The School of Life is a global humanist organisation devoted to developing emotional intelligence through the help of culture. Who did they choose to help spread that message on Mother’s Day? You’ve guessed it….David Baddiel and Rockaoke.
Sunday mornings are not a musician’s natural habitat but we managed to drag ourselves to the beautiful Conway Hall to sandwich David Baddiel’s brilliant secular sermon on Fame with two rock and roll hymns.
The subject of the talk provided the opening hymn, with us leading the congregation in an early morning dance to David Bowie’s Fame. We then sat back and laughed for 45 minutes as Baddiel, one of Rockaoke’s comedy heroes, shared his observations on fame; his own, other people’s and the myths surrounding this prized but also reviled status.
The following Q&A session provided us with the ideal end to a wonderful and slightly surreal morning, as a wannabe teenage rockstar asked a question about levels of fame based on his own upcoming XFactor audition. When we returned to the stage to play the final hymn, Creep by Radiohead, we asked asked him to come onto the stage and lead the song.
He rose to the challenge and delighted the audience as he rolled onto the stage, put on his sun glasses and delivered a slightly nervy, but wonderfully tender rendition of the Radiohead classic. It ended with the whole room singing an a cappella refrain of the chorus, before Conway Hall erupted into applause for the fame hungry youngster, who had given the perfect epilogue to David Baddiel’s poignant and extremely funny sermon.
Just a regular Sunday morning in the office. In the words of Mr Baddiel himself ‘I’ve never seen this before, It’s brilliant, you make karaoke NOT NAFF’.
According to new scientific research, Karaoke nights out are actually good for your health, writes The Telegraph Science Correspondent Richard Alleyne.
Researchers found that moderate drinking with a good friend helped improve cardiovascular health with singing also helping to reduce stress.
While heavy drinking is associated with a greater risk of a stroke, light to moderate drinking has been linked to a lesser risk of stroke and coronary heart disease.
Having the social support of a good friend seems increase the positive effect that moderate drinking has on your health.
“In short,” said Professor Takeshi Tanigawa, at Ehime University Graduate School of Medicine in Japan. “Moderate to light alcohol consumption with high social support is good for your health. Drinking with a good friend appropriately makes you feel happy and healthy.
“So drink with good friends for health.”
Prof Tanigawa also recommended karaoke bars as one way for business persons to cope with stress. “Singers use deep breathing, which is good for the nervous system,” he said.
“After singing, they usually receive applause. It is a good kind of social support, and helps in the face of adverse occasions or stressful events.”
The study on 19,356 men aged 40 to 69 found the health benefits of light to moderate drinking are more pronounced in men with greater social support.
The study, published in Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, also found that those with low social support had less healthy lifestyles such as physical inactivity, no job and fewer opportunities for medical checkups.
Heavy drinking was found to be risky irrespective of the level of social support.
Professor Hiroyasu Iso, the study’s co-author from Osaka University, said: “We found the reduced risks of total stroke, ischemic stroke, and total cardiovascular disease associated with light to moderate drinking were more pronounced in men with high social support, probably due to avoidance of unhealthy behaviours and enhancement of stress buffering.”
This has to go down as one of the greatest weekends in Rockaoke history. We’re all still buzzing from the BBC6 Music Festival at the Victoria Warehouse in Manchester. We were asked by the coolest music radio station in the country to be their official party starters on both the Friday and Saturday on their inaugural festival. This was organised to say thanks to the listeners who helped to keep the station on air and BBC6 enlisted the UK’s finest live karaoke band to add a bit of interactive rock and roll fun to proceedings, complimenting the raft of rockstar talks, interviews and acoustic sessions that were going on during the daytime fringe.
The very first live musical performance of the weekend took place on the Rockaoke stage on Friday morning and it was no surprise to us that our old pal Shaun Keaveny was determined to kick proceedings off in style with a performance he predicted would be the festival’s “high-water mark”. Typically charismatic and slightly bonkers, it was a great opening salvo; however Shaun wasn’t the only person to get up and show us who’s The Boss:
The following sets saw us blast through some old Rockaoke classics, but also visit new ground with tunes that had been specifically requested by BBC6. We went Up The Junction a couple of times, Pumped it up with some Elvis Costello and drove down the 2-4-6-8 motorway whilst Tom Robinson himself was watching. He was one of the many musical heroes who we had the pleasure of entertaining and meeting across the two days. Our heads are still spinning from the chats we’ve had with Mark Radcliffe, Mark King, Tim Burgess, Guy Garvey, Steve Lamacq, Huey Morgan and even Freddie Flintoff.
The only down side to the experience is that we didn’t get to play one particular tune that we had rehearsed. It’s probably a good thing though as the Victoria Warehouse may not have been able to deal with a rendition of “Two Pints of Lager and a packet of crisps please” similar to this one that we smashed during rehearsals.
You can see the rest of the musical highlights on our You Tube channel.
We’re already excited about the thought of doing it again next year. Hopefully we’ll be able to bring a few of the Rockaoke faithful along!
Rockaoke’s involvement at the festival will be at the Fringe event, which takes place on the Friday and Saturday afternoons. We will be nicely sandwiched between DJ sets and spoken word sessions from Tim Burgess (The Charlatans), Huey Morgan and Craig Charles to name but a few.
