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I went out to a gig that I was pitching to the head manager at a place. THey were finishing a remodel, and then we were going to start a gig there. He was moved to another location, a new manager was brought in, and he immediately brought in a Karaoke company.

I went to this gig for the first time last night. THis woman is horrible at the job, and here are the reasons why.

First of all she is illegal. I don't know of any legit KJ who uses a "Dummy Book". Her song book only contained about 1,100 songs. I obviously thought that was funny. Then she announced that if you can't find what you are looking for in her book, just ask her, and the chances are that she has what you need on her laptop. Just like the Illegal KJ's I talked about a month or two ago, she is using the same RJTech laptop that the other Pirates were using. My friend brought his own disc, which has a Johnny Rivers version of Whiter Shade Of Pale. She Showed him on her laptop that she has 5 versions of it, non of them Johnny Rivers, and which one she thinks is best.

She has her speakers on the floor, so obviously is sounded like poop. She is using $30 wired RSQ mics. Not the worst mic I have been handed, but not what I would call professional.

She had absolutely no singers. She was supposed to of started at 8pm. We got there at 9. We were the first people you could call singers that showed up. One of my Saturday regulars showed up, so now there were 3 singers. She kept on trying to talk the people who were there to watch the baseball game to sing. She finally harrassed a guy till he sang, or I mean she sang. She gets the guy to stand up, he sings maybe 5 words of the song. She sang 98% or the song. Right after her turn. I have seen many a crappy KJ's who use this technic to make sure they sing as many songs as they can. They say, oh this song is a request. I have called them on this, by yelling, Who requested it. No answer, due to nobody requesting them to sing 3 songs in a row. When I left at 10:30, that left her with one singer, and the baseball crowd starts leaving too.

This place cannot be making any money off of this clown. I need to find out what this company is that uses these RJTech laptops. I guarantee they are all using illegal songs they do not own. I am going to call the owner directly. It wasn't easy, but I aquired his name and phone #.

Just extra mad because this should have been my gig. I'm the one who talked the first guy into giving Karaoke a chance again. They did it before, but made no money doing it.

Felix the KJ

Speaking personally, I'd go in and pitch myself to the new manager. I'd show him how the show sucks, and that if he feels comfortable hiring an illegal kj, then the repricussions won't stop at the kj if the law ever catches up.

I'd mention that venues like this one actually hurt the karaoke city wide, as others are exposed to this below average type of show and think "oh, this is how they do Karaoke! Big deal!"

You get what you pay for. Chances are the venue didn't want to pay anything, and this is what they get when they pay below scale.

If the venue owner or manager doesn't even want to discuss it, then walk away, and count yourself lucky that you're not working for an outfit like that!

It always amazes me that KJs will use dummy books. It just seems so rediculous.

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[shadow=pink][glow=deepskyblue]. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
[updown]~*~ MONKEY BUSINESS KARAOKE~*~ [/shadow][/updown][/glow]

yep I would pitch to the new manager too

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"Be who you are and say what you feel... Because those that matter... Don't mind...And those that mind... Don't matter."

I suppose you could say I have a dummy book. It isn't, though, it is "selected songs". I have every one of them in there plus more.

I could print one or two master books with all of the stuff in it, but since I add every month it would be expensive to update. I like my approach so far, it seems to work well.

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[color=#ffff55]Mickey J.[/color]
Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music in them.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

I went to a show last week on Sunday night... I had taken a work break to show off for 2 of my security guards at the job. I had been to this show a few times before (and I personally never cared much for it), but this time it was different. The KJ there no longer uses a CDG player. He is now strictly PC operated.


He also had "Dummy Books" (I never heard that term before, but it definitely fits). I asked him if he had "Bring Him Home" from Les Miserable (yes, Susan Boyle inspired me to take this song out of retirement). He said that he had to look it up on the internet and download it, and that it would take a few minutes. He found the song (the manu version that I requested), and then called me up to sing. I told him to raise the key up 3, and he said he did, but when the music started, it sounded like it was on key (and not raised 3) to me. I reiterated that I needed it up 3, and he said it was.

For my 2nd song, I requested a song out of his book. It was "Cruel to Be Kind", and he had the Dangerous track listed. I know this disc (I own it), and I informed him that he has the track listed incorrectly (he had it listed as D-4-5, and I know it to be Track 6... "Fantasy" is on Track 5). Well, he called me up, and lo and behold, "Fantasy" came up. I told him that it was incorrect (again), and he said that his computer is telling him that he is playing "Cruel to Be Kind." I then told him to plug in "Fantasy", and my song came up (this KJ don't listen vewy well (saying in my best Bugs Bunny voice)).

