rockaoke history

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Rockaoke is coming home! (to The Leadmill)

Back in 2005, Sheffield bassist Jon Short had a band without a singer. This wasn’t an ideal position for a family man to find himself in, what with a mortgage to pay and mouths to feed, so he decided to try flipping this disadvantage into the band’s USP (unique selling point). No one else was doing rock band karaoke, and for good reason – there was no demand for it. For a year the phone remained silent.

Then one Saturday morning in May 2006, the phone rang.

It was Ibiza based entrepreneur Andy McKay who introduced himself as co-owner of the World’s biggest nightclub Manumission. He invited the band to do a season at Ibiza Rocks. Jon suggested Ibiza Rockaoke! Andy bought the domain. And when Kaiser Chief Ricky Wilson jumped on stage with them to belt out a drunken “I Predict A Riot”, all eyes and ears were suddenly on hot Sheffield band Rockaoke and their exciting new concept.

Carfest South 2012-6

The Rockaoke band/brand/concept very quickly became a favourite London club night attraction. Iconic venues like Punk, Proud, Raffles, Cuckoo Club, AAA, Roadhouse, Koko and others all offered Rockaoke Nights. Festival appearances followed, beginning on the V2007 VIP stage with a star-studded line-up of celeb singers and an appearance in OK Magazine. Before long, the band were performing all around the UK and Europe, touring with the Chris Moyles Show, house band at Hard Rock Cafe, darlings of aftershow parties like Kerrang Awards, the Brits and Top Gear Live, getting booked for private parties by the likes of Alan Shearer, Richard Hammond and Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour, opening the show at Chris Evans’ Carfest and… well, the list goes on. 

OK_Moyles_sept2009

10 years and an estimated 2,500 shows and 50,000 lead singers later, the Rockaoke tour bus shows no sign of slowing down. However, with the exception of one charity event, they have never done a club night in their home town. That is – until now….

The Steel City’s music scene is famous for spawning the likes of Pulp and Arctic Monkeys, and much of this history can be retraced within the walls of the Leadmill – Sheffield’s longest running live music venue. Many of the World’s iconic acts have graced the Leadmill stage over the years, including Coldplay, Oasis, Kings Of Leon and The Killers, and on the 22nd October 2015 Rockaoke will join them!

So basically, this is a shout out to all you Sheffielders, inviting you to come along and to make your voice heard (literally) at The Leadmill.

The_Leadmill_Logo_aw

In case you’re not familiar with the Rockaoke concept, here’s how it works.

You fill out a song sheet telling us what you want to sing. When your name’s called you get on stage and become a ROCK STAR backed by a three piece band and with lyrics provided. Once you’re up there, mic in hand, the most important thing to remember is – this isn’t the X-Factor. We don’t care whether or not you can actually carry a tune. All we look for is passion and enthusiasm, and all we ask is that you have a blast!

Entry is £5, doors open at 7:00 and the band will be rocking out til 11:00! Head to leadmill.co.uk to buy tickets.

And to make sure you get to sing, sign-up online at www.rockaokenights.com.

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Rockaoke does The Dam!!

2 consecutive years, 2 separate clients, coincidently the same date each time, and 1 city. That’s right…..AMSTERDAM BABY!!! Word must be spreading about the UK’s finest live karaoke band, ROCKAOKE!

Last year we were flown out to play at the RAI centre, just outside of Amsterdam for the Blackberry Jam and the launch of their new Blackberry Z10.

This year home entertainment specialists Control 4, invited us to come and play in an old 18th century orphanage which is now one of Amsterdam’s premier 4-star hotels, Hotel Arena.

http://www.hotelarena.nl/en

The rooms were certainly better than the cabins aboard the Stena Hollandica. Although surprisingly the cabins on the boat were great! 🙂

This has got to be one of our favourite venues of all time……and we’ve played a few!

live band karaoke in Amsterdam
18th Century Orphanage and home to Rockaoke for the night.

We had the most amazing light display, multiple guitar jams, groupies, guest drummers, inflatable sax’s, solo performances, group performances, crazy fancy dress and our drummer Basil even had a drum riser!! We had everything but the kitchen sink at this gig, and we LOVED IT!!

#only at a rockaoke gig!

Same time next year then?!?!

Rockaoke groupies!
Rockaoke groupies!
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Rockaoke take on premiership giants Chelsea FC!!

