Behold: the catchy, buzzy sting of a grown man screaming into a metal tube. Of such humble beginnings are legends born!
Destiny calls. Who would deny that call?
Yet even Destiny must die...
Rise, kazoo! Rise, and rock!
Recorded live around downtown Albuquerque, New Mexico in 2023.
Karaoke and kazoos are a perfect match. They both invite us to loudly and publicly test ourselves to find and hold a note expressively. When you shape the note around a word, it's called singing. If you instead send the note through a kazoo first: well, that's what I do.
Just a few select notes:
Imagine four grown men on a bar stage. Two guys, Warlock and Colin, have inflatable guitars and are jamming the hell out. The KJ keeps beats with his tambourine. The guy singing is all over his kazoo. That's the scene for this song.
Colin got a kazoo that night for stepping up; he came back later, coughing, and complained he couldn't smoke out of it because the plastic disc kept burning.
It is vitally important to ask "do you know how to play a kazoo" when handing them out.
Mark Knopfler is the best guitarist of all time. Fight me. He wrote Sultains of Swing to immortalize a one-off bar band he caught one night, and the crows was there. I cannot think of a better tribute to pay to everyone who comes out to karaoke, singer or not.
This was for John's birthday get-together. True story: this bar is on the other side of town from where I usually play, and yet I swear as I walked on stage I heard someone say, "Hey, it's the guy with the kazoo".
Immortality is mine.
For the kazoo, however...
Hubris strikes.
Here marks my final moments with that first kazoo.
At the end, I find myself wondering: will I ever be able to play a kazoo again? Do I run the risk of annihilating every kazoo I touch? Am I condemned to forever destroy that which I love?
Stay tuned for Volume Two.