Needless to say, I won't be going back to this show anymore. I could deal with the mislabeling of songs, but I can't deal with not be able to use a Key Change.

So how are these "dummy books?" Seems like you are faulting things other than the songbooks.. I don't see what the issue is with the books. They are expensive and time consuming to update continuously, if you have any quantity of songs. If a host is a joke, or the computer program has the wrong track number listed, this makes the books "dummies??" Not sure what this means.

This happens to me a lot too. Usually it is Sax & Dotty's as the software. It frequently is set up wrong, and they think they are making a key change but it doesn't take.

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[color=#ffff55]Mickey J.[/color]
Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music in them.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Don't look at me... I didn't say anything negative about "Dummy Books." I just made a reference to the term. When I spoke of a wrong code in the book, that had nothing to do with the fact that the book was a "Dummy Book." I was just describing the experience that I had at the show, and how the KJ didn't know what to do. If I had not known that he had the song listed incorrectly in his book, then that KJ would not have been able to open the file for the song on his PC for me to sing. Even after telling him that he had the song code listed incorrectly, he still couldn't figure it out until I told him what to do (and I didn't even know how his system operated). On his program, the song codes in the book were meaningless, because all this KJ did was type in the Song Title on his PC, and then queue it up.

What I pick up as the definition of a "Dummy Book" is that it just reflects a small fraction of the songs that the KJ actually has (or can get his/her hands on), thus the reason the KJ may announce, "If you don't see the song you're looking for, come up and speak to me. I can search for it on my laptop/pc."

As for your statement regarding the expense to update your song books, well, that may work fine for KJs who operate off of a PC, but for someone like me (who still run shows using just CDGs), I need to have my books reflect what I have in my library. I tell everyone that asks me, "If you don't see it in my books, then I don't have it."

I am disc based.

Because of constant additions, my books are never truly up to date. I make that announcement ( if you don't see it in the book, ask) at every show as well. That alone shouldn't be an indicator.

However, if a book only has a mere fraction of the available songs, it's a dummy. I just can't see the reason for them. If they are trying not to get caught with a huge collection, the negative effect of a nothing book would still do more harm then good to the show.

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"No Contests, No Divas, Just A Good Time!"

" Disc based and loving it..."

I have to agree with you. I too am disc based and the cost of updating books gets crazy expensive. I also announce to the bar that if they cant find their song make sure they check out the "added song" section.

As for the ilegal hardrives, I get people always asking me if i can do a download or they want to look at my laptop list for a song ( I use it for fill music) and I do have the cds for it too! They always tell me that "so n so" kj will do it for them. Oh God, don't even get me started with that!

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No venue to big or too small. From your den to the local club or event, we have the music most requested. Great sounding system!

I gotta agree with this as well. I am computer based and I even so am still updating at a pace that I just can't keep the books up to date so I always announce that people should check with me if they can't find something. This serves to purposes. One, I might have it and it's just not in the book yet (even if it's an older song that just happened to add recently), Second it's a great way to get ideas for songs that I should add that I don't have. More than once I've had someone come up and ask if I had a song that I thought for sure I'd have only to find out it isn't in my library. Those become a priority for me to get.

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DJ Tony
Let It Rip Karaoke

What do you think a song book would look like if you listed 100,000 songs in it? It would probably be about a foot thick and weigh about 20 pounds; and just think about how many page protectors you'd have to buy for each book. As mostly pirates purchase their hard drives with these large amounts of songs, it is very unlikely that they are going to be willing to spend any money printing up song books that reflect their entire collection because it would be cost prohibitive, especially when you consider how quickly a "NEW" songbook is quickly out of date. From a strictly financial angle, they probably have some old song books from before they went "digital" and are just using them so they have something for the customers to browse through. I guess it's better than having ZERO song books and telling everyone that they should just fill out a slip and give it to the KJ and then the KJ will let you know if he/she has the song.

I remember reading about how expensive it was for people to keep their song books updated when people bragged about having seven to ten thousand songs. Just about every KJ around here claims to have at least 50,000 songs now but none of them seem to have a song book that would reflect that amount of songs. Just too much money to print out all of that data; especially when almost half of it is duplications of lower quality tracks.

