Whenever I see karaoke advertised for the first time on the front of a bar, and if I have the time, I stop in just to check it out. A few days ago I stopped by a small place that had a "karaoke tonight" sign on the door. There were only a couple of cars in the lot. I've seen some very weak karaoke systems in my time but this one was unbelievable.
Picture this. Two old beat up home 2-way stereo speakers with 10 inch woofers driven by an old home stereo receiver with a cheap karaoke disc player sitting on top. Two wired mics that I'm sure were plastic (probably came with the karaoke player). One songbook and a karaoke song selection of about 300 songs.
It was all I could do to keep from laughing out loud. I asked the very bored bar tender how much they paid for top quality entertainment like this. He grinned and said "he does this for free drinks but I don't think we can afford him for much longer".
Now this was funny
I stopped in one night at one of the bars we play at to drop off some posters and was surprised to see they had karaoke that night and it was about the same a couple who own a pawn shop took the mix matched speakers/quitar amps and combined them for what sounded like the old am radio mounted on the tractor fender. they had no song book just the inserts from the cd's taped to a poster. They still had the price tags on their speakers. I asked the owner how much he was paying them. They are doing it for 50 dollars a night. I thought it was about a hundred to much. To find out a year later they are one of my biggest competitors. They have invested alot of money since. They problem is they still don't understand how to adjust their equipment. But they have some of the best stuff. It just shows we all have to start somewhere.
