Puttin’ On The Hits

I don’t hate karaoke. Really, I don’t.

I don’t do it myself, either, but I don’t equate it with actual performance. Karaoke is for fun; a diversion. Plus, I’m old enough to remember the first karaoke joke on The Simpsons, when the gag was that it was something Japanese people did. It was the successor to the camera strapped around the neck.

Now, not only is karaoke available in a home version, but late-night talk show hosts burn air time “lip-syncing” “popular” (corporate-backed) songs. The boring blond from Amos & Andy For Nerds, excuse me, I mean The Big Bang Theory, lip-synced her way through a Ludacris song where almost every other word is “bitch”. The idea being, look at this little white girl act “gangsta”. As long as the star is corporate-backed, this is “empowerment”. What do you imagine happens if someone without a hit show* tries this?

*You know, a product of one of the six companies and their offshoots.

Karaoke in bars is terrific because it helps people loosen up and come out of their comfort zone. Singers use the privacy and darkness of the environment to become someone else. Training TV cameras on the act drains it of its charm and reduces it to cheap imitation.

So of course, it’s already been a TV show.

Puttin’ On The Hits aired on weekends from 1984 to 1988. From that Wikipedia thing:

The show grew out of lip syncing contests developed by Wm. “Randy” Wood, who by 1982 had realized that his contests had grown so popular nationally that he needed to stage them on a broader scale. The planning process eventually grew into Puttin’ on the Hits.

Contestants would often dress up in costumes and use props to make their act more outrageous. This varied from a seemingly severed head singing “I Ain’t Got Nobody” to an Aretha Franklin drag act using couch cushions for breasts. Other acts were more conservative and placed emphasis on performance.

In junior high, my testicles were smashed by a weight machine. It was about a day before I could walk and talk again. Everyone laughed at me, because it was funny as fuck. I would sooner relive that experience in full than sit through five minutes of Puttin’ On The Hits.

If you had a sister or female cousin in 1984, they liked this show. Moms and aunts loved it. The rest of us would run out to the yard and physically abuse each other. A thousand pink-bellies would be preferable to some ding-a-ling from Kew Gardens miming his way through Van Halen while jumping on a trampoline.

You see, Puttin’ On The Hits was from the creator of The Gong Show, and retained that amateur-hour atmosphere. Contestants were more enthralled with the idea of being silly on TV for five minutes than getting discovered as the next superstar. If a song’s title could be molested as a bad play-on-words for its duration, these sons of bitches would do it. (Actually it was only for about a third of the song.)

Dick Clark and son produced the program, and “each act was judged by a panel of celebrity judges based on their appearance, song choice, and lip-sync ability with a total of 90 points being the maximum value an act could score; to achieve that, an act would have to receive 10 points in each of the three categories from all three judges. The act with the highest score at the end of the show won $1,000. They also advanced to the Semi-Finals which is worth $5,000 and after that, the season-ending championship show (dubbed the ‘Grand Final’) worth $25,000 to the winning act.” [Wikipedia]

These were big sums in 1984, well worth the potential embarrassment, which was minimal; only the performers’ relations recorded it at all. Hence, the evidence is not easily found in the Internet Age. Plus I’m guessing that a good percentage of the acts featured on POTH are not alive in 2016. Not to be grim, but these were 1980s New Yorkers, for the most part. If they’re still kicking, I doubt they’re happy about it.

Puttin’ On The Hits was popular enough to sire the abominable Puttin’ On The Kids in 1986, the nadir of the lip-sync concept. As you’d surmise, it was all children faking hit songs. No, it actually wasn’t a sting operation to snare pedophiles. Canada’s Just Like Mom wasn’t either. Can you believe that?!?

When has it ever been a good idea to put a child on a television show? When has it ever worked out well, aside from Ron Howard? He’s literally the sole example! 

I’ll go you one better- when has anyone become anything of merit after lip-syncing on TV/cable/Internet?

Never.

No one truly respects a silly imitator. As a matter of fact, it’s insulting to true creators. Would you break into your own loopy interpretation of Indian or African dancing? Why not, because you’re fearful of offending someone outside your understanding? Then maybe a “lip-sync battle” with a white girl faking gangsta rap is a really dumb fucking idea.

During the improv portion of my high school drama class, I performed my “humorous” version of a “crazy poet”, reciting Dr. Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham like it was Shakespeare. My teacher happened to be a poet from the 1960s, when I wasn’t even a tadpole in my daddy’s balls, and he was so insulted that he berated me before the entire class until the bell rang. I had driven a legitimate pacifist into a rage. On a teenager.

My teacher tearfully apologized to me in private the next day, and I told him he should not be sorry. I got the message, big time. He’d already admonished me a year earlier for farting “The Star-Spangled Banner” in the crook of my arm, on the bus to a field trip. I needed guidance onto the right path, which is why I’m where I am now. Christ, I pulled that fart-anthem shit again, on stage at a school festival. In retrospect, my instructors at Glen Rock Junior-Senior High School should be canonized as saints.

Also at that fabled school, I had a puppy-love crush who laughed at me for playing “air-guitar”. She was right. No one wants to watch a schoolkid wave their arms in an approximation of riffing as they know it. It is Faulknerian in its man-childishness. It is as appealing to women as splash of ammonia in the face.

It’s now an industry.