For intrepid singer Freddi Lindsay at Hamden DVD rental shop and film center Best Video’s karaoke party Sunday afternoon, karaoke was a welcome chance to “pretend you’re a superstar for five minutes.”
This wasn’t just any karaoke party, though. Lindsay had been preparing for moments like these for the past eight years.
Like many of the singers who graced the spotlight Sunday afternoon, Lindsay practices her golden pipes every week with Another Octave: Connecticut Women’s Chorus (AO: CWC), a Hamden-based chorus founded by lesbians in 1989. Sunday’s party was a fundraiser for Another Octave, with profits from party tickets, raffle tickets, and donations going straight to the women’s chorus.
Lindsay, Another Octave treasurer and low alto, has been in the group for eight years but said she’s still a newbie. That’s because some members have been around since the group was founded 35 years ago.
When board member and Soprano II section leader Nara Giannella pushed back on Lindsay’s “newbie” self-description, Lindsay conceded, saying maybe she was a “midbie” instead.
“Oh, I love to sing,” said Lindsay as she waited for her turn at the mic. “Once I get up there, I’m kind of a ham.” Giannella agreed, saying, “She hits the low notes.” Lindsay tried to find a karaoke song that would showcase those deep vibrations, but settled on one of her tried-and-true favorites: Carole King’s 1971 ballad “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow.”
When King’s Tapestry album came out, Lindsay remembered, she just “played it and played it and played it.”
It looked like the fundraiser was doing well. I asked Lindsay and Giannella what they were excited to spend their money on, and they told me about buying more sheet music, as well as paying the pianist, director, and assistant director.
Soon, Lindsay was called up to the front. “Before I get down to business, I gotta take care of some business,” Lindsay told the audience. She called a raffle number, inviting the winner to claim one of the paper bags carrying mystery prizes beneath the projector screen.
The winner turned out to be Giannella, whose mystery prize was a cute macramé carry bag.
Then it was Lindsay’s time to shine. Green, red, and blue lights twirled across the prize bags and ceiling as Lindsay asked a hypothetical lover, “Will you still love me tomorrow?” in her rich, steady voice. The crowd joined in, crooning in her direction to double down on the longing.
“That was fun!” Lindsay said as she returned to her seat after her last drawn-out refrain.
As the karaoke singers belted their hearts out by the projector screen, they transformed in more ways than one. Many of the members were healing through song, using the music to help them process things like the loss of a loved one. During instrumental breaks, karaoke stars and audience members alike broke into dance and occasional air guitar riffs. The singers became glamorous stage legends, and they walked away from the mic having left some pain and heaviness behind.
When Sarah McLachlan’s 1997 hit “Angel” came on, Lindsay walked up to take a second mic, ignoring the on-screen lyrics and launching into a heartfelt plea for audience members to “sponsor a song today.” Anyone who watched TV commercials in the late 2000s might recognize the setup as a mock take on McLachlan’s tearjerker ASPCA ad urging viewers to open their hearts and wallets for animals in need.
Just as McLachlan used to promise donors a photo of one of the rescued animals, Lindsay dangled a joke offer of a “Cats of AO” calendar featuring chorus members’ cats and their favorite songs (for example, one of the cats, Lily, is a fan of “Lily’s Eyes”). I took the bait, coughing up a $10 donation to “sponsor a song” and invite Another Octave’s artistic director Melinda Walwer to duet the Bee Gees’ “How Deep is Your Love” with me.
Lindsay told me she loves being in the women’s chorus — “It’s like my joy.”
Singing along with Walwer about the power of love in “a world of fools” and returning to a whooping crowd that took every opportunity to reject my disclaimer that I’m not a singer, I felt that joy firsthand.
