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What is Karaoke? Part One: An Origin Story · Ridiculous History

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  Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: for joining us today. Let's give a big shout out
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: to our super producer, the Man, the myth Legend, mister
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  Speaker 1: Max Williams.
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  Speaker 2: Huzzah, I am technically still alive. Yeah, it's good to hear.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: I know Max has been. You've been plagued by the
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: ick this season. The weather's on top of the man,
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: it is.
• 0:51
  Speaker 3: It's sitting right on your face and apparently flatulating upon it.
• 0:54
  Speaker 4: We learned the term pink ear, pink ear and cloaping.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's when you close and open dirty double.
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  Speaker 5: When you open at a restaurant, you work to the
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  Speaker 5: closing shift and not like you know that, mid bs.
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  Speaker 4: You and I have a very different idea of what
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  Speaker 4: dirty double means.
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  Speaker 3: I know, and I don't google dirty double, y'all, just
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  Speaker 3: don't restaurant industry.
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  Speaker 5: Everything in the restaurant industry has some innuendo to it.
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  Speaker 5: But yeah, this is the fourth time in a year
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  Speaker 5: of sick. That's the note in five years I did
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  Speaker 5: and get sick. I've been sick now four times for
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  Speaker 5: lost time, buddy.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, we also we also want to again with we
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  Speaker 1: always begin our our episodes with and end our episodes
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  Speaker 1: with thanking the people who make the episodes possible. With
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  Speaker 1: this in mind, ridiculous historians. My name's Ben Bollen. I
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  Speaker 1: would like to introduce you yet again. Don't call it
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  Speaker 1: a comeback to the one the only research associate in
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  Speaker 1: this episode, mister Noel Brown. Can we get like an applause?
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  Speaker 1: I don't have to, Okay, sure, I'll take it.
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  Speaker 4: Thank you. Yeah, always always take the applause.
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  Speaker 3: I'll take the bow. I'll take it. It's a mid bow,
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  Speaker 3: not a low bow.
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  Speaker 1: Now we're talking about something that's been on our minds
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  Speaker 1: for quite a long time.
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  Speaker 4: Oh years, decades. I mean, I don't know you.
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  Speaker 3: I've never known you to be a participant, but I
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  Speaker 3: know you are a delighted spectator.
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  Speaker 4: Right.
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  Speaker 1: I don't participate in the western version of karaoke with
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  Speaker 1: a large public audience of strangers, but I will.
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  Speaker 4: I will kill that room. Bro. We got to make
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  Speaker 4: this happen.
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  Speaker 3: I don't think I've ever shared a private karaoke space
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  Speaker 3: with you, and I look forward to it.
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  Speaker 4: Do you have a go to jam?
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  Speaker 1: Well, it's illegal for you to ask me. I don't
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  Speaker 1: think that's true in the Philippines.
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  Speaker 3: Oh, as far as I know, we're in the good
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  Speaker 3: old us of a ben. But you keep your secret spinbulling.
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  Speaker 3: I got a couple. If anyone's interested.
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  Speaker 4: What do you got? What do you got? Well, I
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  Speaker 4: like to do. You know, I've got a cup. I've
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  Speaker 4: got a bit of a range.
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  Speaker 3: So I like to do things where I sing kind
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  Speaker 3: of low good stuff for that would be new Romantic
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  Speaker 3: eighties kind of synth wave kind of stuff.
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  Speaker 4: I really like, Uh, don't you want me? Baby?
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  Speaker 3: You know, don't you want don't because you get to
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  Speaker 3: do that kind of low Bowie Krune kind of thing. Sure,
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: speaking of Bowie and his low Crune, I like to
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  Speaker 3: do a bit of it. It was a single, but
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  Speaker 3: a lot of people don't know it doesn't really like
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  Speaker 3: the room up usually but ashes to Ashes by David
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  Speaker 3: Bowie off of the Scary Monstrous Record. And if I
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  Speaker 3: want to showcase my higher range, I'll do and I
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  Speaker 3: would do anything for love, but I won't do that
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  Speaker 3: by meeth Low.
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  Speaker 4: I've seen that.
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  Speaker 1: I've seen these because folks, if you don't know, Noel
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  Speaker 1: comes from an operatic background. So the man does have
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  Speaker 1: the range. We are not blowing smoke quite. I would say, honestly,
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  Speaker 1: you're phenomenally talented musician.
