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The New Sound Karaoke (2008–2015) was a Queer expanded-cinema karaoke project that unfolded across clubs, galleries, and alternative spaces in New York City and beyond including Art In General, Tandem Bar, Canada Gallery, DIA, The University of Southern California and more. Conceived and performed by Bobby Abate and JJ Chinois as their alter egos Bobby Service and Black Waterfall — newly “converted” newlyweds turns televangelist turned karaoke hosts — the project reimagined karaoke as a site of disruption, performance and collective release.
Part installation, part nightclub, part live broadcast, the events combined karaoke with multi-channel video projections and participatory performance. Artists working in any medium were invited to occupy pop songs by creating visuals and rewriting lyrics.
Participating artists included Patty Chang, Martha Colburnb, Tracey MacCullion, Ben Coonley, Jeanine Oleson, Jesse McClean, Frankie Martin, Larin Sullivan, Emily Landon, Tara Mateik, Jeanne Liotta, Douglas Martin, Cat Tyc, Danny Balgley, Lauren Seigal, Ashley Huizinga, June Fagley, Khaela Maricich, Michael O’Neill, and more.
The New Sound Karaoke launched in October 2008 with its debut performance at TBD in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. The project brought to life the wild narrative of Bobby Service and Black Waterfall’s karaoke-bound marriage, featuring karaoke videos with rewritten lyrics for Captain & Tennille’s Muskrat Love and Nelly Furtado’s Promiscuous.
The New Sound Pornaoke was a speakeasy-style expanded cinema event held on April 10, 2010, at the Brick Theater in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Presented as an underground, invitation-only happening, the night fused a prohibition-style atmosphere with a “creative orgy” of video art, live performance, and karaoke. Artists included were Ashley Huizenga, Martha Colburn, Ben Coonley, Paul Mpagi-Sepuya, Larin Sullivan, Gyda Arber, and others contributed provocative works.
Participants re-edited karaoke tracks with found vintage porn footage or their own imagery. In addition to the screenings and performances, the organizers produced a limited-edition “smut-rag” zine and invited artists to contribute pin-up style photos.
The saga of Black Waterfall and Bobby Service’s unconventional marriage unfolded further in November 2008 with a saucy mash-up of Minnie Riperton’s Loving You and Missy Elliott’s Pu**ycat. Once again staged at TBD in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, the performance pushed the project’s queer, camp-infused narrative into new territory.
The third New Sound Karaoke event was a holiday extravaganza staged at the now-defunct TBD Bar in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. For the occasion, Dolly Parton’s Hard Candy Christmas was completely rewritten and mashed up with 50 Cent’s Candy Shop, creating a subversive carol unlike anything you’d ever hear sung at your doorstep during the holidays. The accompanying video, filmed in Narrowsburg, New York, featured an all-Queer cast from the city’s underground, blending camp, teeth-grinding volcals, holiday kitsch, and trailer-trash chic into a singular karaoke masterpiece.
The fourth New Sound Karaoke event took place in January 2009 at TBD Bar in Brooklyn, continuing the saga of Waterfall and Service’s performative marriage. The karaoke video for this chapter mashed up Will to Power’s Baby I Love Your Way, Snoop Dogg’s Sensual Seduction, and Tina Turner’s Simply the Best. In this installment, the couple celebrates the purchase of a sleek high-rise condo, enacting a fantasy of heterosexual domestic bliss. Waterfall and Service’s staging of their private life as public performance (feigning pop culture excess) hints toward the early stirrings of influencer culture.
The karaoke origin story of Bobby Service and Black Waterfall. Two Queer best friends living under the shadow of religious repression. Around this time, the Ted Haggard scandal broke — the Colorado megachurch pastor and vocal opponent of same-sex rights was exposed for hiring a male escort, using methamphetamine, and allegedly abusing boys in his congregation — a perfect symbol of evangelical hypocrisy.
In the video, Service and Waterfall turn these contradictions into camp spectacle: beginning as club kids at the nightclub Prisms, they are tormented by televangelist messaging before exploding, with a Wonder Woman twirl, into flamboyant preachers themselves. The soundtrack mashes up rewrites of Joan Osborne’s One of Us, t.A.T.u.’s All the Things She Said, and AC/DC’s Highway to Hell, with musical nods to Tammy Faye Bakker and Enigma. Premiering during Easter season 2009, this was the final New Sound Karaoke event to take place at TBD Bar in Greenpoint.
In the video, Service and Waterfall turn these contradictions into camp spectacle: beginning as club kids at the nightclub Prisms, they are tormented by televangelist messaging before exploding, with a Wonder Woman twirl, into flamboyant preachers themselves. The soundtrack mashes up rewrites of Joan Osborne’s One of Us, t.A.T.u.’s All the Things She Said, and AC/DC’s Highway to Hell, with musical nods to Tammy Faye Bakker and Enigma. Premiering during Easter season 2009, this was the final New Sound Karaoke event to take place at TBD Bar in Greenpoint.
Scaryoke: Escape to Bitch Mountain was staged on Halloween 2009 at Monkeytown in Williamsburg, marking the one-year anniversary of The New Sound Karaoke. Designed as an expanded cinema masquerade ball, the event surrounded the audience with four-channel projections in Monkeytown’s sunken cube theater. The centerpiece video told the story of Waterfall and Service losing their “baby,” Baby New Sound — a melodramatic horror-tinged chapter filmed in Hawley, PA, and set to a rewritten mash-up of The Knife’s Heartbeats and Michael Jackson’s You Are Not Alone.
Alongside the premiere, Black Waterfall and Bobby Service hosted a scream-a-long bash with wall-to-wall karaoke projections, live performances by Brooklyn underground artists, and an interactive installation that instantly placed guests into their own terrifying karaoke videos.
2009 was still in the era of scarily terrible low-light photography.
In October 2010, The New Sound Karaoke was invited to host Art in General’s annual Halloween fundraiser. For the occasion, Waterfall and Service debuted a mash-up of Taylor Dayne’s Tell It to My Heart, transformed into an entirely new song by underground musician and producer Ava Omega Jardin. The piece marked the duo’s launch into the “pop music stratosphere,” pushing their fictional marriage saga into the cult of celebrity.
The video featured a hand-drawn digital animation by artist Kinho Karsyn, who digital traced and painted images from an original photo shoot. Alongside The New Sound, artists Jeanine Oleson, June Fagley, Khaela Maricich, Michael O’Neil, and Ben Coonley presented original karaoke videos and live performances.
A couple of years earlier, I had discovered Kinho Karsyn’s videos on YouTube. At the time, he was a young mega-fan of Britney Spears from Brazil who re-created her music videos frame by frame using a simple digital paint program. I was obsessed with the wonkiness, distortions, and bright colors. After much convincing, he finally agreed to create the artwork for our video — as long as we supplied him with a fresh set of photos. The rest is all Kinho.
Kinho’s art
Photos from the AIG fundraiser event:
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