I may figured out my frustration with DJing today

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My Dad works an Elks Lodge and a AMerican Legion. On a Bad Night they ring in as low as $300 in bar sales for the night. Good Nights are anywhere from $800 to %4,000 in sales. ...You also have to remember at the legion they are selling beers for $2.00, and liquor/wine is $2.25 to $3.50. ...It's CHEAP Drinking. Those older folks can really drink them down though. The legion doesn't do much in food sales...A 1/2 lb Burger and Fries there is like $7.95 and that is the most expensive thing on their small bar menu.

The Elks Lodge has higher prices, and a higher class of clientele (More well off people). They do similar numbers but typically takes less drinking to get there. At either place a $2,500 to 4,000 night is a BIG NIGHT in sales. If they can reach $2,500 in sales and only pay the DJ $200 they got a pretty darn good deal on the DJ in my book.

At the American Legion, you can walk in there with $20 and walk out totally DRUNK.
 
There was a time that to get a record deal you had to have real talent. That's the time when you had artist that could really sing. It wasn't about a gimmick. Also there was no doctoring a voice in the studio. There are those out there who have real talent but won't get noticed because they don't have a gimmick that will sell. I remember Martha Wash sued Soul Train and won a recording contract. They had a skinny lady on stage lip syncing a song she did. The lady couldn't speak English. So how could she have sung the song? They didn't want Martha Wash on the show because she was a big lady and not some skinny model type.
 
There was a time that to get a record deal you had to have real talent. That's the time when you had artist that could really sing. It wasn't about a gimmick. Also there was no doctoring a voice in the studio. There are those out there who have real talent but won't get noticed because they don't have a gimmick that will sell. I remember Martha Wash sued Soul Train and won a recording contract. They had a skinny lady on stage lip syncing a song she did. The lady couldn't speak English. So how could she have sung the song? They didn't want Martha Wash on the show because she was a big lady and not some skinny model type.

It's pretty much always been about a gimmick. Lief Garrett did not get a record deal because Of his amazing talent. If you can add real talent, that's great. But the record industry has always been about putting out anything that will sell.

The difference is the gimmicks are forgotten over the years and people only remember the true talent from past era's. But the gimmicks were there. See:glam rock, punk rock, disco,
 
There was a time that to get a record deal you had to have real talent. That's the time when you had artist that could really sing. It wasn't about a gimmick. Also there was no doctoring a voice in the studio. There are those out there who have real talent but won't get noticed because they don't have a gimmick that will sell. I remember Martha Wash sued Soul Train and won a recording contract. They had a skinny lady on stage lip syncing a song she did. The lady couldn't speak English. So how could she have sung the song? They didn't want Martha Wash on the show because she was a big lady and not some skinny model type.

Not true.

The '60s Housewife Who Couldn't Sing—But Landed on the 'Billboard' Charts Anyway

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My Dad works an Elks Lodge and a AMerican Legion. On a Bad Night they ring in as low as $300 in bar sales for the night. Good Nights are anywhere from $800 to %4,000 in sales. ...You also have to remember at the legion they are selling beers for $2.00, and liquor/wine is $2.25 to $3.50. ...It's CHEAP Drinking. Those older folks can really drink them down though. The legion doesn't do much in food sales...A 1/2 lb Burger and Fries there is like $7.95 and that is the most expensive thing on their small bar menu.

The Elks Lodge has higher prices, and a higher class of clientele (More well off people). They do similar numbers but typically takes less drinking to get there. At either place a $2,500 to 4,000 night is a BIG NIGHT in sales. If they can reach $2,500 in sales and only pay the DJ $200 they got a pretty darn good deal on the DJ in my book.

At the American Legion, you can walk in there with $20 and walk out totally DRUNK.

This is back in the 90's, but we had a bad that we did karaoke at on Tues and Thursdays. The bar was doing about$1500 each night when we started. We negotiated a guarantee of $150, $250 if the bar did $2500, $350 if the bar did $4500, and $500 if the bar did over $6000

We got it to a point were Tues were averaging about $5500 and Thursdays were about $8000 to $10000. We did that for several years and they sold the bar. New owner said he was not paying that much for karaoke. He got someone new for $125 a night and the business slowly dwindled. It's hard to say that the down turn in business was all the new karaoke guys fault. They had raised their prices significantly and there were several other karaoke gigs now in the area, including us down the street.
 
At the American Legion, you can walk in there with $20 and walk out totally DRUNK.

Absolutely. When I first came to Florida 11 years ago, the typical Senior was basically concerned with three things - cheap booze, cheap cigarettes, and when is my SS check coming, but things are slowly changing now that there a lot more younger people here. As for Veterans, the VA is really down on alcohol (rightly so), and I'd say has positively effected the lives of many Veterans IF they have reached out for help, but you are always going to have a group of hard core drinkers - and any one of us could be one of them if you had also lived through the horror of war.
 
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When was that?
The Monkees were a gimmick..so lets go back before 1965.
Fabian? from wikipedia..Forte was discovered in 1957 by Bob Marcucci and Peter DeAngelis, owners of Chancellor Records. At the time, record producers were looking to the South Philadelphia neighborhoods in search of teenage talents with good looks. "They gave me a pompadour and some clothes and those goddamned white bucks", recalled Fabian, "and out I went."[3] "He was the right look and right for what we were going for", wrote Marcucci later

So looks trumped talent. Gimick? Sorta, yeah.