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  Speaker 3: I appreciate that, and it means a lot to me
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  Speaker 3: to hear you say that, and it's something that means
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  Speaker 3: a lot to me in my life. I don't sing
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  Speaker 3: as much as I used to, used to be in bands,
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  Speaker 3: and I work on a lot of music, but I'm
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  Speaker 3: just now kind of getting back into singing and recording
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  Speaker 3: my own songs as supposed to producing others. But karaoke
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  Speaker 3: is a fun, kind of democratic way of getting out
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  Speaker 3: there and flexing your your pipes.
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  Speaker 1: If that's the phrase, oh wait, wait, wait, wait, we
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  Speaker 1: have to say it. This is very familiar to a
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  Speaker 1: lot of us listening. But Noel, for anyone who does
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  Speaker 1: not know what Carrie Okay is, how would you describe it?
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  Speaker 3: Well, it's interesting because I mean the modern concept of
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  Speaker 3: karaoke in terms of like a machine or a device
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  Speaker 3: used to sing along with music with the main vocal removed,
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  Speaker 3: is really a relatively modern and like dating back to
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  Speaker 3: around the late sixties early seventies. But you know, sing
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  Speaker 3: alongs have been around for a lot longer than that.
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  Speaker 3: Folks will likely remember or have seen, you know, in
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  Speaker 3: retrospect with false nostalgia, the good old bouncing ball like
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  Speaker 3: m I C K E Y m O USC or
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  Speaker 3: some of the old Max Fleischer cartoons. So a sing
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  Speaker 3: along kind of situation was certainly popular with these kinds
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  Speaker 3: of shorts that would play before a feature as far
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  Speaker 3: back as like the thirties and forties. You would have
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  Speaker 3: lyrics on the bottom of the screen and the audience
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  Speaker 3: was invited to participate. So I mean, at its core,
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  Speaker 3: karaoke is a participatory musical kind of communal events, you know,
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  Speaker 3: where people sign up on a list, whether it be
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  Speaker 3: at a bar or a private room like you were
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  Speaker 3: talking about Ben, although in the private room it's a
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  Speaker 3: lot easier to get a spot because it's just you
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  Speaker 3: and your friends and you've rented the space for a
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  Speaker 3: certain amount of time. But then you get up there
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  Speaker 3: and belt out your sometimes to a little bit corny
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  Speaker 3: midi fied recreations of the song. That has changed and
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  Speaker 3: varies widely now in terms of the quality of karaoke accompaniments.
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  Speaker 3: But yeah, the idea is just to kind of get
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  Speaker 3: up there and give it your all. And I honestly
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  Speaker 3: think that some people think karaoke is really first and
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  Speaker 3: foremost for people that aren't people that sing all the time.
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  Speaker 3: And a lot of people don't ever sing except maybe
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  Speaker 3: in the shower or when they're doing karaoke.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah. The number one fear, at least in the US
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  Speaker 4: is public speaking, which is bizarre to you and Max
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  Speaker 4: and myself. Obviously we got that face tattoo a long
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  Speaker 4: time ago. I hear drop we got when we earned
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  Speaker 4: our stripes.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, I just remembered, and I don't think you've ever
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  Speaker 1: heard me do it, but this may surprise you know.
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  Speaker 1: I absolutely kill music of the Night.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah. I love the Broadway karaoke eers. It's the subcategory
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  Speaker 4: of karaokeers.
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  Speaker 3: You'll have folks that around Halloween time will do uh,
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  Speaker 3: you know, stuff from Nightmare before Christmas, for example. But boy, Ben,
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  Speaker 3: music of the Night, that's that's a jammer. It's really
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  Speaker 3: it really demonstrates some range. I'm gonna have to insist
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  Speaker 3: on you doing that when we get our private room.
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  Speaker 1: Oh boy, here we go. It's the hot tub all
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  Speaker 1: over again. You're bringing up this point about you. You're
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  Speaker 1: bringing up this point that I think is mission critical here,
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  Speaker 1: which is the idea that carry okay as a It's
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  Speaker 1: a Japanese term, and it is, like you said, sometimes
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  Speaker 1: describing a machine right, a specific device. Uh. But it
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  Speaker 1: also and I love this point, it also describes something
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  Speaker 1: that people have been doing forever. Like you said, singing
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  Speaker 1: in the shower. Name one person who doesn't sing in
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  Speaker 1: the shower, and I will one hundred percent profile them
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  Speaker 1: as a not fun person.
