South Sydney Leagues Club

Rancour at the Rabbitohs - South Sydney Leagues' Club brings back Friday night karaoke.

We had often heard that karaoke used to be good at the South Sydney Leagues' Club, Chalmers St Redfern Ph 93194156, so on hearing it had returned on Friday nights we check it out.
Being locals, one of us (read myself, nominated and selected on the Chair's Deciding Vote) have to disgorge $11 (no change) to join (for the remainder of the year only) before we could enter the Sanctum Sanctorum of cacophonous poker-machines and mindless meat raffles for the Brain Dead.

For the dining experience, in preference to the the rather stuff and expensive-looking Rocks Brasserie, we choose The Chinatown restaurant which, it emerges, specialises in dishes smothered in sticky red gock bequilingly described as 'Peking Sauce'. The special entrée 6 towers prawns ($11) is fried bread with something pale anonymous and bland on it, served, of course with Gooey Red Sauce. Main courses are beef and pork, smothered in The Gooey Red. The Evans and Tate 2003 Chardonnay ($19) helps dissolve some of the fat and we escape to the Karaoke well in time for the advertised 7.30 commencement (confirmed twice by phone during the day).

But we needn't have hurried, at that time setting up has barely begun and a cavernous auditorium full of rough trade seem intent on spending $50 on raffle tickets to win a few thin sausages surrounding a nondescript chicken.

The canaille love to die young, every table and chair lies in the slipstream of the ubiquitous smoker anxious to share their poisons with the hapless abstinent. After moving our chairs several times we find a relatively unpolluted spot near the stage, but the table next to us lights up... This is a seriously unhealthy place to be. While the mindless raffling goes on and on, with interminable patter by some adenoidal blonde non-personality who must be very, very desperate for a gig.

Perhaps a beer will lighten my mood of doom and despair. I approach the bar and am met by a titanic stench. I look for the offending deposit, nothing to see, and try moving from one end of the lengthy bar to the other but there's no escape. If one wants to purchase a beer at the South Sydney Leagues Club one must imbibe an atmosphere of standing in a puddle of vomit to do so. Needless to say the bar staff are surly and why wouldn't they be I reflect.

Gasping, I return to the table and through a cloud of passive smoke try to peruse the songlist while Gatty's Karaoke Show Ph 0417 424 430 is spending the hour - the hour after the scheduled commencement - setting up including a prodigious sign saying....Gatty's Karaoke Show. I find four songs and approach the KJ Andrew Gatt and his minion Brendan and discuss my choice. They approve 'Evie' as my second song, and when I remind them it's long, KJ Gatty says, 'that's OK, we've got to 11.30...'. Yeah, right.

Further EEG flatlining goes on as various punters try to unlock some box (none successfully) and finally at 8.30 - 2 ½ hours after our expectant club entrance - there's some music. A few videos, then KJ Gatt sings 'Achy Breaky Heart'. The sound is good, but no echo will mean the voice will have to be nailed. Karlene is called for her party-piece 'Unchain My Heart' and this confirms my suspicions and I dash over to Brendan to inquire if he has echo, (he does) and could I have some when I sing?

I am called next for 'Lonely Days' and am disconcerted when KJ Gatt's announcement is a pejorative 'Sounds like a ballad..'. As I receive the mike I ask him 'Do you know it?'. He doesn't. I reflect as the song commences, if he doesn't know the song, why the little squirt of ridicule before it's even commenced? When the song concludes, he doesn't acknowledge his error, and I can feel the beginnings of dislike for this bumptious little time-waster.

Lisa is next, and again the thin sound in this huge auditorium without any sympathetic work from Brendan renders her genuine efforts to sell 'Hey Big Spender' embarrassing. Terry 'Dream' obviously a local (is his ventriposity Flatus, Fluid, Foetus, Faeces, Fat or an ovarian cyst?) is followed by Patrick (looking like Woody Allen on a bad-hair day) who does 'Bad Moon Rising' with energy. Blossom (now sadly gone to seed) does Disco Inferno, but even her obvious enthusiasm cannot compensate for a dead, cavernous sound.

So that's 5 songs, 20 minutes of karaoke and - . . .(full story on where2sing.com)

Read the rest of this exclusive Karaoke Gig Review, and find whether this karaoke gig is still running on Where2sing.com . . .

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