“Cigarette Dangles”
by The Pursuit of Happiness
from the album The Downward Road
1993
Buy the album on Amazon

I’m picking a song that I’ve never performed for my Karaoke Tuesday post… which is straight-up cheating.  It doesn’t even fall into the category of I always look for this song, but they never have it. But upon stumbling across the music video recently, I think this song might actually be the prototype karaoke song for me back in college, before I had the balls to sing in public, or more accurately, the ability to pound Jack and Cokes until I didn’t care that I was singing in public.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsMGlHtVV9o

One of my big regrets in college was the decision to never live in a dorm.  It put me behind everyone else when learning how to make friends from strangers (something I’m just now getting good at in my 40s).  But I did score a pretty fun apartment with some buddies.  We were broke as hell, so rabbit ears were our only source of television.  We received one channel (ABC), so we rented movies and games fairly frequently from Blockbuster (sniff). I also developed a weird fetish for General Hospital).

To supplement for music fix, I subscribed to Rock Video Monthly.  That’s right, every month (for $3.95+shipping) I received a VHS tape with 10 music videos on it.  I chose the Alternative option and every 4-6 weeks I eagerly awaited a tape with the goods on it.  “Cigarette Dangles” by The Pursuit of Happiness showed up on a tape with other such alternative artists as INXS, Duran Duran and Ultra Vivid Scene.  Yeah.

I adored this song from the start, despite my hatred towards tobacco products, it resonated.  Cos… sex!!  The video featured cute girls and words flying around… which gets me to my point.  I knew the lyrics.  I still know the lyrics.  If you punched this up on karaoke and asked me to sing it.  I.  Would.  Nail.  It.  I watched this video till the tape wore out.  I sang the shit out of it.  At home.  Alone.  Years, before karaoke came into my life.

Proto-oke.

I should visit Chris in Toronto.  TPOH is a Canadian band, maybe it’s burned into karaoke systems up there?  Oh, Canada…