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  Speaker 3: That's funny you should say that, Ben, because I don't
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  Speaker 3: ever feel compelled to sing in the shower. Yeah, but
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  Speaker 3: you sing in real life, that's fair. And I do
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  Speaker 3: do karaoke relatively frequently. I went for the first time
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  Speaker 3: in quite a while the other weekend, and I didn't sing.
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  Speaker 3: I maybe have mentioned the show, but I quit drinking
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  Speaker 3: about a month and a half ago, and this was
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  Speaker 3: the first time I don't care or been to a
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  Speaker 3: karaoke situation without the assistance of alcohol, and I kind
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  Speaker 3: of wanted to take it easy and just sort of
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  Speaker 3: watch my friends sing and just sort of be there
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  Speaker 3: in a different context outside of you know, the pounding
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  Speaker 3: shots or whatever. So it was a lot of fun
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  Speaker 3: and that we have a We mentioned the local our
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  Speaker 3: favorite chicken wing joint here in Atlanta, they do a
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  Speaker 3: fabulous weekly karaoke night and some friends of the show,
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  Speaker 3: Rowan Newby, as well as my buddy Orlando Montoya, who
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  Speaker 3: was a local public radio guy, his big karaoke nut.
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  Speaker 4: It's a real kind of community, you know, Orlando. Orlando's
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  Speaker 4: a buddy.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, we used to work together back in the day
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  Speaker 3: when I was with public radio in Augusta, Georgia Public Radio,
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  Speaker 3: and he not terribly long ago joined the Atlanta team,
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  Speaker 3: the Atlanta branch of public radio, and he does like
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  Speaker 3: the afternoons and has.
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  Speaker 4: The most delightful public radio voice.
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  Speaker 3: You could imagine. I'm Orlando Montoya, and that voice also
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  Speaker 3: translates to a delightful singing voice.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, agreed.
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  Speaker 1: Now, let's I love the point about karaoke as community.
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  Speaker 1: This is something that I think exists in step with
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  Speaker 1: the idea of a carry okay machine. What what is
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  Speaker 1: a karaoke machine?
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  Speaker 3: Nell, Well, it's as simple as a device that combines
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  Speaker 3: a microphone, some sort of playback mechanism, and a speaker.
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  Speaker 3: Sometimes it will have a vocal effect like a reverb
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  Speaker 3: or a delay, a type of effect where you go bop baa,
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  Speaker 3: or like a quicker version of that which would be
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  Speaker 3: more of like a slapback sound. Both of those things
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  Speaker 3: are designed for comfort for the singer because if you
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  Speaker 3: sort of smeared a little bit with reverb, as anybody
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  Speaker 3: that's cut vocals in a studio will know, it makes
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  Speaker 3: you a little more comfortable because you just sound larger
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  Speaker 3: than life. Just to quickly backtrack before we get to
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  Speaker 3: the kind of advent of that device that you're describing,
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  Speaker 3: I just wanted to go back a little bit to
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  Speaker 3: the whole bouncing ball idea. It was actually invented by
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  Speaker 3: the cartoonist Max Fleischer, you might know from like from
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  Speaker 3: the Ink Well with Coco the Clown. Some of the
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  Speaker 3: earliest use of rotoscoping. There's a really cool Betty Boob
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  Speaker 3: cartoon that features Mini the mouture that features the dance
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  Speaker 3: stylings of Cab Callaway. It starts off with him like
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  Speaker 3: actually you know, film of him dancing, and then it
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  Speaker 3: transitions to a rotoscoped version where his movements are basically
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  Speaker 3: translated to this ghosts. And if anyone's familiar with rotoscoping,
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: it's a technique that you know, it's a little bit
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  Speaker 3: dated now, but it can be used for interesting creative effect.