So what, the 1930s maybe? Oh, wait, singing cowboys...some could sing, some could act and I"m sure many were recorded singing just to sell a record or two.

There was a time that to get a record deal you had to have real talent. That's the time when you had artist that could really sing. It wasn't about a gimmick. Also there was no doctoring a voice in the studio. There are those out there who have real talent but won't get noticed because they don't have a gimmick that will sell. I remember Martha Wash sued Soul Train and won a recording contract. They had a skinny lady on stage lip syncing a song she did. The lady couldn't speak English. So how could she have sung the song? They didn't want Martha Wash on the show because she was a big lady and not some skinny model type.
 
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IMO image is number one. Image could be called a gimmick in some cases.

Beatles - mop top haircuts
Elton Jon - flamboyant clothes and sunglasses
Madonna - pretty much changed her image with each album release
Jimi Hendrix - was accused of using gimmicks; playing guitar with his teeth/ behind his back etc.
Leif Garrett - Just a good looking kid with hair. Justin Bieber did the same thing a few decades later.
 
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It's all just party of your rock n roll fantasy
Are you insinuating that these <--- good looks wouldn't actually get me a deal ??? I've got more hair than Chris Daughtry and can sing better than William Hung. :)
 
Or Spock?
OK .. maybe I'm not Kirk or Spock good, but better than William Hung has got to count for something.....

From Wikipedia ...

Record deal
William Hung was offered a $25,000 advance on a record deal from Koch Entertainment in 2004, and released three albums on that label in 2004 and 2005. His first album was titled Inspiration and was produced by Giuseppe D. It was recorded over a March 2004 weekend with Hung singing vocals over karaoke music. To promote it, Hung performed before nearly 20,000 fans during half-time at a Golden State Warriors game on April 6 and performed "She Bangs", included on the album, on such shows as The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. The album received highly negative reviews,[5][6][7] but ultimately went on to sell about 200,000 copies and reached Number One on Billboard's Top Independent Album Chart.[8][9] His two follow-up albums were far less successful, as Hung for the Holidays (a Christmas album) only sold 35,000 copies, despite a national promotion campaign including appearances on The Howard Stern Show, and Miracle: Happy Summer from William Hung (another karaoke cover album) only sold 7,000.[9] In a February 2006 interview, he said he was working on a 5 or 6-track fourth album,[10] though with his retirement in 2011, it is not likely such an album will ever be released.

Television, commercials and movies
Hung appeared in commercials for the search engine Ask.com, the Game Show Network (spoofing Freddie Mercury and singing an off-key "We Are the Champions"), as well as the mobile phone service provider Cingular Wireless.[citation needed] He also appeared to sing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" in May 2004 at the Rogers Centre for the Toronto Blue Jays.[11]

His first movie, a low-budget Hong Kong period comedy called Where is Mama's Boy (2004), was released in January 2005. Hung played a good-natured village kid who sells Chinese pancakes to pay his mother's medical bills. His character gets discovered as a singer, and helps a woman protect her business from her jealous, conniving elder sister. In the film, Hung played opposite veteran Hong Kong actress Nancy Sit and parodied his own American Idol performance with the song "Siu Beng" (Cantonese) ("Chinese Pancake"), an allusion to his American Idol audition song, "She Bangs." Despite solid financial backing and the involvement of Nancy Sit, the film was a box office flop.

Lampooning his own career, Hung later made appearances in Airline,[12] The Fairly OddParents, Arrested Development, Celebrity Deathmatch, and George Lopez.[citation needed]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0d5eP0wWLQY
 
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Let's not forget the queen of the bad singers ;)

Yoko.jpg



This is back in the 90's, but we had a bad that we did karaoke at on Tues and Thursdays. The bar was doing about$1500 each night when we started. We negotiated a guarantee of $150, $250 if the bar did $2500, $350 if the bar did $4500, and $500 if the bar did over $6000

We got it to a point were Tues were averaging about $5500 and Thursdays were about $8000 to $10000. We did that for several years and they sold the bar. New owner said he was not paying that much for karaoke. He got someone new for $125 a night and the business slowly dwindled. It's hard to say that the down turn in business was all the new karaoke guys fault. They had raised their prices significantly and there were several other karaoke gigs now in the area, including us down the street.

Karaoke always amazed me as to the faithful following. Back in the early 90's I worked for a Karaoke show and everywhere we went there were 50-60 that came with us. Some would sing some wouldn't but you could almost guarantee we would have them any given night
 
You just don't understand "high" art

I've indulged in high art and I've never been able to achieve that level without passing out ;)
 
You just don't understand "high" art
One of the great lyrical lines of all times.. From the Barenaked ladies, from the song Be my Yoko Ono :

"I know when I say this, I may be stepping on pins and needles, but I don't like all these people slagging her for breaking up the Beatles. "

View: https://youtu.be/k5YIJ1pZEBc
 
One of the great lyrical lines of all times.. From the Barenaked ladies, from the song Be my Yoko Ono :

"I know when I say this, I may be stepping on pins and needles, but I don't like all these people slagging her for breaking up the Beatles. "

View: https://youtu.be/k5YIJ1pZEBc
I saw the Barenaked Ladies in Concert 3 years ago .. pretty cool group. I was in the "front row" ..
 
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