Frances Farmer Organ Karaoke (FFOK) is a night for people who hate karaoke. Musician Korby Sears plays the organ while people sing into microphones, or into megaphones, or just scream. He plays fun songs by fun musicians: the Ramones, the Pixies, Gil Scott-Heron, Klaus Nomi. His songbook also includes bizarre options: the theme from The Jeffersons, rants by celebrities, ringtones. FFOK developed a serious cult following over the past year, but it is an experiment with an expiration date. On May 19, Sears is calling it quits.

There is one audience member at FFOK: me. The entire room is the stage, every attendee is the cast. This show is about getting people to entertain me. Having said that, my job is to make you look good, regardless of your skill level. That entertains me, too.

While preparing lyrics for the book, I noticed the older the song is, the fewer words it has. "Fly Me to the Moon" (Bart Howard, 1954) has 12 lines. "Jumpin' Jumpin'" (Destiny's Child, 2000) goes on for four pages. Pop music is getting more verbose.

People have a fundamental desire to scream. Maybe it's release, maybe they just want to be heard. I have a business idea for a soundproof booth in the middle of downtown during the business day, charging $5 to step in for 30 seconds and scream your head off.

There's nothing interesting about a piano. They are everywhere, like nickels on the ground. Organs are inherently funny, mysterious, and unrespectable. They're like $2 bills.

The show got physical very early on. People started performing from the back of the room, over the crowd. Male nudity now occurs regularly. I learned quickly to strap down the lyric book with bungee cords, or else it would disappear.

I go five hours and do not take a bathroom break. I swear I lose weight doing this show. I think it's the fact that I'm pumping bass pedals for five hours. And the next day, I'm worthless. A hell of a lot of humanity is absorbed in those five hours.

No one ever ASL'd a song. I was waiting for that.

At the end of the first night of FFOK, I played "The Star-Spangled Banner" on a whim, and everyone got up, put their hands over their hearts, and robustly sang at the top of their lungs. We all surprised each other with this unexpectedly poignant scene. When you remove that tune from the context of a sporting event or a church or a school, it's actually a beautiful thing. People want to give it their all, sincerely. We still end the night like this every time: the Vermillion bartenders and owner Diana all singing with hands on hearts.

I started hunting for common, shared audio experiences that we all know by heart but that aren't pop songs: "Nokia Ringtone Waltz," "Close Encounters Five-Note Theme," "NW Airlines Pre-Flight Safety Instructions," etc. It's great to watch people performing these—the look of surprise on their face of how well these work as karaoke, how well they already have them internalized.

Watching 10 to 15 people dance nonstop to solo organ music chisels away at my misanthropy.

When people lose their place in a song, an entire table will sing back, helping them get back on track. FFOK may look chaotic from the outside, but sweet and supportive things like that happen all the time.

I love off-book requests. I've become quite adept at reading chord charts off of iPhones shoved at my face.

The "Christian Bale Rant on the Set of Terminator 4"—backed by an instrumental version of "Batman Theme"—is easily the most performed FFOK selection. I have no idea why.

It's fun when killer singers come in and nail a tune, but at that point, I'm just a musician. It's when nonmusicians perform—people with no rhythm, no timing, no intonation—that it gets interesting for me. I have to access another part of my brain. If you pay attention, you find out they do have rhythm—it's just very personal. If they skip two measures before the chorus the first time, you'll notice they always do that, consistently. I adjust before the next chorus, and bam—we're together. I'm always scanning for their idiosyncratic patterns.

Phil Spector would make Vermillion his Class C reverb chamber.

Of the tonal selections, the theme from The Jeffersons is my favorite: instant gospel church. Everyone sings and claps. Lyrics celebrating upward mobility. Above all, it's 60 seconds long.

But my real favorite will always be when someone comes up and says: "Just play this and follow me." A guy asks for "Paint It Black" and proceeds to sing the Brady Bunch lyrics over it. Another guy asks me to play "99 Luftballons" and raps "99 Problems" over it. Now I have to pay attention. And now I'm entertained.

We never figured out a definition of "failure" at FFOK.