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  Speaker 3: But it's where you essentially translate real life movement onto
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  Speaker 3: cartoon cells. For lack of a maybe more expert way
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  Speaker 3: of describing it, but the original Cocoa Song cartoons ran
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  Speaker 3: from nineteen twenty four to nineteen twenty seven, featuring this
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  Speaker 3: sing along technique, which is just lyrics on the bottom
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  Speaker 3: of the screen with the ball bouncing in rhythm to
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  Speaker 3: let you know where you're supposed to be, you know,
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  Speaker 3: in the song lyrics. It was revised again in nineteen
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  Speaker 3: twenty nine as a segment called Screen Songs. This was
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  Speaker 3: for Paramount Pictures and then the film, the short film
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  Speaker 3: Come Take a Trip in My Airship came out in
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  Speaker 3: nineteen twenty four. So this would often feature popular songs
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  Speaker 3: from you know kind of I guess you could call
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  Speaker 3: them pop right or figures at the time, we're talking
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  Speaker 3: about folks like Irving Berlin and his tune when the
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  Speaker 3: Midnight Chu Chu Leaves for Alabama, So not the pop
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  Speaker 3: music we think of today.
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  Speaker 1: Oh and that, uh, that is the midnight Chuo Chuo
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  Speaker 1: leaves for Alabama, Alabama, not Alabama. Yeah, we're working with rhymes.
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  Speaker 4: I know it's true, it's true.
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  Speaker 1: I love that you're pointing this out because what you're
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  Speaker 1: pointing out here is a fundamental human urge, the idea
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  Speaker 1: to participate in some way with things you enjoy. Right,
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  Speaker 1: So the the black batah balancing over in my mind, dude,
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  Speaker 1: it's the little dot or whatever logo might be.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, it can be styled in many different ways.
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  Speaker 3: Ben, did you find anything about, like, what, what's the
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  Speaker 3: technique for translating this to the screen, because at the time,
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  Speaker 3: I mean, sound sync was relatively new, and it's tough
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  Speaker 3: to synchronize the visuals with audio with a level of
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  Speaker 3: precision that makes it like actually time out correctly for
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  Speaker 3: someone using it to follow along.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's kind of a it's kind of like a
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  Speaker 1: conductor for an orchestra because in the early days before
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  Speaker 1: the talkies, which are I think going to stick around
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  Speaker 1: for a while in the in the eras of silent film,
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  Speaker 1: we had on seeing orchestras or musicians playing along right.
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  Speaker 4: Or the audience or an organist or whatever, right right,
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  Speaker 4: or an organist or whatever. And when these folks, uh,
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  Speaker 4: this audience would.
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  Speaker 1: See these these indications, the orchestra or the musicians or
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  Speaker 1: the organist were also following those cues. It's kind of
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  Speaker 1: like the conductor going bupa pup, pup.
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  Speaker 4: Pup, pup, pup, Papa papa pah. You love that one.
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  Speaker 3: It's true, and that, you know, one of the most
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  Speaker 3: impressive to me, especially given the time. Examples of sound
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  Speaker 3: sync to literally, you know, synchronizing musical events with on
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  Speaker 3: screen events would be Fantasia. And if anyone's ever visited
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  Speaker 3: the Disney Family Museum in San Francisco, which I'm always
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  Speaker 3: screaming about, there's a whole section devoted to how Disney
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  Speaker 3: achieved that level of sound sync.
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  Speaker 4: And it's crazy that it had to do with like holes.
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  Speaker 3: Punched in the side of the film that synchronized to
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  Speaker 3: various movements and events that needed to then be synchronized
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  Speaker 3: to the soundtrack.
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  Speaker 4: Really really difficult.
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  Speaker 3: But if you watch Fantasia, which came out in nineteen forty,
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  Speaker 3: the level of precision in what they achieved with that
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  Speaker 3: sound sync, it'll be like, you know, a fairy tapping
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  Speaker 3: their wand on a flower and lighting up and glowing
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  Speaker 3: and all of that, and it has a perfect connection
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  Speaker 3: with an orchestra queue you know, for this the classical
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  Speaker 3: score of that film. So I mean, it's just mind
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  Speaker 3: boggling to me how early this kind of technology was
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  Speaker 3: kind of mastered by masters like Walt Disney. But for
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  Speaker 3: the Fleischer cartoons, we were talking about the movement of
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  Speaker 3: that black baton quote unquote that bounced was a white
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  Speaker 3: disc over the tops of the lyrics, and the movement
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  Speaker 3: got captured on super high contrast film so that the
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: kind of guide stick, I guess was invisible and the
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  Speaker 3: ball would appear as white on black, even though sometimes
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: the ball and lyrics would actually be super imposed over
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  Speaker 3: still drawings or photos even live action footage.