The typical songbook usually lists around 50 songs per page. A song book with 100,000 songs would be 2,000 pages thick. That's 4 reams of paper for each book and 1,000 page protectors to fill for EACH book. Just think about the time involved to re-do your books, even if it was only once a year; not to mention the costs. I can understand the dummy books, if only for financial reasons. If you have a CDG Player at your show, I don't need to look at a book. I can just hand you MY DISC and ask for the particular track that I would like to sing.

They are easy to spot. If they have large books they are cluttered with different naming formats, typos. dups and a menage of crap. Usually their system sucks.

If they do have small books chances are they have their legal stuff on an internal hard drive and the illegal on an external. At the first sign of trouble they will yank the external.


I have spent a decade of obtaining music. My books reflect it too for I carefully renamed each one as I got them in. I keep my karaoke trimmed to 13-14k.

My books do not list all I have and my regs know when im not busy with sound etc I will search on the computer.

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There are a few copied hard drives circulating in our area and one interesting thing is they may have 12,000 songs but none are current hits. They haven't updated since their initial "copy" and that was off someone who had been out of the business for years. But they are still working 5 nights a week to our 1 and they have terrrible sound to boot. Wish that horrible and illegal equalled out of work but it doesn't always go that way.

Dummy Book means this. They have a small book. It only reflects the music legally owned. Everything else on the computer is illegal. How does one have a book with only 1,200 songs, but a computer with thousands. They got those thousands illegally. I am currently disc based, but am buying a laptop this or next month. From what I've seen from hosting and ripping programs, they usually give you a tool to catalog the music you are ripping. From what I have read, at best the pirate hard drives give you an excel spread sheet, or nothing at all. As I stated above, this is the third KJ I have seen with this exact situation, all of them using the same RJTech laptop.

Yes it is expensive to print. I only re-print my books about once a year or so. I just reprinted for the first time in a year. I had 1,100 new songs. They were in a continuously growing new additions section for the past year. If it is not in my main book or new additions section, then I don't have it, unless I bought it that day, and I will usually announce that situation.

On top of illegal music, this KJ just plain sucked. I sang right after her. As I started singing I watched her give me a dry mic, and lowered the mic volume from where it was for her. I am not a loud singer or a yeller. I asked her about it, and she said because of her voice, she has to adjust it different than other singers. Maybe I am the only crazy guy here who does this, but every mic including mine is set exactly the same. The only thing I ever adjust is the volume as everbody does sing at different levels, and the echo if they specifically ask me. I just talked to my regular who stayed after my friend and I left at 10:30. He said he was the only one singing left, except for 2 other guys may have sang one each. This place is paying this person too much, even if it is for free.

Felix the KJ

Thats not exactly correct. I use Digital Entertainer, and have for 3 yrs now, and it does not come with any programs to rip or catalog files. I had to purchase KJ File Manager and Song List Generator to organize my songs once ripped from my collection of discs which I used Power CD+G Burner for. I am LEGAL, purchase all the monthly discs every month (tho rarely get any requests for new pop songs) and my books, which I just redid all 6 of, were costly. I have 37K songs and with my file system each song is only listed one time in my books. Now I just got all the new May Chartbusters so those songs are not reflected in my books.. are my books now "dummy books?"

A "Dummy" book to me would be the opposite... if the KJ listed 60,000 songs and only had 2000 songs. Thats what a dummy book is.. listing what you DONT have. How is listing only a portion of what you actually have wrong? If a song is requested and you have it, it gets played. If it's requested from a book and you dont have it, and this is repeated for song #2, 3 and 4... then you lose your singers, because you have a dummy book with no songs to sing.

I'll take this one, cuz I've seen it done in my area. One particular company in my area has a decent system with the exception of vocopro wireless mics. Has bragged to me that they have over 100,000 songs. They don't talk to me anymore but when I was just starting to learn about the business, they told me they get their music from a "traveling salesman". Their books are pretty thick but don't have 100,000 songs in them. What the books are used for is newbie customers mainly, getting ideas of songs. The kj will tell them, "just ask me, I will probably have it".

That's a dummy book. If they completely did away with the books and just advertised "just ask, I guarantee we have it", the piracy smell gets worse!

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KingBing Entertainment C'mon Up! I have a song for you!!! [font=MS Sans Serif][/font]

It'a amazing how people with over $100,000 worth of music and equipment can charge $50-100/night.

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You can be strange but not a stranger

Duh! Doesn't add up does it. Things that make you go HuMMMMMMM!

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No venue to big or too small. From your den to the local club or event, we have the music most requested. Great sounding system!