Coachella Diary

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People who like their SingStar really like their SingStar, and Sony showed off 30-second karaoke snippets that fans carefully made using the PlayStation Eye camera and no editing software -- just starting and stopping the recording function over and over to make a video. Then, they uploaded their handiwork. That's real dedication.

People seem to like to get dressed up to perform in their videos. I saw everyone from an Elvis imitator to what looked like the Abominable Snowman wailing away. Says Bozek, "When you see these videos, it's like having a surveillance camera in someone's living room. It's really quite mad." Not everything will go up willy-nilly, however. If a user flags a video, there'll be big-brotherly Sony people behind the scenes working night and day to monitor My SingStar Online. Drop an F-bomb and you're done.

There are even plans for indie bands to give their own music videos the karaoke treatment, says Alex Hackford, SCEA's head of A&R. The idea sounded new and unfinished, but it's is an appealing one. Imagine singing along to Vampire Weekend's "Walcott" long before the band got so bloody hot. The question is, what rights would the bands have to give up to get on the SingStore? And who would get on? Would the community choose, or would Hackford choose? Or would it be both? "We haven't quite figured it out yet," admits Hackford.

Upon noodling around with the game, I liked the simple, intuitive feel of the store and found the videos easy to access with no lag time. If you don't have a PlayStation Eye, you can upload snippets of your audio as well. My favorite perk? There'll be a fairly non-competitive Enhanced Duets mode in SingStar PS3, good for people like me who fear losing due to strained vocal cords. It's not often that I get up the gumption to sing in public, but when PSP Fanboy's Andrew Yoon suggested a duet, I was game. Then the machine froze up, as if it feared my off-key voice, which bears the limited range of a male Ashley Simpson. Yoon walked away, and I stood there, bemused. I was ready to go to the show.

Sunscreen was on my balding pate and the yearning was in my heart. The only band I craved seeing at the event was Rilo Kiley. I left Electric Playground's small crew of Donna Park and Enzo Zanatta as they grooved, mesmerized by Death Cab for Cutie. A five-minute walk later, and I witnessed the wonders of Jenny Lewis. There, as the white lights blinded so much so that I needed sunglasses at night, I saw God; I got hard and I was moved to misty eyes, the choked up kind. I mention this because if a jaded writer such as yours truly can be so moved, why doesn't Rilo Kiley appear on any of those 90 SingStar disks? Sony's Alex Hackford is a terribly smart guy who attends all these festivals and knows pop music better than most music critics, so why no Rilo Kiley on SingStar? As usual, I'm mystified. Maybe the band will show up on a download in the fancy new store. It has to.

After the deathly, plaintive strains of Portishead, a few of us, including GameSpot's Ricardo Torres, braved the chaotic and sometimes cut-up zombies to walk the mile or so of black hole desert darkness to the random cabs that were scattered upon the distant avenue like lighted crumbs. There was a celebrity-infested Sony/T-Mobile party that I was required to attend, but the thrill goes away after 3:30 am Big Apple time. While Ricardo and his cameraman soldiered on via taxi to shoot the party, I curled up into my usual haunted state and went to sleep.