in nyc. We were ushered into the VIP room. I was dressed like a camp counselor, every other girl there was rich and famous and etc. Skin that has never seen a zit, or if it did was immediately rushed off to the doctors office. People named Ronson, and others I would've recognized if I didn't waste so much time reading science fiction.
I ordered a club soda and it cost four dollars. I let dudes buy my drinks after that. Lots of Ketel One sunrises and lemondrops if remembered correctly. There was karaoke. Though I have stood on stage and sung/screamed my heart out in many venues large and small, I had never done the karaoke. Sean, on the other hand, is a karaoke slut. When he got up with me it was his 4th or 5th song. They didn't have the Cure track I wanted (Fire in Cairo), nor anything else that I knew the words to. My repetoire is limited to random Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits, + PJ Harvey songs, plus everything on Exile in Guyville. When I sing with bands I write the words, otherwise I am fairly useless.
But he wanted me to bust my cherry, and I said I would only if accompanied. We picked Smells Like Teen Spirit, and I gave it my best.
dokuchan's posting of musicians and bands is continuing through february.
