Karaoke Forums

I was kind of rambling on in a response in another thread and started mentioning reasons i've left venues for greener pastures.. and thought i'd start a new thread.

Over the years, i've had many gigs where the venue/management/owners just seemed like they didn't give a crap anymore.

As entertainment, it's my job to draw in a crowd and keep them entertained and drinking.. but in 'hell bars' it's hard to hold a crowd no matter what you do.

Here are a few things i've run into over the years.. some of them more than once!

1. AC goes out and club owner either refuses to fix it, or is slow to fix it. Common when the AC dies about late July or early August and they don't feel justified fixing AC just for 'a week or two of hot weather left'.

2. Constantly running out of a particular brand of beer or liquor. Maybe I can see this happening once, but come on.. how do you run out of Bud Light? If you sold X number of cases last Wednesday, order more.

3. Doorman/Security doing a poor job keeping riff raff out of the club.. or refusing to bar troublemakers/instigators because they're a personal friend of the management.

Usually something happens on the weekend (when you're not there) like a fight or something.. you try to assure your following that the place is only like that on weekends but all they hear is 'fight club'.

4. Place is a general dump. Bathrooms look like the outhouse at the beginning of Slumdog Millionaire, tables and or floors are sticky, place is just overall funky.

Over the years i've had several venues where my regular following would tell me, "Man.. i'd like to come out Tuesday nights, but I don't know about that place!"

People come out to have a good time and cut loose.. not sweat their asses off and pay $4 for warm beers while they sit in a club that smells like sewage.

I don't care how awesome your sound system or library is.

So let's hear your hell stories with seedy club owners!

Got an "audition" night at a new place. It was a dream setting with a real stage, decent size dance floor, extremely clean and comfortable seating. The owner said to give himd a month lead time to advertise. (My mistake that I trusted them and didn't paper the town with flyers.) In the meantime, he hired a bartender to be in charge of entertainment and the fellow preferred live bands and evidently only promoted their nights and not us.

The bartender had listed the show as starting at 6 pm which we thought was too early but decided to see how it went and argue later. The boyfriend showed up extra early as it was a new place to set up. The bar owner yelled at him for propping open the door so he could carry in the heavy stuff. The boyfriend had called ahead to ask if there would be a sturdy table to use and the bartender had said yes. But the bar owner didn't want him using their tables unless we had rubber feet on all our equipment. Luckily we did plus table covers. Then the bar owner said that 6 was too early and he didn't want us to start until 9. Oh.

There had been next to no advertising and we weren't on any of the posters the bartender put up inside or even on the sign out front (have since ordered our own banners for such cases). We had called alot of people but only a few of ours showed up as it was a ways away from our other show. No one else came. We carried on anyway and once the bartender saw we weren't going to be "Hokey Okey" he started calling people and we got a few more that had a good time singing from our Headbangers and modern songs. We got compliments on our system, our selection, our show and regrets that more hadn't been done to promote us. The bartender said that most other shows they had run through there had been dull and he hoped we got picked up. But we hadn't brought in any money and didn't. We later learned the owner has been running off the clientele by only having conservative news shows on the TV and berating anyone who disagreed, not letting people cheer for the sports team of their choice, etc.

I did a followup on the chance that we could try again and we would advertise this time but it was really, "Don't call us, we'll call you, time." But someone else gave us the lowdown on the troubles this place is having due to the owner and recommended a better place in the same town so I will hit that this week.

The saga continues.

Well I work Friday nights in an English country pub.
An eating house till 9pm.
It is lovely.
Great atmosphere.
I am happy to work there.

Except for two things.

The karaoke is never advertised.
Hence I am going to take my own A frame.

You will wait far too long at the bar to get served.
The landlord and landlady will be sat at the bar but
never help out when they see too many people waiting for a drink.
I know a bunch that stopped coming because of the wait.
I once waited 15 min.
They have a high staff turnover and often the barmaid is
a new girl who has never worked in a bar before.
Believe me. To a drinker, that is hell.

