Anyone can be a singing star, just step into one of these bars.

WHEN Gemini, Starr and Jewel got up to belt out their favorite hits on karaoke night at Ricky Gene's bar in Lomita, everyone took note.

The women, performers of another sort at a nearby strip club, were serious singers--maybe too serious.

"I had one throw the mike down on the floor and storm off the stage," said Tony DeFazio, owner of Starlight Karaoke, a company that provides karaoke jockeys to area bars and restaurants. DeFazio had tried taking her picture and she came back later, explaining that under her belief system "you could not capture her on film while she was 'glowing,' dancing or having fun."

It's just another tale from the colorful world of Los Angeles karaoke where 400 or more bars and restaurants compete in a nightly sing-along that has keeps the customers coming back for years.

The local industry is made up largely of independent karaoke jockeys, KJs, who charge from as little as $125 for a four-hour gig. Bar owners also pay several hundred dollars annually to the American Society of Composers Authors and Publishers and Broadway Music Inc., the agencies that collect licensing fees on behalf of music authors. The fees cover any music, including karaoke.

"You're always looking for something new," said Merrill Falla, owner of the San Franciscan restaurant in Torrance, which started karaoke nights six years ago and quickly added to what had been a crowd of over-50 regulars. "It brought in more people and different people, mostly in their late 20s and early 30s. At first the regulars had a little bit of resistance. But there's so much variety in karaoke, they found songs they liked."

For 23-year-old Lisa Stokx, the thought of performing before a group of strangers was at first terrifying. "When I started, I would take the microphone and go to the back of the bar and hide in the corner because I was so terrified," she said.

Stokx has been singing country songs at the Scarlet Lady Saloon in Culver City about twice a week for two years now. "There was a lot of people being supportive and the KJ was great, so with everybody's help, I got over it."

She, found, however, that there was a less benign side to the pastime: the cutthroat atmosphere of the competition circuit, complete with semi-professional or even trained singers who work the contests for cash prizes.

"In the competition, you vote for each other, so you always get the cliques, fighting for spots, it's like karaoke 'Survivor,'" she said. "I assumed that because it was my home bar, I would win. I didn't make it, and I was crashed. A guy told me, 'We vote for each other.'"

Karaoke is a contraction of the Japanese words kara (empty) and oke (orchestra). What started as a call-in program to a Japanese radio station had by the early 1980s evolved to its present form, where participants sing along with pre-recorded tracks. Popular songs are licensed and re-recorded without the vocal tracks, and singers follow lyrics displayed on a TV screen.

DeFazio charges from $150 to $200 each for the 10 shows his crews put on each week. He splits the fee with the KJs--better money than he earns in his day job as a painter for the Los Angeles Unified School District.

He must invest in a song library and sound systems: vending machine-sized cabinets on wheels with a mixer/amplifier, a double-disk karaoke player, and a compressor that brings unruly amateur voices into the milder mid-ranges.

Songs cost about $1 a piece, and to be competitive, about 10,000 are needed, DeFazio said. New computer-based systems loaded with 15,000 or more digital song files run about $8,000.

"We've been doing karaoke for 30 years," said Walley Quon, who owns the 50-year-old Quon Brothers Grand Star Restaurant in Chinatown with his brother Frank. "It's added at least 20 percent to our business."

Though bar owners generally agree karaoke boosts liquor sales, it's not always enough.

For years, free karaoke drew crowds to Farmers Market on Saturday nights, but guests did not spend enough money to warrant the added costs of security, after-hours cleanup, the karaoke host and equipment rental. In March, the eight-year run ended.

"It was fun," said Stan Savage, director of marketing for A.F. Gilmore Co. and Farmers Market, who is also co-owner of the market's two bars, E.B.'s Beer & Wine and 326 Beer & Wine. "Toward the end, we just got the same cast of characters coming for the karaoke every week."