What the hell is this craze called "dueling pianos"?  I got my first taste of dueling pianos when I visited Las Vegas for the first time back in 1996.  We stopped into the brand new New York, New York Casino and Hotel and went to the Bar at Times Square which is located inside the massive casino modeled after the city skyline of New York, New York.  The Bar at Times Square is a tiny little square shaped dueling piano bar with no tv's, pool tables or games of any kind - in fact, the ONLY thing in this dueling piano bar (besides the bar) is a set of grand pianos set up back-to-back smack in the middle of the room.  As it turned out, this is the ONLY way to set up a dueling pianos environment successfully (more on this later).

Anywho, we grabbed a table and waited for the show - or whatever it was these freaks were going to do.  The drinks at the dueling piano bar were a modest $9 a piece ( I think we were drinking margaritas - yee haw!) so my mom nursed her drink for like three hours whilst I proceeded to drink one about every 15 minutes - hell, we ARE in Vegas right!  Money is no object.

Soon, a couple of early middle aged blokes walked in dressed in tuxedos and proceeded to fire up the show.  There were wireless microphones and cheesy little monitors on top of each piano - one of the guys grabbed a mic and started to explain to the audience how the dueling pianos system worked... "ok folks if you look on your tables you will see these little pieces of paper and some pencils, all you gotta do is write down a song request for us, fold it up inside a fifty dollar bill and throw it up on the piano.  If we know your song we'll play it" - (he was actually probably a lot more humorous during the intro, but again, I had about 15 doctor pepper's before they went on.

And so it went - the people in the dueling piano bar (now becoming super packed - not a table left in the house) started to chuck their song request papers (most with cash folded inside) up on the pianos.  The piano players sat down and began to take turns picking up the request papers and playing (or attempting to play) the songs written inside.  From what I could gather, they were picking up the big dollar bill requests first (duh!).  And thus it went on, one piano player would pick up a request and go to work while the other guy either looked through the requests on his side of the pianos or maybe even joined in the fun and "beatboxed" along with his partner's performance.  Things picked up and started to get a little crazy, girl's came up with birthdays, etc. and the dueling piano guys would find different ways to embarrass them.  The piano players were jumping up on top of the pianos and throwing beer and yelling and rapping and basically going wild.  The dueling piano bar was PACKED man, and the pianos were piled high with cash and requests.

We stayed for about 2 hours or so and by that time the first two piano players left and were replaced immediately by a second pair of piano players.  As you can imagine, the second two piano players ended up playing a lot of the same songs as the previous two as the crowd had turned over by then and there was a lot of new blood and new / old requests.  I think "Brown Eyed Girl" by Van Morrison was played about 3 times while we were there!  It soon got late and we got out of there - dueling pianos is best taken in small doses that's for sure.  After about 2 hours, you've seen what you're going to see and after that it all kind of "loops" and starts over.  If you are going to hire the dueling pianos for an event, be sure and keep that in mind - don't book them for more than about 90 minutes or it starts to get old.

So that was my first experience with dueling pianos and a dueling piano bar.  I was very impressed and I went home with some new ideas about how to entertain an audience.  Thanks guys - whoever you were - who introduced me to what is now earning me a living!

Here is a video of the dueling pianos from the dueling piano bar at the  Bar at Times Square - Video