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American Morning

Karaoke Cab: Music for Singapore's Masses

Aired June 27, 2001 - 09:57   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, you're driving down the road, root is on and you are belting out your favorite song. I admit it.

LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: Badly.

KAGAN: Yes, hopefully, you're not in the car with me, because that is not a good sound.

HARRIS: That's right. But singing out loud while you're riding in a taxi, that's a different story.

CNN's Denise Dillon has the story of the karaoke cab.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEFFREY TAN, TAXI DRIVER (singing): ... my heart, my achy breaky heart, he might go up and kill this man.

DENISE DILLON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Taxi driver Jeffrey Tan knows how to have a good time on the job, and he knows how to entertain his passengers. His taxi is the only one of the streets of Singapore with a karaoke machine.

TAN: We are living in a very fast paced world, and very stressful, so a very good form of releasing stress is by singing. So I set up this system for myself and also for my clients so that they can destress.

DILLON: And destress they do. Some of his regular customers really know how to let their hair down and belt out a tune.

DI YEE, PASSENGER: Bizarre, wild. It's like being encased in a supersonic kind of bubble where you are just letting go of all of your cares and all of your normal life, and you've like an escapism on the road as you are traveling.

DILLON: Since he has passengers from all over the world, Tan has learned songs in more than a dozen languages. He has more than 500 songs to choose from, in various languages, to satisfy most musical tastes.

JOYCE KING, PASSENGER: Jeffrey is loads of fun. He loves to sing probably as much as I love to sing. He tells jokes. He is just very entertaining, very pleasant, always punctual, and just a pleasure to deal with.

DILLON: Oh, and if you can't carry a tune, who cares? It's just you, the karaoke machine and Jeffrey Tan, your friendly taxi driver.

Denise Dillon, CNN.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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