Here's a few I've run into:

1. Pulling all advertising for Karaoke night in order to avoid paying ASCAP/BMI/etc.

2. Finding out from the bartender that his last paycheck bounced and he still hasn't been able to get it cashed.

3. The bar only has one working toilet because someone smashed the one in the mens room 4 months ago and it's not been fixed yet.

4. The AC Duct over the center of the stage area constantly drips water, "Oh yeah, it's been doing that for years. I wouldn't put any of your stuff under there", says the owner.

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DJ Tony
Let It Rip Karaoke

I'm of the opinion that these owners dont "GO BAD". They were always "BAD" to begin with. You just never spotted it until these particular situations occured.

_________________
"You know that I sing the Blues and I do not suffer fools. When I'm on that silver mic, it's gonna cut ya, just like a knife"-The SWINGCAT

A couple of my bars could be described as a sheep in wolf's clothing. They really just need a little spit and polish, maybe a restroom remodel. (The cost of which would actually be covered by the water savings in replacing the old toilets!) Will it happen?? Only if I do it for them I feel!

- Jon

I had a decent show few years back. Busy place --plenty of singers etc.
Then the manager got into a tiff with one of the singers and threw him out and BANNED him from coming back. ALL because the singer complained to the manager that he was SMOKING in the bar and it was now illegal to do so. Seems the singers GF was bening botherd by the smoke. The end result is that all the singers eventually stopped coming in because one of their own was banned.
I eventually left that show for another.

But the night it happened the singer called the police who HAD to give the manager mandatory summons ......COST HIM $1000 ...IDIOT

How about when the bar is going through a new bartender every two months, and each new bar tender is fresh out of bartending school.

Worse yet, when they haven't attended school of any kind?
I have a venue that is having this exact problem. Hard to get a good drink. Wait - hard to get a drink at all.

Ours has the habit of firing popular bar tendresses and then we get boycotted for a while. Once when we were singers there he replaced one with the worst bar tendress ever. We used to bring our own little kit with a rag to wipe the table and our own coasters because she never got around to it. When they used to serve microwave pizzas, she would serve them on top of the flattened box. Eeeeeew.

I don't know L.L......sure make them taste a bit crunchier......

It took me a long time to get to this point but I am finally willing to lose, quit, or pass on a gig if it doesn't meet certain criteria. I'm a KJ full time and it's my whole income, but sometimes it's just not worth it. There was a gig I desperately wanted a couple months ago. It was in a huge place, had a swimming pool out back, and really had potential to draw a huge crowd and pay out accordingly. I got the lead from a bartender and the owner was ridiculously hard to get ahold of. After a ton of calls I finally got a meeting. Everything was going great until I gave him a copy of my contract. He immediately shifted gears and said I'll get ahold of you after I read this. Phone tag again... Long story short, I never got the gig. I did everything right on my end for myself. I made a commitment to myself to not take another gig without a contract and have stuck to it. I've heard nothing but bad things about that particular club owner since and I'm really happy I didn't get the gig now. I will say that early on in my career because I love my job so much I thought it was a privelege to be given work. It is a privelege but at the same time I now know that even though I get to do something I really enjoy, I am bringing a lot to the table as well and not everyone can do what we KJ's do. My time is valuable, and so are the efforts that I put into making my shows a success and ultimately making the bar money. I get to have the gig, but they get to have me too.

That is the point where I would have said bye bye.

While some may claim it's cocky and arrogant, I firmly believe this is exactly the attitude you need to have. Sure you can temper it with a certain amount of humility and present yourself that way, but any time you enter a negotiation you have to be confident in the product you're offering and its value to the person you're offering it to. Otherwise you'll get walked over.

For me it's even easier because unlike you, I don't rely on Karaoke as my primary source of income. I'm not going to miss a car or house payment if I lose a certain show. So it makes having the confidence much easier because the worst the venue can do is turn me down and go to someone else. I've had the "pleasure" of telling a few club owners that they couldn't afford me. They really don't like being told that but then when they get offended and ask what my fee is, they begrudgingly admit that I'm right. I have a good feel for what I'm worth, I don't give away free "try me out shows", but then I'm very rarely approaching the bar to initiate discussion, they're almost always the ones calling me.