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  Speaker 4: Sometimes, so really really interesting stuff. So that's kind of
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  Speaker 4: the advent of this kind of thing.
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  Speaker 3: Not to mention a show in the nineteen sixties TV
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  Speaker 3: show I believe that was produced for NBC called sing
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  Speaker 3: Along with Mitch, which was hosted by a super kind
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  Speaker 3: of outgoing and charming host named Mitch Miller.
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  Speaker 4: We've actually got a clip from it right here. If
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  Speaker 4: you want to take a listen, please, he'll just sit there,
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  Speaker 4: come on and thank.
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  Speaker 3: A whole lot. And for folks listening at home, Mitch
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  Speaker 3: Miller he kind of looks like Stalin.
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  Speaker 4: It's very interesting.
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  Speaker 3: He's got this kind of Stalin esque beard and mustache
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: thing going on, but a lot more cheerful. So at
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  Speaker 3: the beginning of every episode, lyrics to the songs are
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  Speaker 3: shown at the bottom of the television screen. But they
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  Speaker 3: didn't have the bouncing ball. It would just be kind
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: of static lyrics, unlike what you'd see in those cartoon
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  Speaker 3: shorts that would play before features in the cinema. But
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  Speaker 3: you asked about the device itself, karaoke as a machine,
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  Speaker 3: it's a little bit disputed, or maybe a little bit
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  Speaker 3: of a bone of contention, as to who the true
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  Speaker 3: inventor of karaoke was, because, like you said, ben karok
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  Speaker 3: can refer to an actual physical device, and it can
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  Speaker 3: also refer to kind of a culture, and one individual,
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  Speaker 3: despite how important or transformative their invention might be, doesn't
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  Speaker 3: really single handedly create a culture. So the idea for
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: a karaoke machine came to an inventor in Tokyo by
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  Speaker 3: the name of Shigaichi Nagishi.
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  Speaker 4: In the late sixties, around sixty nine.
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  Speaker 3: He overheard a colleague making fun of him for his singing,
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  Speaker 3: because unlike me, this guy probably saying in the shower
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  Speaker 3: and saying just walking around doing his work on the
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  Speaker 3: factory floor.
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  Speaker 4: He owned an electrocx factory.
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  Speaker 3: So he thought that if he could sing on top
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  Speaker 3: of a backing track, then this would make it a
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  Speaker 3: little less awkward than him just kind of singing badly
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  Speaker 3: a cappella by himself.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, and this guy owned, as we said, a electronics factory,
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  Speaker 1: so he had the infrastructure to create this thing to
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: have his look. It comes from this pettiness, right.
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  Speaker 4: He is the person.
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  Speaker 1: He's not the first person to think, oh, if I
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  Speaker 1: could sing with a band behind me, it sounds great.
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  Speaker 1: He was the first person to have that thought and
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  Speaker 1: also have the infrastructure to support it. So in nineteen
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  Speaker 1: sixty seven he creates this we could call it a
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  Speaker 1: predecessor of the modern karaoke machine. And he did it
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  Speaker 1: entirely by just pushing his pushing his kids, pushing his employees,
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  Speaker 1: the people who work for Presido. His head engineer shows
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  Speaker 1: up one day and Nigishi says, all right, I know
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  Speaker 1: you've got a lot on your plate. I need you
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  Speaker 1: to do some guyver stuff for me right now. And
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  Speaker 1: he's like, what about my real job, And the guy says, no,
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  Speaker 1: don't worry about that. I need a microphone app, I
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: need a mixing circuit. We make these eight decks already,
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  Speaker 1: so just get it done and then you know, end
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: of day, check it.
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: It would seem so yeah, and I think the factory
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: produced I believe it was what we would consider eight
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: track tapes, which are kind of these like cartridges. If
• 19:47
  Speaker 3: anyone's ever messed with one, you can get an eight
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: track player for home.
