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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 turned televangelist turned karaoke hosts, the project reimagined karaoke as a site of escapism and performative disruption.
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 karaoke visuals and rewriting lyrics.
Participating artists included Patty Chang, Martha Colburn, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, 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 so many more.
The New Sound Karaoke launched in October 2008 with its debut performance at the now-defunct TBD bar and event space 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, Cat Tyc, Ben Coonley, Paul Mpagi-Sepuya, Larin Sullivan, Gyda Arber, and others.
Participants re-edited karaoke tracks with found vintage porn footage or original imagery. A limited-edition “smut-rag” zine was printed featuring artists pin-up style artist centerfolds.
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. The event was once again staged at TBD in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
The third New Sound Karaoke event was a holiday extravaganza staged atTBD 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, 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 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 married queer-converts celebrate the purchase of a sleek high-rise condo, enacting a fantasy of heterosexual domestic bliss. Turning their private lives into public spectable, Service-Waterfall could be considered ahead-of-their-time influencers.
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.
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.
With bigger venues on the horizon, final New Sound Karaoke event held at TBD Bar in Greenpoint in July 2009. The karaoke video was conceived as a summer banger, mashing up the 80s pop classic Hold On by Wilson Phillips with Fantasia Barrino’s then-ubiquitous Baby Mama. With the Supreme Court’s recent reversal of state laws banning conversion therapy, we may soon witness the dawn of a new generation of Service-Waterfall converts—trapped in sexless marriages and searching for babies to fill the void. Hold On Baby Mama is now a cautionary tale, whether we expected one or not.
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.
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