Tape Works Audio, Video Magic : In the Age of Electronics, Everybody’s a Star

Admit it: Talent runs in your family. When you sing along with the car radio, you sound as good as Whitney Houston, and anyone can see your child’s face belongs on the screen.

Two local firms are ready to help you showcase those assets. For a fee, one will record your rendition of a hit single with full instrumental backup and the other will splice your kid’s picture into an animated video.

Even if you aren’t looking for stardom, Hi-Tops Video, a Santa Monica children’s videotape producer, and The Singing Store in Sherman Oaks have both come up with a new electronic way to entertain yourself (literally).

The Sherman Oaks outfit, which bills itself as “L.A.’s first and only all-singing store,” started out four years ago as a piano retailer that stocked a variety of musical playthings. One novelty, a Japanese tape machine known as karaoke, proved so popular that “We got rid of the keyboards,” says owner Ernie Taylor, and The Singing Store was born.

Orchestra Minus Singer

“Karaoke means ‘empty orchestra,’ the orchestra minus the singer,” Taylor says. “It’s been quite popular in Japan for the past eight years.”

Karaoke machines consist of two side-by-side cassette decks and a microphone hookup. While an instrumental tape plays on one deck, you sing the words into the mike and the other deck records your voice over the music.

Nearly 20 people a week come into The Singing Store to cut their own songs in the karaoke booth for $10 a shot, Taylor reports. Many of his customers have bought their own karaoke equipment and The Singing Store now sells between 50 and 70 units a month for home and commercial use.

$200 to $2,650

For beginners, Taylor carries a pared-down, portable karaoke the size of a boom-box for around $200. At the top end of the price line, bars and party caterers looking for a new gimmick can shell out $2,650 for the Laser Pops Karaoke Sing-Along, new this month from Pioneer, that lets you sing over a music video (with lyrics bouncing under the picture on the screen).

“All of these are designed to make you sound good,” says Taylor. “You can add an echo, you can change the pitch so the music is in your key, you can even change the speed.”

And, most important, you can sing the music you like best. The Singing Store boasts “10,000 titles in stock,” including rock, pop, country-western, old standards, jazz, gospel and Broadway show tunes.

Houston Emulated

Judging by recent sales and booth selections, Whitney Houston has the sound most people emulate. Her new hit, “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” is the store’s biggest single (another favorite is The Beastie Boys’ “You’ve Got to Fight for Your Right to Party”). Among the $9.98 tapes for home use, a compilation of Houston’s hits has sold out, as has a best-of-Madonna tape.

“Sinatra and Streisand have been very, very popular, mostly because people know their songs,” says Taylor. “And I’ve been surprised at how well Gershwin and Cole Porter have sold.

“Elvis Presley is popular, but the Beatles aren’t, because they’re a group and this is more about soloists. Broadway songs are also big, but mostly the older stuff. I bet you couldn’t name five or six songs from Broadway shows in the last 10 years, but you could probably name four songs from ‘The Sound of Music.”’

Popular With Women

Women account for 60% of The Singing Store’s clientele, Taylor reports. One of his regulars has used her karaoke equipment to launch a second career: decades after she gave up professional singing to raise a family, the woman has started a sing-along service for cruise lines.

Taylor doesn’t think the karaoke craze will be as big here as it is in Japan, because “We have more ways of expressing ourselves socially than the Japanese do,” and he emphasizes that his equipment is really just a new way to have fun.

“We’re not telling people, ‘Buy this machine and you’ll be on the ‘Tonight Show’ in two weeks,’ ” he says.

Program Features Child

Hi-Tops Video, the same people who marketed the wildly successful Teddy Ruxpin animated videos, have come up with what they call a “KidVid first”: a cartoon that incorporates a child’s photograph and name into the plot.

The Lady LovelyLocks Personalized Videocassettes, based on a popular Mattel doll, represents “the first time still photography and audio dubs have been added to moving animation at the same time,” says Hi-Tops spokesperson Helen Cavanaugh.

Parents who would like to see their children on television can send a favorite photo and the child’s name (plus $28.95) for a half-hour videocassette of a Lady LovelyLocks adventure. At three different spots in the story, the child’s picture floats past Lady LovelyLocks in a balloon and she addresses the child by name.

Hi-Tops has launched the idea in plenty of time for Christmas and the company expects that parents and grandparents will appreciate the gift as much as the kids themselves.

The basic appeal of the new video concept is that “kids will be able to see themselves on their own TV screens,” says Cavanaugh, “but it also might be fun to use this as a moving school picture--to make yearly videocassettes as the child grows up.”