Karaoke Forums

On Friday nights we do "Monkey Boy" (or Monkey Girl") Karaoke.

It took some searching but we were able to find the most hideous, ugly, painfully ugly decorative container done in an Asian style with a monkey sitting on it's lid covering it's eyes. We couldn't find one covering it's ears - (hear no evil).

Inside the "Monkey Bowl" is 250 prepared slips. The slips were picked out by random using the random number generator in Excel. I'm a techie kind of guy and have all my own software I wrote for songbooks and management in MS Access. Using the random numbers matched up the record numbers and poof - 250 blind picked songs. There are some easy ones, some hard ones, and some, well quite frankly I've never heard of!

So here are the rules. You pick from the Monkey Bowl. You can look at the slip, if you don't like what you pulled you can draw again - BUT - you cannot look at your redraw, you're stuck. At 1:00 AM, with the staff being the judges the best Monkey Boy or Monkey Girl wins a prize (value on average of $25).

Criteria in judging is in order:

* Difficulty of the song pulled based on the singers vocal ability
* Creativity in the performance of the song (funniest thing ever seen/heard was a guy who rapped out "What A Girl Wants" like Eminem)
* Stage performance/effort
* Vocal performance

We do other fun stuff - but figured I'd tossed that one out.

_________________
Despite the internet rumor, Karaoke is not Japanese for "drunk buffoon with microphone."  However, "rotation," is Japanese for wait your damn turn!

Obviously if your shows are packed and have long rotations you won't be wanting to play any games, but on slower nights or in smaller venues they are a lot of fun. Even when I am running these games, singers that don't want to participate can still sing whatever they want, but you'll find that soon enough they'll get caught up in the fun and will want to play along. These are also a great way to get singers to try some NEW SONGS, instead of singing the same seven or eight "Ol' Faithfuls" that they sing week in and week out. The bottom line is that you have to know your show and your customers. What works for me may not work for you, and what you find is successful is something that I'd never do at my shows.

Some of the things that I have done in the past that my singers have enjoyed are:

~Themed segments. For the next half hour we will be featuring (bad 80's, boy bands, hair bands, Elvis, etc) music. Of course you can still sing whatever you want, but if you'd like to join in the fun, sign up for something different

~What were you listening to in high school? Sing a song that was popular when you were in HS.

~Gender bender. Men singing women's songs. Women singing men's songs. Cats and dogs laying down together. It's madness! You'd be surprised how much the men enjoy this. For whatever reason, men are more hesitant to sing women's songs unless there is a sanctioned "event."

~What's the magic word? All willing participants put their name on a song slip along with a word that they think appears a lot in songs. One name is selected from a hat. That person is then put into an "isolation booth" for one song so that they can try to find the song that contains their word the most times. At the end of the song, they will then come up and sing the song they chose. I will pay them (it's nice if you clear this with the bar ahead of time, they may kick in half) $1 for each time they sing their "magic word up to 20 times. The crowd always gets into it, hollering out the number of times the word has come up. I've done it for cash and I've done it for bar tab as well. Can't do it too often though, and I never let them use a word that has been used before.

~Songs from the box. I carry a box of props, hats etc. to smaller/slower shows. Willing participants choose an item or costume from the box, and then I match them up with a song that works with that prop or outfit. This requires knowing your singers pretty well though, since you want them to have fun not be humiliated. For example, my mullet wig could garner a Billy Ray Cyrus song, or some 80's hair metal depending on the singer. My Uncle Sam tophat could get you a patriotic song, or James Brown's Living In America. You get the drift.

~Alphabet soup. For the next half hour we'll be featuring songs that start with a letter chosen at random by a customer or a bartender.

~Songs about...For the next half hour we'll feature songs that are about (trucks, love, sports, sex, money, etc) or have those things in the title.

_________________
Spreading the karaoke gospel

WOW! Those sound HILLARIOUS!!!

How come nobody plays games at the karaoke bars I'VE been to? What a HOOT that would be! !

guess I'm gonna have to do an American Karaoke Tour....

_________________

Well Crystal, if you're ever in Wisconsin come look me up!

Not only do I have a kick (@$%&#!) system, great song selection ,a KILLER personality and a HUGE following (not to mention punctuation!) but I sometimes play games as well to the delight of my customers!

They help to spice things up in smaller venues where the shows get routine, and the customers know what they are in for whenever someone walks in the door.

"Here comes Fred. He always sings Ring of Fire, Suspicious Minds and He Stopped Loving Her Today."

"Damn. There's that lady who always (@$%&#!) up those Patsy Cline songs."

"There's the guy who always sings The Rodeo Song and those other dirty songs. He's funny."

And so on. And so on.

_________________
Spreading the karaoke gospel

Well, come see us! We're sort of part of the 'great white north' too! I'd love to meet some ppl from karaoke-forum...

BTW, we might as well be a foriegn country like Canada - I mean people tell us all the time 'It's awfully nice of you to take American Money' and 'So, do you have a king or a president or what?'.

And I bet those questions come from other Americans. Most don't realize there is anything north of the 49th.

_________________
You can be strange but not a stranger

Yep. Americans. Don't even know we're part of the US of A.... sheesh...

I do have to admit I love it when Texans come here and start talking about how everything is bigger in Texas. We tell them to be quiet or we'll break our state in half and make them the 3rd largest state!

We have to be careful though... after all, our state bird is a chicken:

!

Well last night my show was kinda of slow so I incorporated some games and a contest. It went over spendid and everybody had a peachy time. I cant wait to try it at all my shows!!! Thanks everyone. the end

Big Mike snip~~~




KM snip~~~




You guys have me laughing soooo hard here!! Nothing like a little sarcasm and great humor to get my day a-rollin'!! Thanks!!

_________________
[shadow=tomato]If you want your significant other to pay attention to EVERY word you say::
  TALK IN YOUR SLEEP   [/shadow]  

We don't do games every night or on a regular schedule, but we've used the Kamakazie Karaoke sometimes. Another night I put on the "TV Theme Song" disk and called up everyone up in the regular rotation. Similiar to that, I had a bartender that didn't show up one night (no longer works for me) While I was waiting for a replacement to show up I just randomly picked a disk, grabbed the wireless mic and passed it around the bar while I bartended. If someone couldn't sing the song they'd just pass , or if someone else wanted to sing that song, they's come over and get the mic.

The games are a good way to break the same ole same every week, I also got together with a Coors sells rep here in town and one every few months they show up and give out free keychains, or T shirts, those beer tabs that blink, bottle openers etc. it usually goes over really well, people love FREE stuff. While gimmicks should not be done EVERY night, I think the thing people forget is Karaoke was invented for Japanesse businessmen to unwind aftewr a hard days work while drinking sakui (sp?)
it's us arrogant americans who have turned it into a GD competition Karaoke is supposed to be goofy, and fun. not depressing and stringent and no fun. Singer, singer, singer, singer, singer.........boring.

thry these sites:
http://www.creativeimagineering.com/ and especially http://www.creativeimagineering.com/gam ... ftware.htm - tig