There will also be a record fair, a BBC Radio 5 live special with Freddie Flintoff and loads of other goodness for you to feast yourselves on…!
If you are at the event, and want to sing Karaoke with your favourite live Karaoke Band, then come say hello and rock out with Rockaoke!!!!
There will be a brand new, bespoke set list chosen by the music gurus at 6Music, full of slightly alternative but awesome songs from The Clash to The Tom Robinson Band, Blondie to Weezer plus all your favourite Rock and Pop classics!
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!
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!!
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!!
We have been running Rockaoke Nights for the last 6/7 years now, giving people in and around London the chance to rock out with a real live, kick ass band!!
Our current Rockaoke Nights are at Tooting Tram and Social, Star of Kings in Kings Cross, and of course our longest running night which is at AAA bar, High Street Kensington. We have even been known to use our unique blend of interactive, live rock band karaoke to collaborate with other acts in the live karaoke family Hip Hop Karaoke, and Soulbrew Karaoke for a night we called “Ultimate Karaoke” which took place last November at Scala, Kings Cross.
Rockaoke n Roll baby!!
You would have thought that going into the new year Rockaoke Nights would slow down due to the expense that is Christmas, but so far so gooooood!! We are only just in February and everyone has been on fine form and we have played some of the best Rockaoke Nights ever!!
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 PleasuresRockaoke @ 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!
“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.
“But February made me shiver, with every awesome, barn storming gig we delivered!”
Admittedly there weren’t as many as we would have liked. For some reason people don’t feel the need to launch into the rockmosphere at this time of the year. From the faces I see on da street I think the contrary is probably the truth. But where we were invited, stars were born , legendary residencies created and a little bit of wedding dust sprinkled.
The stunningly wonderful Tooting Tram and Social hosted us for a loosely Valentine themed shindig and as a little band meeting decided afterwards we think this was probably our favourite gig there of the past 3 years. Because it’s such a big beautiful barn of a venue it can take a while to get the whole place shaking. However this Valetine’s spectacular saw revellers bouncing on chairs at the back and hanging from the mezzanine from the first song and then it just got better and better. There were a few contenders for winner of the soon to be invented “I am Rockaoke and Roll” performance of the night T-shirt. These included a 30th birthday rendition of Teenage Dirtbag (complete with rose between the teeth when rubbing up to MC Mataoke’s leg), a guy on his first night in London leading everyone in a rendition of Tootingwall and another pulsating Standing in the Way of Control to finish the night off.
Next stop was a new Friday night residency at AAA@Archangel bar on Kensington High Street. We went for this gig based on a meeting with Mark, the lovely ( and a little bit crazy) owner of the bar whose enthusiasm and excitement for bringing Rockaoke madness to his stage was infectious and he DID NOT disappoint. From the very first lick, pluck and snare smash he was front, side and centre of the party, jumping around, singing and giving away free “Rocktails” to everyone who performed. In contrast to the vastness of Tooting this is a cosy ( not cramped) downstairs venue which filled up quickly and after about 4/5 songs we found ourselves slap bang in the middle of a bouncing rock and roll gig. One of the main reasons this was and will be such a bloody good crack of a residency is that the sound is AWESOME. AAA is very serious about becoming one of West London’s best live music venues and as such have laden themselves with an awesome sound system and some of the best technicians in the business. Phil was God of Sound for our first gig and he was genuinely enthralled by the task of making EACH and EVERY singer sound as good as they possibly could. It’s not often we find that detail on the road and subsequently we have provisionally bagged him for our world tour . This maybe be tough as he was out in Europe last week with Deep Purple and is making Marillion sound good for the rest of the month.
Last but not in anyway least was the wonder of last Thursday at The Alchemist in the city. Technically this was not in February but it deserves a mention as it was the scene of not only a Rockaoke first but simultaneously one of most mega Rockaoke moments of all time. . Manus ( our new biggest fan) had e-mailed a few weeks earlier to ask if we could accommodate a little favour during the evening. So at the beginning of the second half, after the previous singer had whipped the crowd into a frenzy with Sex on Fire , Manus took to the stage. Eyes closed and understandably a little nervous he slipped into Chasing Cars and within moments the lighters were out, arms were swaying and everyone was in love. During the second verse he signalled to his girlfriend Lauren to come and sing with him and she foolishly obliged. As the crescendo of the last chorus eased, our main man dropped to one knee and slightly adapted the outro to suit his requirements. “If i just kneel, If I just kneel here, will you kneel with me and we’ll forget the world”. He then popped the question and Lauren said yes. She burst into tears ( which is rare for an Aussie girl) and so did the band and the rest of the Alchemist. In fact I’m a little wet around the edges writing this now.
And so we march into March with guitars held high and amps turned up very loud, looking forward to making more dreams come true along the way. It’s a tough gig but we’ll play it.
We’re going to start at Punk this Friday and then a large dose of Rednose Rockaoke next Thursday at The Rose in Vauxhall. Let’s lay some down and raise money for those who have fewer chances to Rock than ourselves. Take a sneaky peek at the link below for more details