Posted on 02/09/2010 6:06:28 PM PST by DogByte6RER
Sinatra Song Often Strikes Deadly Chord
By NORIMITSU ONISHI
GENERAL SANTOS, the Philippines — After a day of barbering, Rodolfo Gregorio went to his neighborhood karaoke bar still smelling of talcum powder. Putting aside his glass of Red Horse Extra Strong beer, he grasped a microphone with a habitué’s self-assuredness and briefly stilled the room with the Platters’ “My Prayer.”
Next, he belted out crowd-pleasers by Tom Jones and Engelbert Humperdinck. But Mr. Gregorio, 63, a witness to countless fistfights and occasional stabbings erupting from disputes over karaoke singing, did not dare choose one beloved classic: Frank Sinatra’s version of “My Way.”
“I used to like ‘My Way,’ but after all the trouble, I stopped singing it,” he said. “You can get killed.”
The authorities do not know exactly how many people have been killed warbling “My Way” in karaoke bars over the years in the Philippines, or how many fatal fights it has fueled. But the news media have recorded at least half a dozen victims in the past decade and includes them in a subcategory of crime dubbed the “My Way Killings.”
The killings have produced urban legends about the song and left Filipinos groping for answers. Are the killings the natural byproduct of the country’s culture of violence, drinking and machismo? Or is there something inherently sinister in the song?
Whatever the reason, many karaoke bars have removed the song from their playbooks. And the country’s many Sinatra lovers, like Mr. Gregorio here in this city in the southernmost Philippines, are practicing self-censorship out of perceived self-preservation.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
My wife is pressuring me to vacation in the Philippines this year. My singing sucks, soooo...
I'll avoid the karaoke bars.
ping
Weird.
Regrets?
I’ve had a few....
I get that way when I hear Liza Minelli sing New York, New York.
I was in General Santos City for work years ago. During one of my free evenings, my colleagues and I went to see a movie, starring one of Philippine’s most famous leading men. When the leading man was punched, kicked and mauled by the ‘bad men’ in the movie, the Muslims in the region started firing at the screen to ‘save’ the leading man. It was chaos inside the movie house to say the least.
FYI - Gen. Santos City is in Cotabato, located in the southern part of the Phils., and 95% populated by Muslims.
Don’t sing “I Left My Heart In San Fransisco” otherwise some joker will do just that there in the Philippines.
Red Horse! A Filipino co-worker of mine brought me a bottle once. I hadn’t really thought about how important recycling would be on an island until I saw how beat to hell the bottle was....lol
Seems like justifiable homicide to me. I am Sinatra fan, but I cannot stand that song.
Pretty Stout stuff!
Our filipino friends take hollywierd seriously and have a genetic trait called running amuck. Brought on by drugs and alcohol.
FYI - Gen. Santos City is in Cotabato, located in the southern part of the Phils., and 95% populated by Muslims.
This happens in the northern provinces as well.
To me it’s perfectly understandable. I want to kill Sinatra every time I hear him sing that awful song— even though he’s already dead.
Running amuck!! Facinating, just looked it up on wikipedia. I am always interested in learning where linguistics terms come from. You are right Amuck is a Malay-Indonesian-Phillipine term for going nuts and stabbing to death everybody you can get your hands on. Never knew where that word came from.
I really tempted fate a few years ago ,, back then I had a Pioneer box that stripped vocals so you could sing and after hearing all the sappy songs “paper roses” , various carpenters hits etc. etc.) I put on the Sex Pistols/Sid Vicious version of “My Way” ... I had fun but nobody “got it” .. oh well I have a “magic sing” now and have mastered the tricks to getting a high score (your singing can stink and still score well)... The stupid thing came with a full 17 minute Innagoddadavida ...
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