• 19:51
  Speaker 4: But they were really popular, I believe, also in cars.
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: And it was the same technology that was used for
• 19:56
  Speaker 3: the kind of carts that radio stations would use to
• 19:59
  Speaker 3: play sound effects and music, because you could just pop
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: it in and it would auto play, and then it
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: would auto flip whenever the first side was over. I've
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: actually never messed with an eight track myself, but they're
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: already making these. The basics for what was needed to
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: produce this machine were all simple pieces of audio technology,
• 20:18
  Speaker 3: Like you said, Ben, an amplifier, which is what takes
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: a sound and makes it loud, pumps it through a speaker,
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: a microphone which converts sound waves into either recordable or
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: projectable sound, and that playback, which would be another input
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: on that mixing device.
• 20:35
  Speaker 4: What ended up being created was something called the Sparko Box.
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and shout out to help me with this shout
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: out to La La Saintpete dot com. It's a big
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: source for us on the history of carry Okay, good.
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: Blog post, just about just kind of the trajectory of
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: some of the stuff, and I highly recommend checking it out.
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: So back to our guy de Guiche, the madman, the
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: utter mad lad here has taken his head engineer off
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: of what I'm sure were very important projects and said,
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: make me a little box. Make me a little box
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: so I can go around and let people know that
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: I really do have the pipes. And as you said,
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: they called it the Sparko Box and the Gishe partners
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: with a local distributor liaison a fixer, and they tried
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: to lease the machine to different bars in the area,
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: kind of the way people lease out vending machines, you know,
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: or ATMs. They just wanted it to be a presence,
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: but they ran into the actual musicians who were playing
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: guitar already in these spots.
• 21:56
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I didn't realize this. I guess a cultural thing.
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: They these bar performers had a name in Japan, Nagashi,
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: which I was not familiar with at all. I guess
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: it was sort of like an era where this was
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: the popular form of entertainment, you know, in these kind
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: of pubs. It's interesting too, because it's sort of the
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: same thing you run into anytime, like a new technology
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: sort of hits where there's always concern about who it's
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: going to replace, and there's always backlash from that class.
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: Sometimes these fears are overblown, I would argue, like with
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: the synthesizer. You know, when drum machines and synthesizers first
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: came out in the late seventies early eighties, while synthesizers
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: earlier than that, there was a lot of concern for
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: musicians unions that the synthesizer would replace the orchestra. But
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: what ended up happening was it became a tool that
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: was completely its own thing. I'm sitting in a room
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: here surrounded by synthesizers. I would never use them to
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: try to imitate an orchestra per se. I would use
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: them as elements that might be found in an orchestras
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: in term of combining different sound sources to create something
• 23:03
  Speaker 3: greater than the sum of its parts. But there's no
• 23:06
  Speaker 3: replacement for a bassoon or like a kettle drum. Certainly,
• 23:10
  Speaker 3: you can now get sample packs and things that will
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: you know, recreate those sounds, But a synthesizer sort of
• 23:15
  Speaker 3: makes its own sort of new sound, and maybe there
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: was concern that the karaoke machine might displace these Nagashi,
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: so it didn't really immediately take off, and Nagishi actually
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: decided to kind of abandon the whole enterprise entirely and
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: not pursue a patent.
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's correct. By around the mid nineteen seventies, he
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: you know, this guy's a technocrat. He kind of got
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: done with the idea. I think if you look at
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: his history, what really happened is he was able to
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: prove to his colleague that he sounded better when he
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: sang with music, and that's really why he was done
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: with it. And we want to again credit where due.
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: We wanted to shout out Matt Alt, who interviewed Thegishi
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: in twenty eighteen for a book that Matt wrote called
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: Pure Invention, How Japan Made the Modern World. So we're
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: getting a lot of this from him. And our guy
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: produced about eight thousand Sparko boxes as you were saying,
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: as they're called, and delivered them across the land. Like
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: he tried to make a good idea. It didn't work
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: for him, but it did set a precedent.