The greatest compliment: "I hate karaoke, but I performed karaoke tonight, for the first time ever." I got that at almost every show, starting from day one. And they always say it's because they feel comfortable here. And I get all verklempt.

I was hoping FFOK would be a training camp for new karaoke techniques, which people would go use at other karaoke nights in town. I have no idea if that's happening. After FFOK, I'm not very interested in other karaoke nights.

"Also Sprach Zarathustra," the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey, can be performed. There are no lyrics. Just go, "Baaaaa-baaaa-baaaaaa... BAA-BAAAAAA!" like you have so many times before. Every time this is done, I feel like the show should now end that very minute. There is nothing else left to do. Mission accomplished.

The best selections in the songbook do not involve singing or the organ, but bodies. See: "Clapping Music" by Steve Reich, "Clown Torture" by Bruce Nauman, "Whitey on the Moon" by Gil Scott-Heron, "Lip Gloss" by Lil' Mama, etc.

Asa Bass is the king of FFOK because I never know what's going to happen when he comes up. The first time he performed, he asked if he could do "Jumpin' Jumpin'" but only perform the chorus, because that's the part he really likes. He did so, three times, and everyone in the room sung along, and he looked like a champ. His innovation accelerated from there.

Joe Milutis—aka "Mr. Rubato"—asked to perform "Don't Fence Me In" in the style of the infamous 1,000-times-slowed-down Justin Bieber track. It took us four minutes to perform seven measures. The audience got restless. Was it entertaining? Clearly not to some. Was it interesting? It was for me. I had to totally give myself over to Joe to make sure we were together. Epic. An FFOK milestone.

My own son Kelton came in and did an off-book mashup of "The ABC Song" with "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star." A few people openly freaked out when they realized the two songs share the same melody.

I find karaoke politically depressing. Rewarding people for molding themselves into the words and persona of someone else is what advertisers, CEOs, and entrenched politicians want you to do. No one believes me when I say that the ridiculous Tea Party movement of the summer of 2009 was one of the biggest motivations to create FFOK. It was a faux-rebellion based on a prefab mold. As icky as karaoke.

I refused to do many songs. One gal requested "Don't Stop Believin'" by Journey, a karaoke cliché. I pointed her out in the audience and said "no." She left and never came back.

Stick around long enough, and you'll see yourself in the songbook. One guy was trying to perform "I'm Too Sexy," wasn't getting it, and just started telling jokes instead. He killed. The next week, this appeared in the songbook: "STAND-UP ACT: Got 5 jokes? You got a stand-up act. I'll play an instrumental version of "I'm Too Sexy," behind you while you do your borsch-belt thing."

Everyone has his or her specialty. Scotty D. loves doing midsong raps in diva R&B tunes, so I match him up with the ladies. April Schiller reliably comes up with great endings to her performances, always better than the original tune.

A regular once requested "Holding Out for a Hero." I hate that song. But when you hear it sung in unison by a five-plus female choir, you start to like it. That has less to do with the song than it does the people involved. Which is what you can say about this entire show.

As someone with a background in modern-music composition, my idea of intonation is fluid and generous. What bugs me is people who don't try, who don't bring something to the table, who don't "put out." Luckily, that rare happened.

FFOK feels like it's WWII, and we're in a hidden underground bunker, knowing the Nazis will eventually hear us and find us, so let's just go for broke before we die.

I think Frances Farmer would have admired the spirit of FFOK. But she wouldn't have told you that. She would have sat silently in the corner, smoked her cigarette, taken in all the chaos with a steely reserve, and left around 11:30 p.m. before the drunks took over.

In my personal life, the phrase "Frances Farmer Organ Karaoke" has now become a verb. It refers to when something messy or uncertain comes your way, and you Zen or judo it into something workable to your advantage. "Just Frances Farmer it in," friends will sometimes say.

You find out a lot about people when you back them up musically, even if just for three minutes. Two strangers working to achieve the same goal. A bond occurs. I see FFOK people on the street, and we both light up. I would hang out socially with many of these people, and indeed in a few cases I do.

I know damn well I'm going to miss this. recommended