Crisis!

We've been planning a big neighborhood wide July 4th party, which some of you've already seen me blubbering about and one of our committee members that is not only one of the yards hosting it but was providing the karaoke equipment had her baby yesterday, two weeks early and less than a week before our party!

I'm happy for her of course, but with a brand new newborn she's not going to want to be fussing with this party, which we're moving to Sunday, so it's just five days away. We can find yard space for it, but we're without a karaoke setup... and we've widely advertised that a karaoke stage will be there.

We don't have to have a karaoke screen since I just have plain music CD's with a hard copy lyric book. I have a microphone with stand, that has a small ear-phone type plug (I use it to record my songs on my PC), but I need an amplifier with CD player... very cheap and very quick!

Any ideas?????

She can't lend her karaoke stuff???

She probably would but it's her husband's professional equipment... he was going to man the karaoke station himself to watch over it. He barely knows the rest of us to trust us with it... in fact I've only met him twice! I don't blame him, I wouldn't trust several thousands of dollars worth of equipment with strangers!

Does he have a friend who can pitch in and do it for him?

hmmm... not much room to type around fat @$$ Mookie Mika, who just flopped in my lap! LOL

I'm counting their equipment out of the picture, I'm about 80% sure we'll have to find an alternate setup so we need to be prepared! He might be hard pressed to find a friend willing to play unpaid DJ to a bunch of strangers on a holiday (it's still possible we're having it on the 4th).

We could take our laptop, fitted with my external soundcard & speakers, but again, lots of expensive sensitive equipment and hubby vetoed the idea... unless we fall short and have nothing, I might be able to beg it out of him but even I would rather not. I'm a little freaked that our party plans are falling apart!!

I've seen them for sale for like $50 at places like Toys R Us and Radio Shack. If you want to rent it, check into someplace like Guitar Center or other music store. If they don't rent it out, they can probably tell you where you can find it. As far as DJing, you can probably do it yourself, or get a few people to go in shifts. Just get the equipment the night before and have a mini-party to familiarize yourself with the equipment.

I looked at those little $50 jobs... problem is the party is outside so it needs to have some power and one of those won't cut through the outdoor and people noise. Looked around for local rental, haven't found one yet. We're willing to purchase a shelf-unit stereo (the ones that look like big boom boxes) if we knew for sure it would work as an amp for the mic & cd at the same time, since we could keep it to use for music later- mine blew up a while back. I used to see them at stores several years ago with separate mic volume controls, but I haven't seen one at Walmart or Best buy in several years.

No advice for you but sending luck your way!

do you have a guitar center in your area? they have tons of stuff. (steve works for one) when hes awake i will ask him.....A) if guitar center rents. and B) what you would need for outdoors hes a muscian..and a cheap one at that hehe