Welcome to our Rockaoke Blog! Follow our posts to stay up to date with gig announcements, press features, festival news and everything Rockaoke.
About us:
ROCKAOKE are the UKs original, BEST and only SPECIALIST live karaoke band, inviting their audience to “live the dream” by taking to the stage and singing with a live rock band…
“One of London’s finest WTF experiences!” – Timeout London
A “beloved institution” – Rolling Stone
Tooting Tram & Social on saturday 6 june was probably one of our best gigs ever. We had some truly great singers. The guys who sang “Last Nite” and “Are You Gonna Go My Way” were fantastic. And the girl (Biz???) who sang “Simply The Best” was so nervous but pulled a mega performance out of the bag which sent the crowd berserk! She was shaking like a leaf but that merely contributed a unique vibrato to her idiosyncratic vocal style. She was awesome!
Band weren’t bad too. After a few holidays and enforced absences, it was good to have Basil, Danny and Jonny all back together again. And Mattyboy was on top form – as usual!
The show was so good we are using it to launch the ROCKAOKE Podcast. We’ll be recording our first podcast this week which should be available for download very soon. 🙂
Things are hotting up in London. More venues wanting Rockaoke, demand that we can’t meet and therefore more bands emerging who do what we do. Oh well! We’ve known for years what a cracking concept this is and it makes sense that other bands should pick up on it.
This week, Cuckoo Club in London and a rare hometown appearance at Sheffield Wednesday FC. Up the Owls!!!
“We invested £4m in an integrated marketing campaign last year and reached 650,000 consumers. The overall Gaymers brand experience grew by 200%.
On Friday 26th September live on stage at BANGERS & MASH @ PUNK Soho, join us for the launch of ROCKAOKE!
From 7.30pm till 10pm join us on stage and perform one of your favourite tracks with a live 3-piece rock band! Join your host for the night Roxy for karaoke, as you have never seen it before!
The infamous ROCKAOKE, the band supporting your performance, made front-page headlines after a performance at IBIZA ROCKS when they were joined onstage by KAISER CHIEFS Ricky Wilson (singing his own hit “I PREDICT A RIOT”) and New York rockers WE ARE SCIENTISTS. Rockaoke have performed at other major festivals all over the UK V2007, O2, Hard Rock Calling and Rockness!!
Take the stage and perform in the shoes of Alex Turner, Amy Winehouse, Sting, Axl Rose, Madonna, Bono, and many many more…
Come down to infamous PUNK in Soho, and take to the stage, sign-up on the night from 7.30pm, from 10pm BANGERS & MASH take the floor with their eclectic sounds, expect live jugglers, bubble blowing drags & the usual face art, face painters & games. Dj’s Emilia & Jimmy Napes spin a perfect mashup of tunes alongside Olivia Joyce with the treats & Rodolfo with the live art.
Don’t miss out!
“Four hours before the Police bade their final farewell to Britain, a karaoke contestant called Steve was belting out Message in a Bottle in a tent a few hundred feet from Hard Rock Calling’s main stage. A middle-aged man in a Stranglers T-shirt, Steve had a gritty voice for a Sting stand-in, but still he managed what none of the afternoon’s paid acts could – he got a crowd going crazy.” – The Times
This is the opening paragraph of The Times review of The Police’s last ever UK appearance at HARD ROCK CALLING in 2008 (01 july 2008 – click here for full article). It illustrates perfectly how ROCKAOKE can be the highlight of absolutely any event!
In june 2008, ROCKAOKE were invited to perform at the high profile and prestigious event to launch WHATHiFi.com at AKA Bar in Bloomsbury. The organisers (the editors at WHATHiFi) wanted to do something memorable that got everyone talking about the event and what the event was about by association. And because of its interactive nature, ROCKAOKE always makes for a memorable night.
There were some very talented performers on stage and also some entertaining and totally impartial celebrity judges. It was a great night!
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See the Beam Blog for more about the party.
ROCKAOKE are please to announce a series of Rockaoke Nights as part of “HAPPY ACCIDENT LOVES… SUNDAY’s” at the new Proud Galleries in Camden. The launch night is 06 april 2008.
See below for HAPPY ACCIDENT’s press release
Happy Accident Loves… Sundays
New Night, New Proud
Happy Accident is proud to announce a new weekly residency at the new Proud Galleries, opening up in April 2008. Continuing its huge success at the Camden mainstay in 2007, Happy Accident is taking over Sundays at the new 700 capacity venue, providing 3 separate areas tailored every sort of Sunday crowd imaginable – chilled out booths for those who have partied too hard, a dancefloor for those who want to keep going and a games room for the energetic yet clear-headed. Happy Accident will be hosting new and established bands, big name DJs, team games and quizzes with special guest hosts and the fantastic Rockaoke, making sure Proudsters are entertained from afternoon until midnight.
