Got a call today and have already gone up too meet him. Long story short I got the gig for twice what I was getting paid at my last bar.
The customer wants 60's, 70's and early 80's only. How do I keep it in that genre and not offend those that might want to sing newer music without editing my books?
New Bar: need suggestions
You don't.
If you keep the same book people will want to sing every song.
I used to do an all oldie night, that had nothing after 1985. It takes time to make a completely different book but once it's done, it's done.
If it ain't there they can't sing it or even argue about it.
And you advertise it as an "Oldies Karaoke" night. Oldies means oldies. But I left in country songs that made the Top 40 charts too. That way you can still keep the country singers happy. Or try to.
Get yourself a good Top 40s reference book to help you edit. You can also check the web. Or the actual artists web sights to see when the songs came out.
Draw your line in the sand and start deleting everything after that line.
You can delete all your Pop Hits Nashvile and Pop Hits Pop discs. Many of the Sound Choice discs were labeled Hits of the 90s or 80s etc.
You can do fast deletion by artists and by discs. You know who the modern country singers are and by looking at the disc names you can see the modern country and pop songs. I use KJ Pro. It makes it pretty fast. The ones that give you trouble are the one hit wonder artists.
If you keep the same book people will want to sing every song.
I used to do an all oldie night, that had nothing after 1985. It takes time to make a completely different book but once it's done, it's done.
If it ain't there they can't sing it or even argue about it.
And you advertise it as an "Oldies Karaoke" night. Oldies means oldies. But I left in country songs that made the Top 40 charts too. That way you can still keep the country singers happy. Or try to.
Get yourself a good Top 40s reference book to help you edit. You can also check the web. Or the actual artists web sights to see when the songs came out.
Draw your line in the sand and start deleting everything after that line.
You can delete all your Pop Hits Nashvile and Pop Hits Pop discs. Many of the Sound Choice discs were labeled Hits of the 90s or 80s etc.
You can do fast deletion by artists and by discs. You know who the modern country singers are and by looking at the disc names you can see the modern country and pop songs. I use KJ Pro. It makes it pretty fast. The ones that give you trouble are the one hit wonder artists.
My "oldie" book is almost exactly half of my regular book. Half the songs are before 1985 and the rest are after 1985.
So of my 12,000 songs I have about 6,000 in the oldie book using the 1985 cut off date.
I would have rather used a 1980 cut off but I wanted to get a few more people to participate.
An oldie night will limit those that want to attend. It may also take longer to get a good crowd established. You are eliminating half the potential participants by eliminating half the songs.
The best part is the elimination of potential trouble makers. People that sing oldies are far less likely to start trouble. If I could do it, I would do only oldie karaoke nights.
So of my 12,000 songs I have about 6,000 in the oldie book using the 1985 cut off date.
I would have rather used a 1980 cut off but I wanted to get a few more people to participate.
An oldie night will limit those that want to attend. It may also take longer to get a good crowd established. You are eliminating half the potential participants by eliminating half the songs.
The best part is the elimination of potential trouble makers. People that sing oldies are far less likely to start trouble. If I could do it, I would do only oldie karaoke nights.
This is just for this bar. I intend to keep my main book as well for other parties. I decided to put my cut off a little later than midway, at 1989. For one it gets a song that is eighties rock all the way into the mix. The other I just figured I'd just get rid of 1990 through today to make it easier.