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From the Where2sing.com stories:
The Great Karaoke Escape 2004/05

DAY 12

Monday morning, and it's a beautiful sunny Adelaide day. But first to catch up on emails, and so the first three hours are spent clearing the in-box, and finally he backlog of emails is finished. And, with people being kind enough to hold back on their normally chatty emails, I'm back on top of the situation.

Off to see Kath & Randy at Karaoke Light & Sound in Daw Park - turns out to be only a short distance from the hotel, and happily they're both in residence. It's a small shop on the side of a very busy road, and they seem surprised to see me. Turns out Randy had decided that I was headed north from Melbourne, and they didn't expect that I would visit Adelaide.

The shop had been a bit difficult to spot, partly because I was driving along a busy road, and counting street numbers (and thus didn't notice the big sign saying 'karaoke'), and because the shop has a small frontage and is set back from the road. But that also means there's great parking, so my second attempt is rewarded with being able to park right next to the shop. The only other dedicated karaoke shop I've been to is Karaoke Korner (run by Oz Karaoke) in Brisbane, so I sort of expected Adelaide's 'Karaoke Light and Sound' to be in a smallish place.

When I walked in, Randy and Kath were doing something on the computer, and after the initial shock, we sat down to coffee and biscuits. It's what you'd expect of a karaoke shop, some racks of discs, and a fair assortment of equipment ranged around the walls. It's their first attempt at a shop, and they're already talking about moving to a bigger place.

Randy and Kath are partners in life as well as business, and they're an entertaining couple. It's only recently that South Australians have been coming to the W2S site in decent numbers, and part of the reason lies in the promotion of the W2S site that this couple has done - mainly in assuring other hosts of the value of the site. Randy and Kath were also one of the first to take up a free W2S webpage, and a few months later migrated to put together their own website - www.letspartyparty.com

If you ever wonder what karaoke is all about, it's worth noting how long karaoke people can talk to each other whilst not actually being at karaoke at all... the hours drifted by, and a couple of times I checked with them that I wasn't taking them away from other work. The phone went a few times, but otherwise the day was quiet - very different, they said, from the day before when it was busy with people popping in. I got a very good overview of the Adelaide karaoke scene, we compared notes with the impressions I had gained from a couple of other hosts in the area, and I now have the idea that the local karaoke scene is, err, 'understated' (that means 'good', but no one is really boasting about it).

If you're in Adelaide, Randy and Kath have an open door, and you can expect coffee and biscuits whenever you drop in for a chat - especially if you mention you're a W2S regular.

We agree to meet later at Shenannigans for karaoke, so I headed back to the hotel for a couple of hours of website work.

I asked at the hotel desk, and got vague instructions to the shopping centre at the top of which should be Shenannigans. I had also received more detailed instructions from Randy, and it was therefore quite easy to find the huge shopping complex.

Finding the pub was another matter, and although I had in mind that I should head for the top of the carpark, I couldn't find my way to upper floors. So, driving slowly past the now-closing supermarket at the base and seeing a girl who had obviously just finished work, I wound down the passenger window and asked her if she could tell me where Shenannigans was located. Strangely, she looked straight through me, turned on her heel and rushed inside (I checked the mirror - I was looking as I normally do, just averagely scary). Oh well, there must be a ramp up to higher levels somewhere...

In fact, it still took a bit of searching before I found the ramp, but I parked as soon as I got to the upper level, walked up the stairs to an even higher level, and suddenly there was Shenannigans. Easy. And it looks like a great place - and already a fair number of people inside.

Read more singers' stories, and write your own karaoke story, on Where2sing.com . . .

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