My Life As: A Karaoke DJ
Andrew Holguin has had a lot of nightlife jobs, from a street team flyer guy to lighting tech. For the past decade, however, he has helmed the karaoke party Ground Control, which currently goes down on Monday nights at Complex in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Glendale. When he started, Holguin had no experience as a karaoke jockey; he just got involved because a promoter pal advised him to make sure he did something different from the rest of the scene.
Eventually, he gained access to a massive archive of tracks, and what started out as a karaoke night for goths has become an event where partygoers can sing anything from Dresden Dolls to Basement Jaxx to their own, original songs.
Here, Holguin talks about his life as a KJ.
Were you into karaoke before becoming a KJ?
I wasn’t. I had gone and done karaoke once. I came up with the idea, wanted to do it, and after thinking about it and doing some soul-searching, I thought, “I’m not going to ask any of my friends to do it if I haven’t done it.” My friend Marshall helped me get started, as he was a big karaoke aficionado. We went out to Liquid Kitty and I sang “Light My Fire” by the Doors. That was my first karaoke song. It scared the shit out of me. He even did it with me, because I was scared to do it by myself. I did it and went, “Wow, this is really easy.”
The other thing I realized is that if you can sing the Doors, you can sing any Billy Idol song, and vice versa. The first song I did at Ground Control was “Rebel Yell.” I started getting into it. I enjoyed it. I don’t consider myself to be a particularly good singer, but that’s kind of the fun of it.
I never want it to be about quality of singing. Like, “Oh my God, I’m a great singer.” I never wanted it to be about that stuff. I wanted it to be about having fun. People would get up and have these really interesting performances of songs, which I thought was better than, “Oh my God; I sing great.”
How did your party take off?
In that first year, Ground Control decided what it wanted to be, and what it wanted to be was weird and fun. We would have people come in who are amazing singers and people will respectfully clap for people and respect the fact that people were amazing singers. Then somebody would get up and have a not-so-good singing voice at all, but would be into whatever it was they were singing and the crowd would go wild. They still do. That’s one of my favorite things—seeing somebody who doesn’t necessarily sing well get up and have fun anyways. That’s my favorite part of doing this.
Do you ever get professional singers coming in?
We call them ringers. We get people who are really, really good. An interesting story on that: My friend Forest started coming to get over her inability to speak in front of people. She’s an amazing singer, so that wasn’t a problem. She got over that fear and was able to let loose. She brought a friend of hers who was a classically trained opera singer and was afraid of crowds, which kind of makes it hard to have a career as an opera singer if you’re afraid of getting in front of people. She came out to Ground Control and she brought her CDs. You could see the wine glasses and the beer glasses at the bar oscillating whenever she would really hit those notes.
She just kept coming back, and she did it more and more, and she got more comfortable with doing it. She started doing a cappella stuff. Eventually, after all that, she decided that she wanted to do stuff that she was familiar with that she didn’t have a whole lot of chances to do before because of all of her training and all of her work. It turns out that she likes ‘80s glam metal. She would do “Cherry Pie” or just about any Scorpions or Mötley Crüe song. It was hilarious to see some of the stuff she would pick. To see her fall into that after being so structured and so intent and so focused on doing the opera stuff, she would just take over the stage when she did the glam metal stuff.
Is there a time of the night when people sign up more?
There’s a curve. At the beginning of the night are the hardcore regulars that are here all the time. They want to sing, and they know that if they get here when the doors open, most people don’t show up for another hour. We open at 8. Most people don’t even start showing up until 9. There are a handful of people that roll in here and immediately throw in their song tickets. Half of them are staff, apparently. They get in, and they get started.
Then there’s a slow ramp-up of people trickling in. Usually, during the course of that first round, people are getting up and singing for the first time. We have an amazing bartender, which does affect the curve. Around 10:30, 11:00, the courage starts setting in, and people start signing up more. First-timers really start jumping in around that time.
What are the most popular songs?
That can change from week to week. We’ve got every Depeche Mode song. We’ve got every David Bowie song. As it turns out, just about every goth who comes in to do karaoke either wants to sing David Bowie or Depeche Mode. It’s tough, because people intentionally stay away from the standards. The odds of actually hearing “Hotel California” or “Freebird” or “Stairway to Heaven” at Ground Control are pretty low. We’re so all over the map.
Have you ever had a karaoke mishap onstage?
All the time. Regularly. To the point where it became a chant. Something would go horribly awry—we would lose sound, the power would go out, a laptop would die, amps would go out, everybody would of course start making noise. Honestly, it’s not a Ground Control until something goes wrong.
Do the karaoke performances change as you hit last call?
Oh, God, yes. One of my all-time favorite nights was with my host, Eric Schreeck. We were all pretty hammered by the end of the night. There was a handful of people. This was at our old location, and we had couches set up at the front of the stage, which was really comfy. We had three couches kind of semi-circle around the stage. That was the prime seat.
Schreeck was sufficiently hammered and really read the crowd perfectly and got up and did “Anarchy in the U.K.” While he was doing it, he walked out, took a big step, and stepped on one of the armrests of the couches while people were sitting there, walked along the back. Back then I had really long mic cords; this is part of the reason why I don’t have really long mic chords anymore.
If you could imagine the Joker doing “Anarchy in the U.K.,” this was very reminiscent of that—just his posture and the ominous elegance with which he moved from along the back of the couch, walked across one of the tables. The table actually started falling part while he was walking across it. He just flowed across it like it was nothing, while the table was falling apart. Stepped over to one of the bar stools and promptly wound up finishing his song while sitting on top of the bar. We ended the night there. It was perfect. It was everything it should have been.
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