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it really did, And I just wanted to mention
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: too that Alt in his interviews with Nigishi, pointed out
• 24:46
  Speaker 3: that maybe some of the concerns that led to this
• 24:50
  Speaker 3: not immediately being adopted are super similar to some of
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: the concerns and the debates surrounding machine learning and artificial
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: intelligence today in terms of how it could affect or
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: impact the jobs of everyone from writers to musicians to producers,
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: because everyone's just so hot to get AI to like
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: do all this stuff that used to be done by people,
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: and it does it with varying degrees of success. I
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: actually saw a really cool interview with the filmmaker Guilllmo
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: del Toro where he said something to the effect of,
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: in terms of AI used for video, that they've proven
• 25:26
  Speaker 3: themselves to be good at creating pretty interesting screensavers and
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: that's just about it.
• 25:32
  Speaker 4: And I don't think he's wrong.
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: But this tech has also been used in music production,
• 25:37
  Speaker 3: like the new version of the Apple recording software Logic Pro.
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: It went without a meaningful update for years and years
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: and years, and in the update that came I believe
• 25:49
  Speaker 3: last year, it had all of these AI tools things
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: for creating music out of nothing. You know, it just
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: link entering in a prompt or selecting a pulldown menu
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: and it creating kind of a song for you. It's
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: a little weird, though, if you're making demos at home,
• 26:04
  Speaker 3: probably not bad as a stand in for a drummer.
• 26:07
  Speaker 3: But the Sparko Box didn't make Nigishi a bunch of
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: money for the reasons that we addressed, because they really
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: didn't take off right away.
• 26:16
  Speaker 4: He also never pursued the pat like we said, but
• 26:19
  Speaker 4: copycats were.
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: Hot on his heels to kind of take advantage of
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: what would be maybe better timing for this technology.
• 26:28
  Speaker 4: Enter Daisuke inOui Inui, I believe.
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: Right, So enter Daisuke Annue. This guy comes in about
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: four years after the initial ideation of the Sparko Box
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: from that technocrat, and he calls his machine the juke
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: eight like juke box plus eight.
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: Track eight track Yeah, and it often gets credited as
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: being the world's very first karaoke machine. But we know that,
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: as often as the case with inventions, he was standing
• 27:02
  Speaker 3: on the shoulders of someone else. We don't know, I
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: don't believe, we know definitively if he was super aware
• 27:13
  Speaker 3: of Nagishi's developments, but it's certainly likely, but it also
• 27:19
  Speaker 3: could be some form of parallel thinking. But whatever the
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: case is, the Juke eight was jumping on a trend
• 27:26
  Speaker 3: of jukebox as being popular in bars and nightclubs and
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: things like that, which is basically, anyone knows you feed in.
• 27:33
  Speaker 4: A couple of coins and you get to be the DJ.
• 27:35
  Speaker 3: But what this did was added the bonus feature of
• 27:39
  Speaker 3: not only being able to be the DJ, but also
• 27:41
  Speaker 3: being able to be the star of the show. So
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: that kind of democratization of singing really played a huge
• 27:49
  Speaker 3: part in this, and it did seem to take off
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: more than with the Sparko Box. And just wanted to
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: shout out an article on Time Asia by Pico Iver
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: and I ever points out something that I think we've
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: talked about on other episodes of Ridiculous History. Just the
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: nineteen hundreds marked Japan kind of establishing itself as a
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: real force to be reckoned with in terms of innovation.
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: And this is the case with lots of things that
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: they were producing in the nineteen hundreds, like companies like
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: Sony producing the Walkman, which became a cultural phenomenon, because
• 28:25
  Speaker 3: again it put the power of listening to music, you know,
• 28:28
  Speaker 3: in the palm of your hand. Not to mention video
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: game companies like Nintendo and Sega and all of those
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: culturally important innovations that were coming out of Japan, including
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: of course, as people also mentions companies like Bandai and
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: their you know, claw machines and things like the Tamagachi.
• 28:45
  Speaker 3: So let's hear a little bit about Innoe's upbringing.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so, Innoe is born in Osaka in nineteen forty.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: He started he started as a music in high school.
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: He played percussion because he said, all you have to
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: do is hit the drums. Before he was out of
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: high school, he was actually making more money than any
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: of his fellow students because he played in a Hawaiian band.
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: And this Hawaiian band, by the way, is performing in
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: old dance holes like VA halls, kind of structures that
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: were left behind by the American occupation of Japan.
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. He did not have a technology background like Nagishi.