Being the UK’s, original, BEST and only SPECIALIST live karaoke band means you get to do some pretty sweet gigs. Now, although none of the Rockaoke crew are actually Chelsea supporters (at least not to our knowledge), being given the chance to play the christmas party for all the Chelsea FC staff at their uber cool, bespoke venue, Under The Bridge at Stamford Bridge was quite a privilege. We even got to play with one of our favourite DJ’s Sean Rowley, as he ripped into a classic Guilty Pleasures set.

We had a plethora of people in their weird and wonderful fancy dress wanting to sing, from the groundsmen to bar staff, physios to merchandise people. We had them all, including a guy dressed as Olympic Diving star Tom Dailey….!

I think we can safely say there was not a dull moment all night. With a venue like Under The Bridge and all their glitz, glamour, Guilty Pleasures and Rockaoke, the night was only ever going to be one thing…..EPIC!!!

A big thanks goes out to Sean Rowley and his Guilty Pleasures crew, and an extra special shout out to all the staff at Under The Bridge for looking after us so well on the night!!

Rockin the stage @ Under The Bridge
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What Happened?!?!

Bloody Hell, how did it get to November. It seems like seconds ago we were jumping around in red noses for Comic Relief at the Rose in Vauxhall. Apparently not, it was 9 months ago! So here’s a quick three quarterly report of the awesomeness that we have been laying down in the interim period. It comes with a tentative promise of blogging more regularly. The aims of increased blogosphere action are three fold. Firstly it will help to show people who care what we do beyond the stages of London town, secondly it will remind us what great jobs we have and thirdly it will stop Danny bleating in my ear about how I never update the blog!

So…in chronological order, here are the brief highlights of the last nine months.

March – Our first and only hen night. 4 lads, 25 drunk ladies = you do the math! Wowzers! Repeat booking please.

April – Snowbombing – 5 days in Austria. 4 performances. 300 jaegerbombs. Youdu  the mafth…..hic.

May – Our introduction to the carnage of Propaganda at the O2 Acadamy in Islington. this spurned a number of national dates that could turn into a lively tour next year. May also marked our first festival of the year on a rainy day in a car park in North Yorkshire. The beautiful people of Crickstock go down in Rockoake folklore.

June – The Wednesday and Thursday at Download were absolute mayhem. Anyone who thinks Rockoake is not a big stage ting should cast their beady eyes at the 1,500 people getting down and dirty in this little number .Big Stage Rockaoke at Download.  We also played Winterwell for the third time which is another of our favourite festivals of the year but for very different reasons. Then there was the Hard Rock Calling after party at Kensington Roof Gardens which involved Danny drinking far too many mojitos and getting his car towed the next morning as a result. In between this action we managed to clock up a 36 hour road trip, taking in a very early morning varsity ball and then a crazy corporate in Harrogate that saw Jamie Archer ( Xfactor man with Afro ) turn up for his PA and on seeing the boys play swapped his backing tracks for a 3o minute improvised live set. Rockaoke’s Longest Day

July – This whole month was overshadowed by the sensational events of the first weekend. In fact that weekend has to go up there in not only the best weekends of the year but also in the Rockaoke Hall Of Fame top ten weekends of all time. It was a story of two double performances. The days were spent whipping up revellers in the summer sun at Jamie Oliver’s Big Feastival on Clapham Common. This included hitting up the main stage on the Sunday, giving singers the chance to perform in front of 4,000 people and again proving that Rockaoke works on the big stage. Big Feastival By night we sped to the Milton Keynes bowl where we twice rocked the VIP section of the Foo Fighters mega gigs. Sadly this also involved getting to watch the whole show both nights from a Grohl’s spit distance. The month was finished in style with a red wine and meat infested  3 day sejourn to a party in a castle in Umbria. It was nearly finished for good after a late night drinking session with the hotel owner turned a little funky. Never again will we ask a wobbly Kosovan war veteran to prove it!

August – Weddings, weddings, parties, parties, V Festival VIP, weddings and more parties. The top of the rock tree in August was a sensational party thrown by a gazillionaire in the back yard of his uber mansion somewhere in Wiltshire. Putting on your own minifestival for 200 mates for a whole weekend is a pretty cool thing to do and in the words of one of the guests ” I’ve been to many parties over the years and this was the best party I have ever been to, and the best thing about the best party I’ve ever been to was Rockoake”. Not only the party of the summer but quote of the decade.