The problem is, we have many in our ranks who are just desperate to get gigs. They will take a gig for well under what they feel they are worth just to make sure they have some kind of income coming in. It's the whole work smarter versus work harder argument. I'd rather work fewer shows for more money but not everyone feels that way. It's truly unfortunate because it hurts all of our ability to get paid decently for the service (and increased income) that we provide the client.

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DJ Tony
Let It Rip Karaoke

Contracts. That's something that deserves a thread all of it's own.

I finally quit the place where I had my first KJ gig, mixed my first band, and have been trying for far too long to keep the place open with too little pay. Since we are sharing horror stories, I think mine is pretty worthy!

Earlier this year, one of the owner's daughters, we'll call her "Dawn" (to protect the guilty), moved back home to escape a life of booze and cocaine she'd been living for several years. It turns out that a change of geography doesn't automatically help you kick bad habits She got caught double-charging customers (plastic and cash) and putting cash customers' drinks onto tab customers' tabs early this year. It was supposedly a mistake (happening to three different people who all complained about it immediately?) and was supposedly fixed.

Fast-forward a few months. The bar is slower, the entertainment budget slashed, etc. Things are worse, due entirely to poor management. Well, this girl gets caught stealing from customers yet again. Adding drinks onto tabs and pocketing cash. Somehow the other bartender who worked with her on Saturdays was only making $30 in cash tips a night, so she just started clocking off early and refused to work with her. "Dawn is caught doing cocaine in the employee restroom, customers are complaining about their tabs being run up, and one person actually wrote down every drink they ordered, compared it to their printed tab at the end of the night, and had been charged almost $100 when her bill should have been around $20!

I go to the owner with all these issues, tell him to take "Dawn" off my nights or I won't work those nights, and he refuses. I quit. The next day he asks me if I'll just work the nights she doesn't. I foolishly agree, but point out that "Dawn" and one of her coke-addicted sisters who also tends bar there have been going around his bar telling customers that they were "falsely" accused of ripping off customers (I had said nothing to anyone.)

A few weeks later, I walk in late on Saturday to buy carry-out beer for my BBQ the next day. The beer was already in the cooler waiting for me, and I had already asked for the amount I needed so I wouldn't run them out of something. I walk up to the bar, and "Dawn" refuses to serve me. I don't care, it's already late, and I'm just waiting for the place to clear out so I can get my carry-out and go home. The owner notices I don't have a beer, wants to know why, and when told, goes behind the bar and gets both of us a cold one. "Dawn" actually starts yelling at him for getting me a beer (I still work there twice a week and am certainly allowed to be served!) When it comes time for my carry-out beer to be rang up, the owner asks his lovely daughter to do it, and they actually have a shouting match behind the bar, with 20 customers still present and watching this go on, over whether or not she will do what she's been told and ring up my beer. In the end, she won't, so he gets someone else to do it and gets my beer out of the cooler himself. I pay and go home.

A couple days later, I show up to do karaoke, have a fun night, drink a few shots with friends and coworkers, and I have two customers tell me they had been dramatically over-charged by "Dawn," had seen the scene on Saturday, and they can't understand why she isn't fired. I simply say, well, Dawn is the owner's daughter, I suggest you pay cash for each drink when she's here instead of start a tab, then you won't get over-charged.

I then have two other people tell me the owner has been telling people I am wrong about the stealing and over-charging, and that all the other bartenders "hook me up" so much that I must just think she over-charges. Oh, by the way, the person who wrote down every drink they ordered and were charged almost $100 for a $20 tab was my girlfriend. I have first-hand knowledge and direct proof of it, and so do many others.

So I quit. If the owner of the bar can't face up to the fact that his daughter is a thief and a drug addict, I was willing to live with that; but don't tell people I lied or exaggerated when I have proof and dozens of people won't come into the place anymore because of her attitude and her theft.

At least no one got hurt. I certainly have seen stories of worse things happening to people, but I really think this bar owner takes the cake as far as stupid/bad owners. Their sales are down so much now, I used to bring in more revenue in one day than they now make in a whole week. I don't feel sorry for them.

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Jeff Wheeler, moonlight DJ/KJ

That's one way of putting it.
Wow.