NRG Roadshow Karaoke
The NRG Roadshow can provide Karaoke at your event either included as part of the disco or as a separate service.
Our current song book has over 5000 songs available so no matter what style of music is your choice, you should be able to find something that you would like to sing.
If you cannot find the song you would like in our list then please let us know before your event and we will attempt to get it for you.
Please download our online song book and check to see if your Karaoke song is available.
Click here to download the song list
What is Karaoke? (Taken from Wikipedia )
Karaoke (? from kara, "empty" or "void", and okesutora, "orchestra") (pronounced [karaoke]; listen is a form of entertainment in which amateur singers sing along with recorded music. The music is typically of a well-known song in which the voice of the original singer is absent or reduced in volume. Lyrics are usually displayed on a video screen, and usually change color to guide the singer. In some countries, karaoke with video lyrics display capabilities is called KTV.
What is thought of as karaoke today was popularized by the Japanese singer Daisuke Inoue in Kobe, Japan in 1970 [1]. After becoming popular in Japan, karaoke first spread to East and Southeast Asia during the 1980s and subsequently to other parts of the world.
History
In Japan it has long been common to provide musical entertainment at a dinner or a party. Japanese singer Daisuke Inoue was asked by frequent guests in the Utagoe Kissa, where he performed, to provide a recording of his performance so that they could sing along on a company-sponsored vacation. Realizing the potential for the market, Inoue made a tape recorder that played a song for a 100-yen coin.
Instead of selling his karaoke machines, he leased them out, so that stores did not have to buy new songs on their own. Originally it was considered a fad which was lacking the "live atmosphere" of a real performance. It was also regarded as somewhat expensive since 100 yen in the 1970s was the price of two typical lunches. However, it caught on as a popular entertainment. Karaoke machines were initially placed in restaurants or hotel rooms; soon, new businesses called karaoke boxes, with compartmented rooms, became popular. In 2004, Daisuke Inoue was awarded the tongue-in-cheek Ig Nobel Peace Prize for inventing karaoke, "thereby providing an entirely new way for people to learn to tolerate each other."
Inoue never bothered to patent his invention, losing his chance to become one of Japan's richest men. Roberto del Rosario, a Filipino inventor who called his sing-along system Minus-One, now holds the patent for the device now commonly known as the karaoke machine. Following a court battle with a Chinese company which claimed to have invented the system, del Rosario's patents were issued in 1983 and 1986, more than a decade after Inoue's original unpatented invention of the device in 1971.[2]
Early karaoke machines used cassette tapes but technological advances replaced this with CDs, VCDs, laserdiscs and, currently, DVDs. In 1992, Taito introduced the X2000 that fetched music via a dial-up telephone network. Its repertoire of music and graphics was limited, but the advantage of continuous updates and the smaller machine size saw it gradually replace traditional machines. Karaoke machines connected via fiber-optic links to provide instant high-quality music and video are becoming increasingly popular.
Karaoke soon spread to the rest of Asia and then to the United States in the 1990s. Facilities such as karaoke bars or "KTV boxes" provided the venue, equipment and software for amateur singers to entertain each other.
Karaoke has also spread to the United States, Canada and other Western countries. As the available selection of music has increased, more and more people within the industry see it as a very profitable form of lounge and nightclub entertainment. It is not uncommon for some bars to have karaoke performances seven nights a week, commonly with much more high-end sound equipment than the small, stand-alone machines noted above. Dance floors and lighting effects are also becoming common sights in karaoke bars. Lyrics are often displayed on multiple TV sets around the bar, including big screens.