Karaoke Forums

Really? Which one of your parents was the chimpanzee? Was it your mom or your dad?

Wonder how long it takes them to delete that one?

When some people can’t win an argument they resort to personal attacks. They not only will attack your character, they will even involve your family as best as they could. Really nice, Bruce. Your response was not even at a scale commensurate to what I posted.

You just made it quite obvious that you haven’t got much of an argument & hence you have to resort to personal attacks. But, I’m not gonna play your games. I won’t stoop down to your level.

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To be fortunate enough to derive an income from a source as fulfilling as karaoke music has got to be as close to heaven as we can get here on earth!

Well, that's what happens when you bring a knife to a gunfight. I tried to walk away peacefully and take a break but you just had to poke me on my way out the door as if it wouldn't get back to me. No free cheap shots at my expense, Bonzo.

hehehe "It's about time!" is considered a "cheap shot" now. Priceless.

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-Chris

It only became a cheap shot because it got applause...... from me included. I once gave Bruce a very genuine compliment and he turned around and attacked me for it like a rabid dog. I have not responded to a single post of his until this cheap shot at Brian. Bruce, please take a break, make a few new songs, drink a few beers and get laid. Life could only get better after all that.

Bruce, I do believe that you are an extremely serious karaoke enthusiast that has a very strong opinion on every aspect of it, but others are entitled their very strong opinions as well.

Agree! Bruce & I bickered once or twice before too so I kinda expected this kind of response coming from him. No surprise there.

He just called me Bonzo! See what I mean?

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To be fortunate enough to derive an income from a source as fulfilling as karaoke music has got to be as close to heaven as we can get here on earth!

What role/part did the Monkey play?

oh, i misunderstood...
i thought he compared you to one of the greatest rock drummers of all time.
my mistake.

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

Of topic, but the pic reminded me. Saw Bonham so wasted in St. Louis that he fell off his throne. Was not one of the shows to make the 'highlights reel'!

Gotta tell ya Bruce, your analogies on this thread suck! Just not close enough to home to be considered mind changing.

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

Nope! Not even close. But I totally agree that John Henry Bonham was the best & the greatest rock drummer of all time. A tribute: “Bonzo, with his speed & power, the groove remains the same!”

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To be fortunate enough to derive an income from a source as fulfilling as karaoke music has got to be as close to heaven as we can get here on earth!

hail no, i don't sing when i host. i'd rather play music

Which came first - The karaoke host? or the karaoke singer?

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-Chris

Chris, you should add God is Dead to that, or Bat Out of Hell!! .

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I am the ONLY SANE 1 HERE

I sing first song. If the rotation is small, I stay in. If it gets busy, I take myself out. I do have people who want me to help with harmonies and stuff like that, or to do a duet. Sometimes, if I don't sing I actually get yelled at. .

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I am the ONLY SANE 1 HERE

I sing the first song and take myself out of the rotation at or about 10 singers.

I still "help" or duet when asked and occasionally I get requests.

Last Thursday, one of my long time regulars (and a friend) saw that I had taken myself out of the rotation and he put a song that he wanted me to sing under his name so he could give me his turn...

never had that happen before...

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Never the same show twice!

let her go - Passenger, i love it.

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facebook - PJs Karaoke Disco

Unless its really busy I'll always sing the first song of the rotation. The reason is simple.. control. I don't sing the song 'I want' to sing, I sing the song that the night needs to set the direction of the show.

I run a high energy show, and always have. Not everyone does, but this formula has proven successful for me.

I try to work in duets with my regulars that are fun and entertaining for everyone. "Who says you can't go home" and "Like I'm Gonna lose you." are common, but it depends on the crowd and the night.

Its important to be entertaining, and positive, and a good first song by the host can set the tone and direction for the rotation. If everyone is singing sad songs and ballads its going to suck real fast. To me, karaoke is best when you have a combination of talent, average, and poor singers in the rotation. You can't have 'all ringers', and you can't have 'all poor' singers, you need a nice mix.

Most singers won't always play to the crowd. For example, you have a crowd of mostly older folks, but some young kid wants to sing Cage the Elephant. Its not going to go well.

But.. this is what I do, and its successful. I have a hefty, loyal, and enthusiastic following. Your mileage may vary.

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Good music, good friends, howling good times!

I sing. The frequency with which I sing varies, but I sing, and don't know any good karaoke hosts that don't.

The truth here lies somewhere in the middle. At a certain point, I feel it necessary to back away, or perhaps restrict myself to duets only. I do sing duets when it's requested of me, and I feel like that's necessary in my role. To facilitate the kind of karaoke show you want to run - which I assume for most of us is a communal one in which everyone feels included - you kind of have to. Look, I'm not the songbird of my generation, but in a pool of karaoke singers, I'm pretty good. People want to sing with me, and I'm inclined to do it; sometimes, it's a fun duet that I rarely get to enjoy ("Suddenly Seymour", for example, when the theatre nerds show up), and sometimes I'm trying valiantly to pretend like I'm enjoying singing "Picture" for the thousandth time, but either way, if I can help a singer do what they want with their five minutes, I'm happy to.

I'm also often thrown curveballs by participants - both singing and non-singing participants - who would like to hear my take on a song. I've been known to take on some very embarrassing numbers on the behest of my clientele; sometimes I stick the landing and sometimes I beef it terribly, but either way, it's garnered me a reputation for being agreeable and up for anything, and it's certainly not lost me any fans. This, too, I believe to be a valid reason a KJ would step up and sing.

All that to say what others have said before me: there is no hard and fast rule. To say that it's never appropriate for a KJ to sing would be asinine and, I'd argue, patently false, for the reasons I've outlined above and more. (I haven't mentioned singing the opening song of the night because, honestly, I think that should be common sense for any working karaoke host.)

A closing anecdote: on our honeymoon, my wife and I took in some karaoke at a joint that had it six nights a week. We were only going to go once, but we had such a good time we stopped by the next night for seconds. A good deal of that was the host, who ran a tight and fair rotation, announced up front that his song marked the beginning of each rotation, and gamely performed requests for him (betraying an encyclopedic knowledge of music in the process). I have no problem saying that I believe he was the best karaoke host I'd ever seen, and he made me want to try and strive for his level of quality back home at my own shows. We revisited the scene of our honeymoon four years later, and were delighted to find that the same joint was still running karaoke six nights a week. Unfortunately, and we discovered this a couple of beers too late, the place had decided to cut costs and hire a different host. Everything from sound (absurd levels of echo rendering vocalists near-unintelligible) to mic presence (essentially an extended impression of Casey Kasem being strangled) to rotation (none to speak of - he seemed to place each successive slip in a line chronologically, thus causing multiple singers to sing three, even four times before people who submitted their songs scant seconds later sang one) was off. He, like the previous host, sang in every rotation, but when his rotation was severely mis-managed, and I found myself watching him sing (poorly, but that's not really the issue) multiple songs in between my two. (Yeah, two - there for three hours in a rotation of perhaps four singers, which is math I can't even figure out.) Those are the guys that piss people off. A tale of two hosts - both sang throughout the night, and yet it was the one who continued to sing at the top of every rotation even as it got absurdly busy that inspired me to do a better job, because regardless of rotation size or vocal ability, as a host, he was SIMPLY. BETTER.

When I was a youngster (about 1996) I used to put karaoke request in under a few different names, to get more goes

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