Proud’s new booths are ideal for a relaxed Sunday afternoon. Order your favourite food, watch DVDs, pre-order Sunday papers and catch the big game – all in the unique surroundings of Camden’s favourite venue and under the watchful eyes of your favourite hosts, Daisy Quin and Anne Kapranos from Happy Accident.
Later on, the best from London’s music scene will be performing alongside UK and Internationally known bands and for those in the party mood, Happy Accident’s resident DJs will be keeping the uplifting vibe going with the best electro London can offer. Happy Accident at Proud will be the answer to sad Sundays of hangovers, boring family events and Monday looming.
Launching on Sunday 6th April, Happy Accident Loves… Sundays will welcome Jodie Harsh as the Quiz hostess with the mostest and the ever popular Rockaoke. Special guest DJs will include The Rakes, Stunners International, Death Can Dance and Lillica Libertine.
3pm – 12am
At Proud
Stables Market
Camden
NW1
Last night four of thelondonpaper’s musical minds converged on the Albany pub for the annual music quiz to celebrate the NME Awards nominations. There were reps from many of the broadsheets, radio stations, TV stations and shows.
We kicked ass and came joint third (with The Sun), out of twelve (I think, I can’t quite remember in the blur of chip and cider scoffing). MTV2 were knocked from their perch of two-times winner by joint winners The Guardian and BBC Radio 1 who then had to battle it out for the ultimate prize – the NME Awards middle finger – by doing rockaoke (that’s karaoke with a live backing band).
Radio 1 were clearly better singers – hello attempted harmonies on Bon Jovi’s Living On A Prayer! – but the Guardian won out with the largest cheer. Losers the Independent knocked back tequila shots and sloped up to sing the Zutons Valerie as their forfeit.
The perfect “X Factor” style event. Featuring competitors from rival commercial radio stations backed by the awesome ROCKAOKE.
Competitors from 8 rival commercial radio stations jumped on stage with ROCKAOKE @ Sound, Leicester Square for this “Commercial Radio’s Got Talent” event. The high-tech stage set, celebrity judges and host helped set the scene to create an unforgettable experience for both singers and audience alike. And for the band of course who had a great night, made a lot of new friends, ran up an immense drinks bill afterwards and made a very unfortunate rickshaw pilot take them back to their Kings Cross hotel.
Rock & Roll!
Songs ranged from Dolly Parton to Dakota, Stevie Wonder to Spice Girls. The winner sang (and played drums dressed as a gorilla) the very topical “In The Air Tonight”, which was featured on a popular Cadbury’s chocolate TV ad of the time.
Just occasionally we get to fly to places that are much warmer than we are used to and where I don’t have to drive home after the gig. So I get to have a few beers with the lads. And we tend to make the most of these happy days. Because I like a beer. And the lads like me to have a beer because it amuses them so.
So, on november 1st we celebrated Dan’s enrollment as an official band member with a trip to Athens at the invitation of Macquarie Bank, or more specifically by their Corporate Finance London office who were organising the Macquarie 2007 annual northern hemisphere conference. We were going to be performing to 900 investment bankers – and performing onstage with about 80 of them. “MACSTAR” was a Pop Idol type show with 7 groups competing for the coveted golden microphone. And boy were they competitive!
4 of us travelled as the MIGHTY ROCKAOKE! Dan, Basil and me and the awesome Mattaoke who was to steal the show as MC extraordinary in his traditional greek outfit (looking much like this except for bigger feet and a more swollen bottom lip).
The event was a real success – we think! Everyone seemed to enjoy it. Lots of shaking of hands and mopping of brows afterwards. The organisers were really under massive pressure to deliver. Of course we remained sublimely oblivious to all this. But hopefully we didn’t let anyone down.
Of course, then it was party time. As some of us hadn’t got to bed until 7.30 that morning, I wondered how well we’d last. But we did ok. It was a free bar until 1am which was good apart from the predictable problems getting served. The one draft beer tap was playing up and the bartenders seemed more keen on dancing than serving drinks. But soon, the bar tab dried up and in one visit to the bar Matt managed to spend the 100 euro note I’d nicked out of my eldest son’s piggy bank.
What else. Water fights. Basil stripped to the waist and armwrestling with big Jim from the Bronx (“If you come to New York, bring a spare liver”) and winning. And there we were in the spiritual home of the kebab but all we could find were dodgy paninis. That was a big fat greek letdown!!!
But otherwise we had a fantastic time! And what’s more we won – sorry, Corporate Finance London won with their ace rendition of BO RHAP! Forgive the bias please. These guys were paying us…
Finally, please also forgive the photoshop job on the photo at the top of this post. We were in a rooftop bar overlooking the Acropolis and this is what the photo would actually have looked like if we’d been able to explain the merits of backlighting to Michael the random dutch banker we’d grabbed to take the photo!
