Karaoke Forums

I've witnessed a fair amount of karaoke over the years, although I'm a performing musician, myself.

I'm attending a karaoke event, and I overheard one of the organizers say something like,"we need some hecklers," and I went Whaaaaat??

I was never aware that heckling a participant was part of the "concept."

Can anyone comment on this?

Not at my show.

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If you choose to heckle at my show, you better be able to put your money where your mouth is because you have a choice between giving the person you just heckled $50 or getting up and singing whatever I choose for you to sing and if you can't pull off the song, you have to give $25 to the person you just heckled. My singers will throw you out if you don't do either of the two.

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The Line Array Experiment is over. Nothing to see here. Move along.

Extortion? Bribery? Threats of Violence at a karaoke show?

Danny you must run MAFIA HITMAN KARAOKE SHOWS!!!

No, while for the most part my singers are well behaved, they don't put up with any BS and that includes making other singers feel bad about their performances, not that there are that many bad performances.

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The Line Array Experiment is over. Nothing to see here. Move along.

The most horrific abuse of karaoke I've ever witnessed occurs (or used to) at Hamburger Mary's in Chicago. (It's the bar's own system and library, they just pay a succession of people to come in and run it.) Their weekly karaoke show is called "Gong Karaoke". The audience is encouraged (by the host) to boo any performance they don't like after it starts. If the host hears enough boos, he strikes a gong, stops your music, tells you you're done, and calls the next singer.

I was so affronted by this idea I just had to prove to my wife and the friends we came in with that I could pick a song, not a bad or terrible song, but a decent song that would get me gonged. I looked at the crowd, assessed what kind of people they were (young urban hipsters screeching out uptempo, overdone songs) and picked Dylan's "Like A Rolling Stone" as the opposite of what I thought they'd like. Waited almost an hour to sing, boos started with the music, and sure enough I was gonged off only 2 or 3 lines into the song. I felt very self-satisfied I'd proven what an idiotic show and idiotic group of customers they all were.

UNFORTUNATELY, there was a sweet young girl also waiting to sing. She was by herself sitting near us, so my wife started talking to her. She was scared to death because she'd never sung karaoke before and this was going to be her first time. She waited almost 2 hours for her turn, which just made her more and more nervous, but my wife kept chatting with her and assuring her it was just for fun and she'd do fine. She finally gets her turn -- and guess what happened. Booed and gonged off before she barely got started. She sounded fine, but it was a slower sweet song (Rhiannon or Dreams I think) and this ugly crowd just didn't want to hear anything "nice". This poor girl got back to her seat very shaken, and just started to sob. Good thing my wife was there to put an arm around her. Told her this is NOT what real karaoke is like or about, slipped her one of our cards and invited her to come to one of our shows and we'd make sure she had a great night, but she left soon after and we never saw her again.

This was probably 8 years ago, and I'm still upset when I recall what they did to that girl.

been there, that's Chilli's show.

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

"there was a sweet young girl also waiting to sing. She was by herself sitting near us, so my wife started talking to her. She was scared to death because she'd never sung karaoke before and this was going to be her first time. She waited almost 2 hours for her turn, which just made her more and more nervous, but my wife kept chatting with her and assuring her it was just for fun and she'd do fine. She finally gets her turn -- and guess what happened. Booed and gonged off before she barely got started."

this never would have happened at my show! very unprofessional! and I would never attend a show that did this to a new singer!

she should have been exempt from the so called gong show! and that also announced. nothing like destroying a new person self esteem on her very first try!

stuff like this just pisses me off! and I would have made sure I said something to host and owner! and they would have also made known they are going to lose some business from me and my friends!

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It's all good!

Totally wrong in my book as well, but hard to complain when those were the stated ground rules from the get go, with reminder announcements and reminders on the covers of the books. The only point of this had to be to draw in customers to watch people get humiliated -- bread and circuses. Karaoke itself was completely beside the point. What sane karaoke singer would go to a show where you could waste the entire time you wait for your turn only to have it pulled out from under you seconds into your song? And what kind of masochist would you have to be to sign up again if you had been gonged on your first try? They had a full room, so obviously that appeals to some people. At least they weren't feeding people to lions.

But what a terrible thing to spring on an unsuspecting newbie who has no idea what to expect from karaoke in the first place! Well that's why we checked out the show, to see if it could really be as bad as it sounded. We didn't expect to like it or ever go back. Sometimes I visit competitors shows on my off nights just see what everybody's up to. Usually nothing that terrible!

Also of note was that the bar had 100,000 songs on an external hard drive, every brand you could think of, and very badly ripped at that.

One time, I competed in a gong show contest but the singer had the ability to choose whether to compete or not. All you had to do to compete is Mark your song with contest. All songs not marked we're announced ahead of time as exempt from the contest. I think that they only gonged 2 people. It ended with a tie because even with audience applause at the end of the contest they couldn't tell who got the most applause so they declared it a tie and gave out duplicate prizes. I was one of the winners. To be honest for that contest I wouldn't have been upset if I had lost to the other singer because they were good singing and performing. But that's how a situation like that should work. The Virgin singer that got gonged should have had the option to be exempt from being gonged and booed. I personally won't run a show like that with either way of doing it but that's me. I think all singers should be encouraged to get up and sing and it's hard to get a shy singer to even try if they know that there's a chance that they wouldn't even be allowed to finish the song. After all, Karaoke is there for the average Joe to get up and live the dream of being the fronman to their favorite band or Artist.

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The Line Array Experiment is over. Nothing to see here. Move along.