Karaoke Forums

I'm writing this review of last night's show, and I must say I wasn't impressed at all. This particular host and me have had a long standing feud, but I tried to not let this color my judgement about him. For years when I was hosting full time this host would try and poach my singers and my gigs, to little avail. He has always been selfish, greedy, lazy, and not really had any original ideas of his own, in fact he stole as many of my ideas as he could. They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, if that is the case he is very sincere. Lucky for him I'm not calling the shot as far as hiring is concerned, I'm leaving it up to the members. I gave him his shot and the members gave the thumbs down, so he can't say it was because of bad blood between us. He's the one that started this whole thing, and he wants everyone to feel he is the victim. He did have a computer at the show, but didn't really know how to use it, it was all for show, I need someone that knows what they are doing, not a hack. The post is not running a training program for hosts, especially one who says I'm the novice, really!

I went to the E board meeting last night at our Legion Post, so many officers have resigned that we just had enough for a sit down. It was decided that the karaoke contest is at an end and two new hosts have been selected Cowboy Monty, and KJ Jim, long may they play. I had to after the meeting let the loser know that his services would no longer be needed, that was the tough part of this, but then again you can't have winners without the losers. On a lighter note the merger seems more likely to happen each day since the financial health of our post in particular continues to decline despite all of our efforts. It is good to have a plan B especially when plan A is not working. Now that it is December I will be quite busy with private parties, the annual children's Christmas party, and New Year's Eve. Happy Holidays to all.

It is coming up on the private parties and Children's Christmas parties I hope I'm ready. I have been playing with my new Bose L1 S1 with B-2 Bass Module that Santa brought me early. I will be trying it out for the first time this Saturday and I will let you know how it goes. It won't be a full karaoke test since I'm just DJ'ing this particular show. Mostly Christmas music so I won't be using that much base, just as well I don't want to rattle the glasses at the post. The room there is always a challenge during holidays what with the Christmas Tree usually set up where I would put one of my two regular speakers. I'll have to see if the Bose technology really fills the room, what with it's various ceiling heights and all it has always been a task to get the sound right. I will let you know how it goes, I'm also going to have at 2 day gig at the Legion in the same room, that will be karaoke DEC 30th and DEC 31st.

Whew! Just read through this entire thread, and found it to be very interesting. I wish I had the time back when I was still running Stellar to read more threads like this, but back then 12 to 16 hour days at 7 days per week were the norm so there wasn't much time left over for these things. I'm curios to learn if VFW markets have any resemblance to the bar scene. Depending on who you listen to it appears that in some areas karaoke is on a huge decline, while in other areas there seems to be a measurable increase in the size of the market. From the sounds of things "country" seems to be the dominant genre. From Stellar's perspective Pop and Country were pretty much equal at approximately 40% each with Rock and/or Urban at 20%. Adult Contemporary never did all that well. I dreaded the Urban line not so much because of the music itself, but because the lack of music in the genre, as an awful lot of it was more production stuff and ear candy. It's pretty weird to see the music director charting out sound effects and loops, etc. instead of musical charts for the session players.

The other thing that I wasn't aware of is how challenging this "rotation" thing is. Personally, I don't understand the need for a "rotation" to begin with but I'm not in the trenches so my opinion is irrelevant anyway. The only thing I can relate to is open mic nights where the performers usually only get one turn of 2 or 3 songs each. Of course the circumstances are quite different in that often times the musicians would bring their own rigs and not be inclined to want to use the house set up. Even in those cases however I seem to remember hearing mumblings of "unfairness".

So what has roused my curiosity is if there's a general consensus in the differences or lack of differences between karaoke at a VFW versus karaoke at the local bar open to the general public. I'm also curious to learn as to what kind of music millennials tend to favor. i never could quite understand the attraction of performing hip-hop in karaoke format.

Welcome to the crazy world of hosting, but then that is what this forum is supposed to be about right?

Last night I had a real shock the commander of our post resigned, I think he was having some personal problems. There is supposed to be a meeting on Monday to deal with the problem of no chief executive to run the day to day function of the post. I'm more than a little miffed at the fact that I was not informed of the meeting Monday but had to find out from a different source. Because of a rash of resignations I'm the only officer left that was elected at the time of our last general election. Naturally it has been presented to me that I should be a temporary commander, until a new one can be elected by the general membership. It is a big responsibility, what with the pending merger and all. I'm the only officer left that has attended any of the merger joint committee meetings.

What's that saying? .... sometimes you're the bug, sometimes you're the windshield!

Last night I became commander of the post, a big job with big headaches. Compared to the other position I occupied it is much more detailed and time consuming. It is even made more difficult by the fact not all of the different officer positions have been filled. I'm really flying by the seat of my pants, and I can expect little help from the faction in the post that is anti merger. All I can do is my best and hope I can keep things going until the next general membership meeting. I above all want an orderly transition of power and not have the stigma of back room deals being made. Whether I continue as commander will depend on basically a vote of confidence, on the matter of voting on the merger, if it fails then I will resign in favor of the first vice who should be voted in by next general membership meeting. Technically I could remain commander until May, but it wouldn't be fair to the members if they would rather follow a different path. Holding on to power just for the sake of power doesn't appeal to me at all. I'm trying to keep our options open so we don't paint ourselves into a corner.