September – Errrrmmmm. Right. This warrants either a sperate blog or a very quick entry so I don’t end up daydreaming. Here we go.  So we played at the Roundhouse and twice at Koko in the space of a week! That’s some heavy music venue boxes ticked! Amazing! Wish we could do that over and over….one day. Just check out these videos – you’ll understand. Rockaoke @ Guilty Pleasures Rockaoke @ Crisis “The Big Thankyou”

October – The Pride of Britain Awards Aftershow party started the month with a celeb fest bang. Unfortunately there were far too many agents hanging around to let any of them get on stage, not that Jon would have known who any of them were. We also started a new residency at The Star of Kings in Kings Cross which we hope will turn into as great a night as the wonderful AAA in Kensington. Seeing that not much else happened in October, now would be a good time to say how the growth of our AAA nights has definitely been one of our favourite things this year. After the unceremonious exit from Punk in January we were a touch dejected and wondered where we could find a venue as good. Two weeks later we started at AAA and it’s been a treat ever since. The owners are lovely, the stage and sound are easily the best we have had at a residency and it creates a genuine gig atmosphere for singers to strut their stuff.

November – We can’t complain so far. A couple of days in Portugal with 700 woman in fancy dress and a weekend in Belfast to play the sublime Empire Music Hall. Those crazy Irish kids love Rockaoke and we never fail to have excellent Craic when we’re there. It’s so good that even our down time is epic. On this occasion a mid afternoon guinness at The Crown turned into rock and roll story time with the legendary Wilko Johnson from Dr. Feelgood.

So here we are, half way through November and about to embark on our busiest Xmas ever. We’re going into battle at over 40 gigs in December alone and if we make it out the other side we’ll let you know what happened.

If you got this far, thanks for reading. More regular updates will be shorter and sweeter. Keep on rocking!

x

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Who Nose the Rose?

“Let em say we’re crazy, I don’t care about that, put your hand in my hand baby, don’t ever look baaaacccck”

As we valiantly sang those words at 11:32 last night  I imagine most people in The Rose, especially those on stage were questioning our sanity.

It had all started 3 and a half hours earlier, when at the beginning of our Red Nose Rockaoke night we rather foolishly guaranteed that everyone who wanted to sing would get at least one song. It’s for charity after all, what’s a band to do. And so we rocked and rocked and rocked until we had squeezed all the sweat and energy from our foreheads, strings, drums, lights, the rockstars, the pub and it’s staff. I’m pretty sure the door said “thank f@*k for that” when I closed it on the way out.

The night opened in style with a huge slice of big bad Jon Bon Jovi. Helena ( the organiser ) and her Red Nose crew set the standard for the rest of the nights rockers by laying down a storming version of Living on a Prayer. This got the crowd going and the first set flew by at ferocious pace with Sweet Child of Mine, Mr Brightside and You Really Got Me building to a Roger Innocenti shaped Simply the Best crescendo to close.

The second set bought around a semi naked rendition of Sex on Fire with Steve George struggling to raise the necessary £10 to whip his top off. Sophie from Surrey came up trumps though and coughed up the cash for him to reveal himself to the audience. She then kindly offered to do a number in the buff for £20. I wish I hadn’t bought all those red noses at the start of the night. We are now very seriously considering making “naked song” a regular part of the show. The performance of the night came from the middle of the second set when Jon caught hold of I Believe in a thing called Love by The Darkness. He grabbed it by the collar, spanked it and sent it home like a naughty little school boy.

By the time the third set came around, the last tube catchers had made theirs moves and we were left with a slightly smaller, unquestionably drunker but nonetheless resolutely rocking red nose massive. They were in for a treat however as we unleashed a volley of dirty rock anthems to tie the night up. Killing in the Name of, Nobody Knows and Whole Lotta Rosie got dusted off and thrashed about, but to be honest, by that point in the evening it wasn’t really a fair fight and we nearly didn’t make it out of the ring.

And so we made it to Helena’s swangsong at the end of a wonderful evening. The might of Starship’s Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now carried us all home on a Red Nose shaped cloud and even now my ears are still ringing. All in all we busted through the best part of 40 songs in 3 hours, raised around £900 for Red Nose Day and agreed that this felt like the start of a beautiful relationship.

This year The Rose, next year Wembley.

Job done.

x

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Rock Band Karaoke = ROCKAOKE

ROCKAOKE on the "Knees Up" stage - Brits 2010 Aftershow
ROCKAOKE on the “Knees Up” stage – Brits 2010 Aftershow

Not only are ROCKAOKE the UK’s most in-demand karaoke band, they are one of the busiest bands in the UK full stop. Around 200 gigs in 2009! Over 1,000 gigs since they started out. A band that have had knocking on 30,000 lead vocalists surely deserve a place in the Guinness Book of Records.

