Dream Karaoke is an elite group of independent entertainers who love karaoke and take pride in their shows. Over the years we have had a very diverse group of customers. We’ve done shows at weddings, colleges, several city and county public libraries in conjunction with the literacy program, a car dealership, church halls, retail grand openings and more. Although we are always happy to accept a new challenge, what we mainly do (and do best) is entertaining in area bars and restaurants. In fact, that’s what we do seven nights a week. This gives us way more experience and selection than anyone in the inland area. Because we all promote each other’s shows, it gives us a really great following too.
One night back in the 1990’s, while I was working at Don Jose’ restaurant in Montclair, a regular at my show by the name of Tim Ruggio told me how much he would like to be a karaoke host. The first thing that came to my mind is “Wow, that guy would be a great K.J.” I knew he had the right combination of personality and patience to do the job. A couple weeks later, two more regulars who I thought would be good at it (Bret Manfred and Trini Tate) saw that I was training Tim and said they were also interested.
Soon we decided to put an ad in the karaoke magazine to help us round up some jobs. We couldn’t very well call it "Bob’s Karaoke Show" any more, so we advertised ourselves as Singer’s Dream Karaoke. Within days after the ad came out, our name was copied by other concerns and a .com in that name was quickly registered by someone else. A couple years later, I decided to shorten the name and not tell anyone until after I registered it at the local and state level and secured both the DreamKaraoke.com and DreamKaraoke.net URLs. I’m actually glad it turned out this way. I love our new name.
Today, thousands of shows later, we still have the same business model. Dream Karaoke has no employees. All K.J.s are independent contractors who work directly for the clubs at which they entertain. Dozens of my regulars have told me of their interest in doing karaoke shows since then. Every once in a while, there’s one who I feel would be unusually charismatic and entertaining as well as very reliable and also patient with a bunch of drunks. We train that person to be the next Dream Karaoke host. I guess that makes me an “enabler”.