After checking with District I found out that I'm the new post commander aka Chief Executive Officer until new elections are held in May. So now it is up to me to sell the merger to the members of the post, and see it through to completion, wish me luck, I'm going to need it.

Little update, it seems that due to some by laws that no sitting member of the E board can assume the post of Commander, only a former Commander can. So the E Board approved a former Commander, in fact the only one that showed up. So I guess the drama is over for a while. Just as good I have been running around for more than a week, trying to learn a complicated job, with no one to mentor me, but I managed to follow the rules, and get the post back on track. This Commander is opposed to the merger, so it looks like me and him are heading for a showdown.

Showdown was averted the other Post has decided to pull out of the merger and so it is a dead issue. Now we have to focus on saving the home Post here. I just hope that we can keep it afloat, I'll keep my fingers crossed.

got to say it, put your focus on the younger crowd. the current crowd is literally dying off. without new blood coming in, the post sinks.

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Paradigm Karaoke, The New Standard.......Shift Happens

In our particular case Paradigm the BB's are still the answer. We have about a 15 year period where no veterans are able to join, and the BB's fill that hole. Due to the fact that either their parents or other relatives were in WWII and can become members of the Legion Sons or Ladies Aux. Younger potential members from Desert Shield, Desert Storm, and the war on terrorism, are busy with careers and raising their families. They simply don't have the disposable income. The Mills I have seen come to our post and put a soda on a credit card, the transaction costs more than the item purchased. You can't make money that way or stay in business.

my reason for saying that was since your focus has been on the BB's, and the post still needs to merge or die (along with others obviously) they seem to not be the solution.
add to that the fact that the new commander (who i wager is not a young one) is against the merger. better to go down in "their" way than merge and change anything.
it's hard to believe we are talking about the same groups.
all the private orgs seem to be having the same issues, the VFW, DAV, Legion, Eagles, Elks, Moose all have what we are both describing as dying posts and lack of active membership. but i see the BB's buying a few PBR's or Hamms (didn't Hamms was still around until i saw it at the posts) and that's it. the younger Desert Storm through Afghanistan come in with their girls and buy shots and the girls get top shelf cocktails (the girls can out drink the guys hands down).

VFW, DAV, and Legion have jumped on board with focusing on the younger gens and removing the "old man" feel and smoking at the posts and revenue is up, mergers have been cancelled, attendance is up, and hall rentals have also increased since younger gens feel welcome.

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Paradigm Karaoke, The New Standard.......Shift Happens

What a difference a State Makes, things are totally different in California. What can I say, oh buy the way smoking is not and issue since smoking in public places has been banned for quite some time in the Golden State. Sorry made the correction, it's Christmas and I was blinded the egg nog and the Christmas lights.

LR, From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Sunshine State may refer to:

The official nickname of the U.S. state of Florida
The nickname of the Australian state of Queensland
The unofficial nickname of the U.S. state of South Dakota
The nickname of Ondo State, Nigeria
Sunshine State (film), a 2002 film set in Florida
Florida's Turnpike, originally known as the Sunshine State Parkway

I don't see California mentioned

It has been awhile since I posted on this topic, and feel compelled to give an update. The merger died and with it any hope of a long term solution to both posts problems. I will continue to run the entertainment at my home post until June when the new officers will be installed. I don't plan on running again since my wife wants us to do some traveling, and enjoying the fruits of years of labor. She tells me life is too short to be caught up in post politics. I did my best and things have improved, I just hope the new team is up to the job.

Your wife is very smart. Take her advice.

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Electro-Voice Evolve 50... Taking Sound To The Next Level.

Well I did not run for reelection and a new officer is in charge of entertainment. He has taken a page out of Trump's book and has decided to undo everything I had worked on for 2 years. He fired all of the hosts I so painstakingly hired. He brought back the host everyone disliked because of his rudeness, on Saturday. This particular host is a personal friend of the new commander and his wife. He hired himself to do the karaoke on Monday, getting rid of the best KJ in the area in my opinion. He cut every host salary to 75.00 a night, which of course will stop any quality act from applying. This new officer was always a DJ and has only recently become a KJ and told me that he knew more about karaoke than anyone. When this guy DJ'd for the post he charged $200.00 and had two patrons in the Legion Hall. His arrogance is supreme and it is hard to believe that soooo much hubris resides in just one person. I'm glad I'm going on vacation, I don't want to be there when the crap hits the fan. When I left he had everything setup for him for 2 months until he learned the ropes. He doesn't need a mentor, so I'm out of there, for at least 6 months, on extended leave. I hope all of you have as good a time as I will. Vent over.