Shows

PB Idol is Back!

Perfectly timed with the start of Season 10 on American Idol, we’re bringing back PB Idol for the spring! The contest will happen during our regular Thursday night gigs at the 710 Beach Club in Pacific Beach starting on February 3rd. The winner will be crowned during the PB Idol Finals night at 710 Beach Club on April 2. See our show calendar and details below. Start warming up those voices!

Here’s a quick rundown of how it will work:

PB Idol begins Feb 3, and runs 8 weeks (ending March 24). Six contestants per night, two per set, one winner each night. Finals will be held on Saturday April 2.
ROK will take sign-ups for the preliminary rounds here: http://goo.gl/qzHKc (feel free to share the link with others). Contestants will sign up for a first and second choice date, but not a specific time slot (you will be able to select a time slot and tune the night of your preliminary— first come, first served). We anticipate all spots will fill up fast, so sign up now to get the date you want.
Contestants will be judged in 3 categories:
- Musical ability – can you sing?
- Stage presence (see Kristen demonstrate near-perfect stage presence here) – don’t just stand there!
- Crowd noise – via decibel reader (bringing friends/fans to be loud will help your chances of advancing)
Prizes: Cash money prizes will be awarded!
Misc:
- Contestants may compete in only one preliminary round.
- If you sign up for a time slot and don’t show, you won’t be able to sign up a second time.
- No-show time slots will be filled by others who are present that night (first come/first served)

So who’s ready to show us what you got???

Rock Out Karaoke is San Diego’s most dynamic live music performance group, combining the raw power of a live rock band with the fun of audience participation, where individual singers take center stage with the live band! Complete with lyrics displayed on a monitor in real-time with the music, nothing is missing from this unique karaoke show!

Twitter Friends

San Diego’s best live band karaoke is all over the internet: blogging, Facebook, Yelp!, YouTube, and even Twitter. You might wonder why we spend time on all this stuff. Sure, we need a website (or in our case a WordPress blog) and Facebook makes sense for us to post our pictures, but what about Twitter? Lots of folks have pretty big misconceptions about what Twitter really is and how it is useful. Have you heard these before?

“Isn’t that just for teeny boppers?”

“Why do I care what you had for lunch?”

Fact is, most Twitter users are old (insert reliable, well-cited statistic here). And while a few people are sharing what they had for lunch, many more are actually sharing great ideas, websites, and in this case, events.

Thursday, October 28th marked the first (hopefully of many) “Tweetup” with Rock Out Karaoke. A Tweetup is a meetup for folks on Twitter. Now I’ve been to a few of these before, and it’s always pretty neat to find someone who knows your name, logo, and online persona but has never met you in person.

We had the chance last week to not only meet some of our “tweeps” at this particular 710 Beach Club show, but we had a great time when they joined us on stage for some great live band karaoke!

The event was inspired by @gingeranderson (a Twitter “handle” always begins with @) after an ongoing conversation about the TV show Glee. Ginger created the incredibly user-friendly invitation and response website using Tweetvite – an easy way to spread the word about events, register, and let others know you’re coming.

Those in attendance included @c aliforniakara, @nataliewardel (the artist formerly known as @mrsnatalie), @iizliz, @babyblooze (those last two may or may not be the same person), @sugarjones, @socalsally … notice a pattern here? They’re all women! I think there were a couple of token guys there, husbands and whatnot, but who really pays attention to dudes anyway? Ok, fine, thanks to @dannyboy72, @babyface_GM (our Tweep from waaaay back when), and the other husbands/arm candy for coming as well! Hope I didn’t miss anyone.

We even got a couple of sweet blog mentions from Sugar and Natalie afterward. Be sure to subscribe to both of their blogs – great reading on a variety of topics. Also, here’s a video of Natalie’s husband and one of Kara rocking it on stage with us!

It was pretty cool to finally meet some of these folks in person and even more fun knowing that they enjoyed the show. Here’s hoping the #sdrockout Tweetup becomes a monthly event! Thanks, Twitter. You can be our friend…

Rock Out Karaoke is San Diego’s first and best live band karaoke – since 2006. Find us on Twitter and ask how we can rock your next party.

Weekly Shows

Take the stage with a real live band and unleash your inner rock star. Every Thursday night you’ll find us at 710 Beach Club in Pacific Beach (710 Garnet Ave) from 8:30pm til 12:30am.

Email us to join our mailing list to get weekly updates!

For a complete listing of all our shows, take a look at our Gigs page.

Looking for the best in San Diego Karaoke & San Diego Wedding Bands? Check out our special events options!

Thanksgiving in July

Thanksgiving…in July? That’s right! A group covering California and seasoned with a few other states held their 5th Annual “Thanksgiving in July” in San Diego on the weekend of July 10th. But this year, a little spice, a little zing, a little kick was added. The giant spread was served with a generous side of Rock Out Karaoke! (I wonder if I can keep the food references flowing through the entire blog..).

The dinner was delicious—turkey, tofuturkeyduck (or was it called turkeyducktofu? Tofugoosechicken?) and a huge assortments of potatoes, yams, salads. And the deserts. Like whoa Scoob. Chocolate brownies the size of Matt’s bass drum! Even with the smorgasbord, the crowd was still hungry for some live band karaoke. Well luckily, someone set the oven to the temperature of “rock.” (O man, this is getting ridiculous).

No tryptophan here. Singers jumped right in. Two straight hours of sizzlin’ karaoke. All the big hits were plucked, although one of the most memorable performances was “Ice, Ice Baby,” where the duo passed out bottles of Smirnoff Ice for chuggin’.

In the end, the gig was definitely well-done. A fantastic party done right by great hosting and preparation. Thanks for having us, and we look forward to Thanksgiving in July VI!

We’re also available for “President’s Day in October.” And “National High-Five Day in January.” Although our rider has seriously been super-sized from the traditional bowl of green M&Ms.

House of Blues Pub Crawl

What do you get when you combine 300 people, killer drink specials, a 20,000 watt sound system, the House of Blues main stage, and live band karaoke?

The Local’s Memorial Day Red, White, and Booze Pub Crawl to the Park. That’s what.

This is the kind of event where you just had to be there. Photographer, John Audley, with Be Water Photo captured some great moments during our 90-minute peformance; but you really had to be there to believe it. There’s probably lots of video floating around out there – if you have a great clip, contact us and we’ll put it on our YouTube page!

From what we could tell, the girls outnumbered the guys for this event. Not bad, considering we are in Man Diego.

The theme was Red, White, and Booze – sort of a “Top Gun” feel, which would explain the overwhelming number of aviator sunglasses.

From The Local Pub Crawl at House of Blues San Diego

We enjoyed all the stage antics, energy, dancing, and great vocals from the lucky participants. Highlights included the Vanilla Ice impression (by two chicks, of course), the Michael Jackson tribute during Billie Jean, and Chris’ stage dive after Rebel Yell. In the end, we were just stop #2 of 5 on a killer pub crawl. Here’s hoping that at least someone remembered us…

Special thanks to Scott, Todd, James, and the rest of the HOB San Diego crew for kicking ass with the production. Thanks Nancy, Nina, and the Local for having us – we had a blast!