​Drinking is an essential part of enjoying any karaoke night. It provides the energy to motivate people to sing, as well as the patience to tolerate horrible singers. Recently, I've come to realize that I haven't been doing enough drinking lately. Aside from every weekend at Tarasco, it's been months since the last time I truly tied one on while checking out a new karaoke bar.

Since most of the spots I review are during the week, the fear of feeling like shit at my day job has subconsciously caused me to install a governor on my intake. As a result, singing hasn't been nearly as fun. Karaoke or no karaoke, what's the point of hanging out in a bar around a bunch of drunk people if you're not going to get drunk yourself? Plus, every time I sing without enough booze in me, I'm distracted by it to the point where I'm literally thinking about how I wish I had more to drink as I'm singing the song.

This week I arranged Thursday off from work so I could get wasted at Kate's Pub in Wallingford on Wednesday night. I grabbed my buddy Juan and we got there just before the show started at 9 p.m. My plan was to get five slips in quickly, and take a shot before and after performing each one. And just for good measure, I brought a list I compiled of the most played-out karaoke songs and decided I'd take a Jager shot any time one of those songs was sung as well.

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Nailing it with a "Sledgehammer."

​The Venue: The Crocodile's back bar now has a karaoke night. They call it Liquid Courage Karaoke and it's on Tuesdays from 8 p.m. to midnight (or later) whenever they don't have a band performing on the mainstage. It's been a long time since I've sung at a really happening spot during the week. I arrived at 10 p.m. thinking this would be the typical "ten people there, two people singing" dead weekday night. But when I walked in the place was so packed, I had no place to sit. I had to hang back and wait for a spot at the bar to open up. Once that spot did, I was in heaven.

The Set Up: I hardly recognized the place. I've seen a few shows at the Crocodile recently, but the last time I actually hung out in that back bar was years before their renovation. The stage is set up in the immediate corner as you enter, and it opens up to a long narrow room with the bar on the right and luxurious black, high-back half-moon booths on the left. The round padded bar stools swivel and have a comfy back to them as well. The interior is decorated with enormous black and white pictures of rock icons, a grid of multi-shaded stained glass panels behind the bar, and a huge glass retracting door that serves as the backdrop for the stage. There is a monitor in front of the stage for singers to read from--the one TV they have above the bar does not have lyrics patched in yet, but that's coming soon.

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​The Venue: Tuesday night was my last chance to find a new spot to sing before the snow hit Seattle. Just before midnight with only hours to spare, I drove from my house in Greenwood all the way to West Seattle to sing at A Terrible Beauty.

Taking into account the distance and the impending storm, I understood the two shots of Cazadores I usually take with my first beer to help loosen and charge me up could not be enjoyed on this night.

The Book: There were many song binders laid out on tables throughout the bar. Half were organized by artist, and the other half by song title. The artist catalog was 174 pages thick.

The Setup: Just like their original Renton location, this is a gorgeous Irish Pub furnished in wall-to-wall dark wood. They have an elevated stage located in the corner in front of the windows that look out onto California Avenue. From the stage, the performers sing out to the entire bar. There is a monitor onstage and a big plasma TV above the bar that displays the lyrics. They have a solid sound system and the microphones sound very good.

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​The Venue: Back in '09, when I first reviewed the Kona Kitchen, it was a dead Maple Leaf bar that could barely string together five singers on a weekend night. Last Saturday, I returned to discover a vibrant karaoke scene that rivals any place in town.

The Setup: My friends and I arrived at 8:30pm. The bar and restaurant were filled with people. The stage and KJ station were still situated in a customized nook between the two areas, but on this busy night really stood out as the center of attention for both rooms. There's a monitor on stage and two plasmas in the bar for lyrics.

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​The Venue: Fuel, the sports bar on Washington St. in Pioneer Square where Sounders fans rally to get hammered before, during, and after every home game has had karaoke on Wednesday nights for over four years. I went there solo on the eve of my birthday last week.

I first walked in at around 10:15 p.m. Song binders were placed at tables throughout the bar and I could hear singing from the room where the stage was, but there was next to no one there. Since I was taking the next day off from work I decided to come back later to allow time for the night to pick up. When I returned at 11:30, a few people had arrived but they still hadn't built a rotation.

The Set-Up: The main floor has three sections. The bar is on one end, the stage is the other, and there's a TV area in between. The second floor is located towards the back and it looks down on stage.

The KJ station is a designated sound booth half way up this stairway that leads to the top floor. There are high ceilings and a true elevated stage. The huge projector screen that takes up the entire wall above the stage serves as the main lyrics screen and backdrop for every performance. From the stage, there are two lyrics monitors on the walls to the right, one to the left and one straight ahead. There isn't much of a production between singers, but the overall sound is loud and well balanced.

