Thursday 15th March

Hello again to another weekly dose of karaoke mayhem. I'm not going to say this again but this has been the quietest few weeks in the Hotel for age's. Now either our singing is that bad that they are all keeping away or the locals have all been abducted by aliens!

They are all missing out on some really good quality karaoke. Over the last few weeks the regular singers have all been trying new stuff which they have never sang before, and have been doing a grand job of it too. Yet again with it being quiet I managed to get in four new tracks this week so in the last three weeks I have sang twelve new songs, which to be quite honest I was very surprised with. When you sing every week you don't realise what you sing and you can sometimes feel you become repetitive singing the same stuff week in week out, but since I have begun this blog, and with Shaun's brilliant stat's page you get to see the singing in a totally different picture. I think secretly we all want to do new songs, and as many as possible so that we all put as many on the chart as possible, although I am sure there is a conspiracy to get The Frattellis to the top of the most sang artist league table!!

I must make a couple of special mentions on this week's comments. Firstly I would like to say a happy 40th birthday to Paul who some of you will know from my wedding night Darkness tribute, as the bass player who was the most like any member of the band! I'm sure he won't mind me saying that he doesn't look a day over 39!! Anyway here is a picture for you all to remember him by.

Paul is the good looking one on the left, with his son Jack at the front. Shaun is at the back and I am the embarrassed one on the right. This was one of the highlights of the whole evening (I was going to say whole day but the wife would kill me!) And if I never had the chance to thank all the lad's properly for dressing up and help in making our day special then I shall now. Thanks guys!

Back to the other mentions. Firstly to Nicki one of our regular singer's. I tend to give her a bit of stick of a night but she's is always willing to get up and have a go, and this week she sang Redemption Song by Bob Marley. Although most of the empty pub hadn't heard it before I thought she sang it brilliantly seeing as she had never done it and didn't even know until she turned up as I had taken the track down for her to have a stab at. Secondly to Andy who sang White Lines which is an absolute classic, and finally to Hayley & Tina who had a crack at the new Sophie Ellis Bextor track Catch You which with a bit of practice will be brill!

On to my songs this week. They were as follows 1. Gimme Shelter by The Rolling Stones (SC8964-11) 2. I Guess That's Why They Call It The Blues by Elton John (SC8134-08) 3. Let It Be by The Beatles (SC7513-12) and finally 4. Ooh La La by Goldfrapp (SC8967-04)

Gimme Shelter by The Rolling Stones

This weeks latest Stones track in my attempt to educate the populous into some of their unknown classics. I'm sure that most people will recognise this music from an advertising campaign a few years back, not sure what it was for though! I actually prefer another version by a band called Thunder and I will attempt to get it on the player for you to hear for yourselves. It's pretty straight forward to sing and as with all Stones track's it has some great guitar riffs. This is a great karaoke version as well as are all the Sound Choice tracks.

I Guess That's Why They Call It The Blues by Elton John

A song that I never thought I would do on karaoke as I'm not really an Elton John fan but I did enjoy singing this one although I think it needs a bit of work to polish it off. I must respond to the ridiculous claims of me being overly modest at singing this song! I was responding to Shaun's comment of " That was quite good" when I responded "I Know" I did think he was talking about the actual song as I know he probably thought it was sang by Cliff Richard and not about my singing performance which was note perfect, faultless in every way and positively the best version of the song I have ever heard. Now I must widen the doors so I can get out to go work next week!!!

Let It Be by The Beatles

Another absolute belting track by a great band. This a really easy track to sing but if you get it wrong it does sound terrible. Thankfully I always seem to be able to sing it well. This is one of the wife's favourites after Journey South sang it on the X-factor a couple of years ago, so I do try and sing it more like them rather than Paul McCartney, and this version is much more like their version as well.

Ooh La La by Goldfrapp

This was my song of the night this week. It was a special one I sang just for Shaun as we actually both prefer the version done by The Fratellis as they use it as their closing song on their live shows and he didn't know I was going to sing it. I did also ad-lib at the end, throwing in some Spirit In The Sky as it seemed to fit in. It is a great song in it's own right and I'm sure I will have a go at it again as it is a song that rock's!

Well there you go then another night of quality entertainment at The Birches Head Hotel that everyone missed! Even though Andy started a bit later due to the lack of punters in the pub we still managed to get in 24 songs this week even though there was only about 6 singers in the pub. I know me and Shaun would get up a dozen time's each but I must admit it makes the others have to dig deep to come up with songs to sing, and Pete, who is a regular, has been doing some absolute belting tracks by artists such as Carl Perkins and Dave Edmunds which none of us have heard done on karaoke before. Anyway on to this weeks Homer quote to round things off.Ta ta for now!

"Kids are great, Appu. You can teach them to hate the things you hate and they practically raise themselves now-a-days, you know, with the Internet and all" Homer J Simpson