While the band have been doing the business, the business has achieved something that most businesses dream of achieving but very rarely do. Like the weblog became the blog, sometime in 2009 rock band karaoke became ROCKAOKE.  We can’t really claim to have invented the name and we don’t have a trademark on it – others have tried but have failed to stop others using it cos it is such a generic term. But we used it first, we popularised the word in London (and therefore the UK), we’ve attracted loads of press and media attention and now the word is on everybody’s lips.

Recent press in The Times and Cosmopolitan/Company/OK magazines use the word ROCKAOKE. Such is the general acceptance of the word ROCKOAKE as part of the English language that Chris Moyles regularly refers to us by our band name on the BBC – how’s that for priceless promo! And seeing the word ROCKAOKE up large at the recent Brits 2010 Aftershow was awesome.

In hindsight, it looks like we chose our band name and web domain well. It did seem like a good name at the time simvastatin 5mg. But there’s a lot more to it than that. Most of it involving hard work and stuff.

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starting with IBIZA ROCKAOKE

Bar M, San Antonio, Ibiza
Bar M, San Antonio, Ibiza

Back in 2005, we were a rock band without a lead singer. No viable future beckoned. But a couple of us were doing this Bandaoke thing – pimped-up karaoke with a couple of guitarists playing along to backing tracks. A music agency (Live Music Management) had started us off doing Walkabout bars. Frustratingly for us, they failed to see the potential of doing this rock karaoke thing on a bigger scale (i.e. with drums and for a decent fee) and the work was drying up.

So, we put our own website together – www.karaokeband.com and started promoting the concept of rock band karaoke where you get to sing onstage with a live band. Real drums and everything! We got a few enquiries but no work. LMM got us 1 or 2 gigs during this time but prospects were not good.

What happened next was mental!

One saturday morning in may 2006, I got a call from Manumission’s Andy McKay who wanted us to play Ibiza Rocks! The fee wouldn’t be great (cos the cost of getting us out to Ibiza was enormous) but the opportunity to launch our rock band karaoke concept was too good to miss. I suggested to Andy that he should call the nights “Ibiza Rockaoke”. He liked it so much he bought the .com and .co.uk domains. I did likewise with www.rockaoke.com (www.rockaoke.com was taken but we now have that too) and ROCKAOKE was created there and then.

We invented ROCKAOKE – don’t let anyone else tell you otherwise 😉

Our first night at Bar M, San Antonio wasn’t great. Lots of teething problems and lots of pressure. I realised this was a defining moment in my life and didn’t want to fuck it up. We got through it. The second night became a nightmare. Our guitarist refused to come. A good mate of mine Paul Faud (aka Jinx) came to the rescue. For such a scratch band we did amazingly well to get through the gig and to be asked back again. But jesus was it tough! Paul’s van broke down on the way to the airport, both guitar and bass never got out of Stansted (we had to hire instruments over there) and we missed the flight home – replacement flights cost us all the money we ever made from Ibiza Rocks!

ROCKAOKE with Ricky Wilson @ Ibiza Rocks - july 2006
ROCKAOKE with Ricky Wilson @ Ibiza Rocks - july 2006

But we did get asked back. And our third Ibiza Rockaoke night was ace! The Bar M stage was set-up for Ibiza Rocks which had kicked off the previous week. It was amazing. WE ARE SCIENTISTS, who had played Bar M 2 days before, were in with Kaiser Chiefs’ Ricky Wilson who had done a DJ set that night. All of them joined us on stage. ROCKAOKE made national headlines and folks still come up to us and say “I was there that night at Ibiza Rocks!”

It’s not often you get an opportunity to change your life. And when the opportunity presents itself, you have to recognise it and grasp it with both hands. Do what you have to do to the best of your ability. And try to enjoy it. Especially if what you have to do involves flying to Ibiza, drinking lots and playing in a rock band.

We did that – and IBIZA ROCKS became a massive turning point for us!

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ROCKAOKE with CHESNEY HAWKES @ The Empire

EmpireWithChesneyHawkes

In october 2008, ROCKAOKE were invited to Belfast to play The Empire Music Hall – a charity gig in aid of the Alzheimers Society. It was best ROCKAOKE gig of the year!

On 15th October 2009, the band were invited back. Te gig was just as good and just as much fun as the last time. Even better, the band were joined by an amazing line-up of judges – Cool FM’s PETE SNODDEN, West End star and finalist in BBC’s “I’d Do Anything” RACHEL TUCKER and the one and only CHESNEY HAWKES.

The highlight of the night was Chesney joining ROCKAOKE on stage to sing – you guessed it!

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