rate of pay around the country.

[alanross]

Originally Posted by StudioPro

...If you sing more than one song a night then you have an ego problem. Your job as stated before is to motivate people to get up and sing and have FUN doing it.

...Ok what if i have no singers you may ask. then here is what you do 1. Play some dj music then go into the audience and introduce yourself strike up a conversation and gain the confidence of people that don't know you.

Great advice for most areas, but there are exceptions to every rule and I get a little irked when anyone talks in absolutes...

It's not an ego problem for the host to have the same opportunity to sing as those for whom he is working. By all means a host should not sing more than once in a rotation, but they should sing at the top of each rotation. There is no reason why the host, who is doing all the work, should be given less of a chance to sing than the patron in the bar. Being fair, why should the host be required to sacrifice when they are doing all the work? That's not an ego problem, that's basic fairness. Why should he/she have to become a martyr?

After working in the DJ/KJ business for over 26 years (1979 - Present) I've learned a lot about audiences and while there are similarities in all audiences, every situation is unique. Not all rules work for all places. For example, in a tourism dominant market, such as the beach resort area in which we perform, audiences are more interested in being entertained than being the entertainers. Simply playing DJ music is boring, the audience can go anywhere and see that. When you have no singers, your audiences will respond much quicker to the void if the host continues to sing until someone stops them by turning in a request. I don't care how good a vocalist you are - if you are the host and you sing a couple of songs, back to back, to fill a "no singer's" void, someone's gonna turn in a request. There are two main reasons someone will turn in a request if the host keeps singing, 1) To stop the host from singing another song or 2) To take advantage of the lull in singers and get more songs in for themselves.

If you are running your shows right, there should be very few nights that a host should have to sing more than once each rotation. Your shows will be packed and there will be a waiting list before you even start the show. One of our shows has been in the same nightclub for over ten years - seven nights a week - and we still have people turning in request slips before the show starts. During the summer, we have more people than you can imagine here on the beach and of course the shows are packed. But during the off-season, when the beach becomes a ghost town, our shows still draw in all the locals.

Even during the off-season, it's extremely rare our hosts have to sing more than once at the beginning of the night to get things started, then it's off to the races. During any given year, there are maybe 6 nights out of 364 when the host would have to sing more than one song to fill a void.

The overall entertainment value of the show is directly dependent upon the personality of the host, selection of music, quality of the sound and quality of the vocalists that come to your shows. The host is most important because they can either excite, motivate or alienate a crowd. The trick is finding the balance for your area and your audiences.

If the formula for successsful shows was based on very black and white principles that could be repeated consistently, then everyone would have a great show all the time. The problem with absolutes is that we live in a world full of colors and black and white absolutes will always fail.

I'd be willing to bet that more than anything else, the host StudioPro felt was "the best" was extremely talented at reading his audience and knowing how to play to them. For DJs, the subtle difference between playing "Brown Eyed Girl" after "Turn The Page" and playing it before is lost on inexperienced DJs. Hosts who have mastered these subtleties are much more in demand because although the audiences may not be able to explain why, they just know which hosts have "the touch" and which don't. Being able to read your crowd makes all the difference and you can't write that down as an absolute.