Jrock Revolution

On the 29th of December JRR had what I hope to be the first of many NYC karaoke parties, and was it ever a blast! We had a relatively small group: Saturn (Saturnsmusician), Flip (Flippinklein1337GDer), Missykitty, musicalshadow and myself—but hey, the way I see it small is just another word for cozy and intimate. Plus, we had the privilege of hanging out with a west coast JRRer (Saturn!), which completely made up for the lack of numbers. Still, next time we'll hopefully get a few more people to tag along...

So we started the meet-up by, er, meeting up at the Kinokuniya bookstore across from Bryant Park, perusing the new album releases, raiding the sale section, and reliving fond memories of the Sugizo and Ben Watkins interview/fan event. 

After that it was off to karaoke! Luckily the place was within a short walking distance of the bookstore (because it was pretty cold outside). Eventually we spotted the sign for our destination: Karaoke Duet 35. 

This place is one of a few different chains of Japanese-style karaoke places scattered throughout the city. They have songs in English and Japanese, as well as Korean and Chinese. Their selection of Jrock songs was awesome, we couldn't decide what to sing next!!

 

Some of the songs were, sadly, horribly distorted MIDI versions of the songs we were expecting to hear, paired with incredibly cheesy and low-budget videos that had little if anything to do with the songs. We were confused, but entertained. All I can say is rocking out to a MIDI version of the GazettE's Filth in the Beauty is not easy to do. For some lucky reason they had actual real versions of pretty much every X Japan and hide song ever made, and the real PVs as well, so we had a lot of fun with that…we sang for 3 hours straight!

By 8 pm or so we were getting pretty hungry so we left to get dinner, and ended up going to a Chinese restaurant right next door. Delicious food was had.

The night was still young, so we decided to go a little further uptown to Rockefeller center to take in the holiday sights and sounds.

We saw Elmo, among other unexpected characters.

And took in the spectacular light show Saks 5th Avenue had going on every 15 minutes, set to a rather awesome techno-orchestral version of Carol of the Bells.

 

 And finally, arguably the highlight of the night: we happened to witness a guy propose to his girlfriend on the Rockefeller Plaza ice skating rink, and she said yes! Cue the cheers and claps of hundreds of spectators, us included! And then we watched the guy on the Zamboni do his thing, because we all agreed Zambonis are fascinating.

By that time, we were all pretty much freezing, so we decided to hop back on the train and call it a night. All in all it turned into a night of much more than just karaoke, and we all definitely agreed that it was so much fun we need to plan another one ASAP. Hope to see you there!

 (Photo credit to Missykitty and Flip)