This story goes out to all those who are aware of the karaokegoss war that occurred a couple of weeks ago, and of course those who are interested. You will know that it didnt start with me, but soon disintegrated into a personal slanging match between me and a certain other Brisbane host, because I dared to publicly expose the fact that this host had an insider on the Goss website and had taken total covert control of the site. The result of that debacle was that Gary Str8up was banned from the site and it has not gone unnoticed that that host has not been heard from since, except for a feeble attempt in the chat room to bully Gavin into allowing Gary to be reinstated. It didnt work.

Of course this host fell back on her usual tactics of threatening all in sundry with defamation action thinking that it would intimidate me into being so frightened of her that I would refrain from telling the truth - that didnt work either. What other options did she have?

After working my ass off at my Saturday night gig, and doing a damn good job at that venue I might add, I was woken last Sunday morning by a phone call by yet another of this woman's ex friends informing me that this host was advertising MY gig on her website. Being still half asleep the news didnt sink in immediately, so after a coffee I had a gander at the (website name removed) website front page. Sure enough there it was, bold as brass - she had my gig in her gig listings.

Of course Dave and I had'nt even been informed by management at this stage that we had been replaced, and after only 1 gig at this venue before being replaced, couldnt understand what we had done to deserve it. We'd hardly been given a chance to prove ourselves or what we we're all about. We hadnt even been given the opportunity to meet face to face with the head honcho to give him our profile and show him our true selves, which in our case is what always wins management over in the end.

We did however meet with the decision maker yesturday. It seems that being as certain as we were that this host would go after our gigs anyway, as hard as we tried to keep this venue quiet the host got wind of the fact that we had just aquired it, and went in for the kill. We know what tactics she used to pinch it, the same ones she uses to attempt to pinch everybody elses, but I will leave that to your imaginations. She will give everyone the usual spiel about agents, cheap gimmickry, and promising the sun the moon and the stars, (promises she obviously cant keep of course) all the while with a huge throbbing halo hovering above her head, because in all honesty this charlatan is really the most honest, lovely, lovely person you will ever meet in your life!!

Me, yeah I'll be honest and admit that I was gutted at first, I was really enjoying the venue and was confident that we would be there for a long time. But after taking the time to calm down and be logical about it all, I dont blame (host's name removed) for whats happened. Theres no denying that this woman has no pride and is quite prepared to abandon what little integrity she may have had to begin with, not to mention the damage she herself is doing to her already tarnished reputation. But I worked in the hospitality industry for ten years as a youngster and gave it away very disillusioned with exactly the lack of ethics that the management at this establishment has displayed. To his credit, after actually meeting with us yesturday he did apologise and express regret at the way he had handled the situation, and even went as far as to say that if he had bothered to meet with us before hand and find out what we were all about before (the new host) bombared and baffled him with their BS, they would never have even got their foot in the back door as it were. But Im afraid apologies and regrets wont do anything to undo the damage done to my opinion of his managerial skills. Not the least being the fact that we had to find out that our employment had been pilfered on a cheap nasty website. That behaviour is absolutely inexusable and unforgivable, and something in which (the new host) played no small part.

I believe in the cliche that when one door closes another one opens, theres a reason for everything and Im confident that theres something far better for us around the corner. It only took us two months in the business to get the gigs we had without actually 'going after' any of them. Imagine what will happen when we do?

We wish you the best of luck with this venue (new host's name removed) - you're gonna need it.


Submitted by Karma Karaoke Kay on 17-07-2006

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