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: He was coming at this strictly from a kind of
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: musical perspective and figuring out ways to make money from
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: being a musician.
• 29:50
  Speaker 4: And he was pretty good at it like.
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: By nineteen seventy, he and six other bandmates were playing
• 29:57
  Speaker 3: in kind of more fancy joints near Kobe, and they
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: were actually serving as kind of a live karaoke band
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: for folks who wanted to sing popular Japanese songs at
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: the time, or even like military songs. His friends that
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: he played with were able to read music, but like
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: you said, ben AOI was more concerned with just bashing
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: on the drums and never really bothered to embrace the
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: theory side of being a musician.
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: So you can hear some choice interview quotes with our
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: guy here. He said that he could read music, but
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: most of his friends or colleagues could, so he would
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: watch he would remember songs he heard earlier, and he
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: would literally watch the lips of whomever was functioning as
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: the front person as this song burked. And he said,
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: out of the one hundred and eight club musicians in Kobe,
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: i was the and the clients in my club were
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: the worst singers, which was funny because the name of
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: the club, Baron was so high and that's it's funnier
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: in Japanese.
• 31:11
  Speaker 4: But it does make.
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: Meaning like hyphalutin, like the idea of a baron being
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: like a very fancy man.
• 31:16
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, that's that's the gist of it.
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: He he did get a lot of fans, and some
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: of his fans had access to infrastructure. This is where
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: you know, we're getting in the weeds with this, but
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: this is this is pretty cool stuff. The there was
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: a guy who just kept showing up to Annoy's gigs.
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: And it turns out that he was the president of
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: a steel manufacturer, a steel interest and h and he
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: loved the way that he loved the way that this
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: percussionist would kind of play the drums and look at
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: this guy as he is singing, probably out of time,
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: if we're being honest, out of time, out of tune,
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: and so and so he's like, Hey, I like your vibe.
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: You're the best drummer I've ever met. You make me
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: sound amazing. Hey, will you go with me on a
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: road trip? So I think I'm getting this right. But he.
• 32:22
  Speaker 4: Was asked to go on this trip.
• 32:24
  Speaker 3: Unfortunately, he sadly did not feel like he could leave
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: his bandmates in a lurch. So you know, this guy
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: wanted him to accompany him to this getaway with for
• 32:34
  Speaker 3: fancy business folks at some hot spring, so instead of
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: going with him and playing live, he recorded all of
• 32:40
  Speaker 3: the accompaniments to the songs on tape and gave them
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: to the guy to take with him to I guess play,
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: so he and his buddies could sting along.
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: That's right, and this boss, we have this confirmed as
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: a true story. This boss did a did use the
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: tape and had a great time. Apparently he delivered what
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: is often called an emotional rendition, which is not the
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: same thing as singing well but you know, it's like
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: that football film Rudy. He had a lot of heart
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: and he sang a song called leaving Haneda Airport on
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: a seven fifty flight, which is a banger if you
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: know it. And this is this is where we start
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: to get the term that the world uses today. And
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: hold the phone, pause the music, skip the song. We've
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: got more on the playlist for you. This is a
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: two part episode on the history of Kerrie.
• 33:47
  Speaker 3: OK.
• 33:48
  Speaker 4: We will be right back in just a few with
• 33:52
  Speaker 4: the with the.
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: Stunning conclusion, please seek along at home, big, big thanks
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: to our super producer mister Max Williams. Noel, thank you
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: so much for being our research associate on this one.
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: It's near and dear to my heart, Ben. Thanks for
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: the opportunity. Huge thanks to Alex Williams who composed our theme.
• 34:10
  Speaker 3: Jonathan Strickland, the Quizitor, A J. Bahamas, Jacobs the Puzzler.
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: Rachel Big Spinach, Lance Eves, Jeff Coat.
• 34:19
  Speaker 4: You know the names.
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: We hope you like him as well. We got a
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: weird shout out to Jimmy Carter and snuck in just
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: spoilers ahead, snuck in one of our favorite quotations about
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: the guy, Jimmy, If.
• 34:32
  Speaker 4: You're hearing this, Jimmy, can you hear me right right right?
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: So? Ground Control to Major Tom. We can't wait to
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: hear from you soon. Stay tuned to.
• 34:44
  Speaker 4: See you next time, folks.
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.