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​The Venue: Every third Sunday of the month, The Mercury, a private club located under Auto Battery on Capitol Hill, welcomes non-members to come in and sing at an event known as "Guilty Pleasures Karaoke."

The doors opened at 9pm. I got there at 11. The entrance fee was $3 for members and $5 for everyone else. I was briefed at the door that everyone who worked there was a volunteer, smoking was allowed, and to be careful because the bartender poured very stiff drinks.

Someone was nailing Depeche Mode's "Enjoy the Silence" as I walked in. The club was dark and the music was thumping. There were only around 15 people there, but everyone was having a good time and loving their cigarettes.

The Setup: The KJ station and stage were located right in the middle of the dance floor. The majority of the crowd was seated on this island of tables between the stage and the bar. The sound was phenomenal. They just had new speakers installed in October, and they shake the entire place.

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Anne Julson

2010 Karaoke champ Johnny Gray delivered the night's only knockout performance.

​The Venue: Mick Kelly's Irish Pub in Kent does karaoke every Friday. It's not very inviting from the outside, and it's real easy to miss. The long, windowless building located next to the Riverbend Driving Range looks more like a banquet hall for the elderly than a place to party on a Friday night. The dark parking lot was a couple cars from vacant, and the place looked closed. But as soon as we entered, I was relieved to find a cozy, ski lodge atmosphere, with about fifteen people drinking and eating throughout the bar.

The Set Up: The huge interior is divided by a tall, freestanding stone fireplace wall in the middle of the room that separates the bar from the dining area. The stage and KJ station were set up in the back corner on the dance floor. My buddy and I took a seat at the table on the bar side of the fireplace. It wasn't the best angle to watch singers, but, aside from the one big table set up on the dance floor, every other spot was pretty disconnected from the show.

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​Since first discovering it in September, I've been back to Queen Anne's Spectator five times to sing at the Baby Ketten show. Last week I checked out Ketten's other residency at The Hideout on First Hill, which hosts karaoke the first Sunday of every month.

The Venue: The Hideout is a long bar with a high ceiling and artwork covering every wall. The bar takes up one side of the room and one long booth is on the other side. Since it was Sunday, I was hoping for a dead night, as there are about 50 songs I've been dying to sing that can only be found in Baby Ketten's catalog. But when I arrived at 8:45, the place was packed.

The Setup: The stage and KJ podium are located on the opposite corner from the entrance and look out to the entire room. There's a nice red curtain backdrop at a big projector screen that displays the lyrics above the singers.

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​North Seattle has four karaoke bars that get a ton of action on the weekend. Living in Greenwood, I know through years of experience that by 10:30pm on Fridays and Saturdays, the Baranof, Rickshaw, Mandarin Gate, and the Yen Wor Garden are all packed and have rotations exceeding 20 singers. That's great for people who don't care to sing a lot and just want to party, but then there are the rest of us, who get very antsy if they don't get a chance to show their stuff at least once every 45 minutes. A couple weeks ago I found an untapped venue right near these hot-spots that can more than handle the spillover.

Heads or Tails Sports Bar on Aurora has karaoke from Thursday to Sunday night. It's a small room with the bar along the left and tables pushed together in the back corner to surround the stage area. The run-down look of the place reminded me of the old Beacon Pub, one of my favorite karaoke dives that no longer exists.

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​I've sung in all sorts of places: dive bars, sports bars, Tiki bars, Irish Pubs, Mexican cantinas, coffee shops, bowling alleys, brothels--you name it. But my favorite setting to croon has always been Chinese restaurant lounges, specifically the ones that do karaoke seven nights a week. It's where karaoke in the United States was born, and there is a timeless quality about singing in these dingy bars with the outdated technology and the horrible singers that the glitzy one-night-a-week spots with the hired-gun KJs can't match.

Living in Greenwood, I'm lucky to have three classic Chinese karaoke lounges within walking distance of my home: Mandarin Gate, Rickshaw, and Yen Wor Garden). But there's a huge drop-off after that. The only other places like this in Seattle are Bush Garden (which is technically a Japanese restaurant, but it's in the heart of Chinatown and arguably the best k-bar around--so it more than counts) and the Yen Wor Village in West Seattle (sister lounge to the Greenwood establishment which shares its name).

To the north, one has to travel all the way to Taster's Wok on Highway 99 in Lynnwood to get to the next great seven-night-a-week spot. I stopped in the Tuesday before Thanksgiving and ended up closing the place down.

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