The drunken sing-along takes its place in history

Jul 9 2008 by Laura Davis, Liverpool Daily Post

THERE’S that slightly out-of-tune crooning usually associated with too many G&Ts, an early hours chicken biryani and alcohol-induced complete lack of shame coming from the inside of the gallery.

It’s only 2pm in the afternoon – barely time, unless you have long given up the office for the bottom of a pint glass, to have managed more than a single white wine and soda at lunchtime.

Yet there it is again – those familiar notes – not the chords of I Will Survive belted out after one too many shots of sambuca, but Lita Rosa’s How Much is that Doggie in the Window.

I have it on good authority that Rosa, who was the first Liverpool artist to reach number one in the UK charts, only ever sang the ditty once.

As a colleague once facetiously put it “she had the good sense never to sing it in public” but now, by an odd twist of fate, the public will be the ones crooning the tale of the waggily-tailed dog sitting all alone in a shop window as part of The Beat Goes On exhibition at World Museum Liverpool.

This seems an odd, if inspired, location for karaoke, but there’s no real reason why it shouldn’t take its place among the other products of human existence – the Egyptian sarcophagi and Etruscan metalwork in the neighbouring galleries.

Perhaps, in many years to come, a karaoke machine will feature as part of the museum’s permanent display, for future generations to marvel at the eccentric pursuits of their 21st-century ancestors much as we do at the Nigerian spirit masks.

School parties will be given a virtual tour of a typical pub basement and be able to interact with a computer generated binge drinker of 8AD (eight hours After first Drink) from the days before alcohol was illegalised and the Great Dimplepot Amnesty.

“If you can divert your eyes for one moment from the original prototype of the Nintendo Wii and look at the glass case to your left, you will notice a strangely-shaped receptacle known as the ‘shot glass’,” the teacher would explain.

“This was used by tribes of raging binge drinkers to increase the speed at which alcohol would enter their bloodstream.

“We believe they were popular with young females reacting to the conflicting social pressures placed upon them to procreate without veering from their chosen career path.

“To the right, we have an item that was known in the 21st century as a ‘mobile phone’. Comical, aren’t they? Thomas! Leave that lifesize replica of a hoodie alone!”

Meanwhile, post-graduate students would prepare papers along the lines of “Shakespearean allusion in 21st-century pop lyrics”.

These would not actually be on paper, of course, which would have long been limited to government use only for environmental motives.

There would still be museums because some things never change.

People would still need glass cases filled with objects of human construction to reaffirm the importance of their own brief existence.

Once a civilisation is gone, then what remains behind – the objects we have chosen to spend our time creating and those we hold dear – is all that is left to judge it by.

But with nobody to ask, much of an item’s significance is lost to us.

We can study a piece of rock carved into the shape of a slaughtered ibex and draw the conclusion that it was used as a bowl for holding make-up but we can only imagine the woman who owned it.

Did she struggle with her eyeliner as I do?

Was she a dab hand at applying red ochre as blusher to her cheeks, or did she end up looking like the Ancient Egyptian version of a drag queen?

Perhaps she was a tomboy and resented her daily cosmetic routine.

Would a karaoke machine reveal more to the visitors of a 23rd-century museum or would they be left wondering, just as we do today, how a perfectly sane human being can be transformed into a caterwauling banshee with just six vodka and tonics and the opening bars of Gloria Gaynor’s biggest hit?

lauradavis@dailypost.co.uk