It used to be that a 92.3% score was knocking at the door of a gold medal. In this year’s record-setting contest, that was good enough for 4th place for Sound of the Rockies, who presented an amazing military set. Director Darin Drown didn’t get the color of medal he wanted from his troops, but the bari of Storm Front still went home happy with quartet gold.
Beat that caption, PLEASE! The best one gets published in The Harmonizer!
While their set was good enough for eighth place, we have to say that Midwest Vocal Express delivered the finest musical presentation of Olympic male synchronized swimming that the city of Philadelphia has ever seen performed in the barbershop style. At minimum, it was the best in recent memory. Above is the star of the winning nation’s team.
Beat that caption, PLEASE! The best one gets published in The Harmonizer!
Background for the above photo: When Lunch Break was announced as mic tester for the finals, many folks immediately thought of 2003. In Montreal, yucksters Freestyle decided that no scores meant no rules — many hoped that Lunch Break would deliver an equally wild ride. The audience was not disappointed.
Lunch Break failed to show up on stage after their announcement, eventually being shoved and prodded unwillingly toward the mics the stage hands. Barely acknowledging the audience, they sang through “Make ‘Em Laugh” with the most bored-to-death body language imaginable as they clipped their nails, checked text messages and passive-aggressively shouted what they thought about missing the final round but being required to sing. After a massive ovation, the real fun started.
Shortly into their second song, another semifinalist quartet came through the curtains and pushed Lunch Break away from the microphones, eager for their own moment in the Saturday night spotlight. After a few bars, Lunch Break pushed the quartet aside and continued their second song, only to be pushed aside by another semi-finalist quartet. By the time the second song was over, Lunch Break had bickered with, fought or made fun of all of the other nine semifinalist quartet, each of which got their own shot at the microphone. The above picture shows the final tag.
Beat that caption, PLEASE! The best one gets published in The Harmonizer!
Here’s world-famous speed painter Greg Pappas, an extraordinary performing artist who with nothing but a blank canvas and black paint, can create a masterpiece in minutes — all while painting upside-down! He created several masterpieces during contest intermissions, and rarely could the audience guess what he was painting until the art was almost ready to be turned right-side up.
Here he reveals with aplomb his five-minute portrait of 1993 international champ and Hall of Fame quartet The Gas House Gang.
Beat that caption, PLEASE! The best one gets published in The Harmonizer!
Here’s 2010 Silver Medalist Old School in the opening round of competition. There are five gold medals in this quartet — and that’s just on the left side! Turns out the veteran power-chorders were in first place after two rounds, but they couldn’t overcome eventual champion Storm Front‘s crazy antics–and Presentation scores–in the final round.
Beat that caption, PLEASE! The best one gets published in The Harmonizer!
Here’s the Big Orange Chorus of Jacksonville, Fla. hoisting their ample director, Tony DeRosa, near the end of their set. Tony is quite humorous and self-effacing as the Society’s biggest on-stage ham (in more ways than one), a role where he also shines as director of Tampa’s Sweet Adelines Chorus Toast of Tampa and as lead of 2007 international quartet champ Max Q. The song was about finding a way to get noticed or respect after singing directly after the Westminster Chorus.
Beat that caption, PLEASE! The best one gets published in The Harmonizer!
Here’s the director of The Alliance, Dave Calland, getting CPR during the choruses 6th-place “Geriatric set.” Freebie information if it helps you write a clever caption: Dave is also lead of 5th-place medalist quartet The Allies and president of the Johnny Appleseed District. (Maybe Philly was too much for his heart?)
Beat that caption, PLEASE! The best one gets published in The Harmonizer!
Want your name and your work in the convention issue of The Harmonizer?Just write something better than my below boring caption for the above photo:
“Voices in Harmony performs “Cruella De Vil” in Philadelphia. The Bay Area, Calif. Chapter chorus, directed by Dr. Greg Lyne, took 7th place.”
Top that! (PLEASE!)
We’ll be adding one new caption contest post EVERY BUSINESS DAY for the next little while — could be a couple of weeks or more. It could be a lot of fun, plus now y’all can get off my back for the … uh … very light posting lately here on the blog.
Each of these photos will appear in the Sept/Oct 2010 issue (July/August issue is already at the printer, expect it the week after Labor Day). Contest closes when I’m good and ready to wrap up this issue.
Imagine that a Society member or Associate was ready to write a million dollar check to Harmony Foundation. But he or she needs a cause that they are certain would be a great investment. Would YOU know what to tell them?
I’m pretty sure I already know what Harmony Foundation would tell them. They already gave $450,000 to the Society in 2009 to fund our entire Youth in Harmony program and to help dozens and dozens of chapters improve via Director’s College scholarships. And I know they’re hard at work trying to raise money for additional Society priorities: Read the rest of this entry »
A week from today, barbershop’s best groups will be on display in Philadelphia, starting with the College contest on Tuesday, the quartet quarterfinals and semifinals on Wednesday and Thursday, chorus contest on Friday and finals on Saturday. (Buy tickets and get the schedule of events here. Sign up for the webcast here.)
So who’s going to win these contests? Everyone’s always making their predictions online, but rarely do we ever get a chance to take the next step: Take an ENTIRELY MEANINGLESS, UNSCIENTIFIC POLL online. You know you’ve always wanted the chance. That’s what we’re here for. Read the rest of this entry »
The sun in shining, the nearby Cumberland River crested at 52 feet (12 feet about flood stage) and is receding. No reports of major damage to staff homes, although several staff have been stranded in their neighborhoods and unable to travel. Only a very small puddle in the basement at headquarters — we’re lucky to be on top of a high hill here. Still, we’re at 7th Ave., and the crest of the Cumberland reached as far as 5th Avenue (which is at the bottom of a steep hill).
All the results of 14 inches in two days. Saturday, it was wave after wave of torrential downpour, with eight inches in about 12 hours. The rest came Sunday. Previous two-day record for rain: Just over 6 inches.
I went out on my bike yesterday afternoon with a point and shoot camera. Here are some images from downtown, after all the rain and before the worst of the Cumberland River came last night. Here are some shots, with a little commentary. You can see far more extensive shots of the flooding at The Tennessean.
A fun discussion developed this morning when some of us staff guys were taking a stroll around the block this morning. Webmaster Eddie Holt mentioned he’s got a picture of the bronze medal won by the Bartlesville Barflies (our first champs in 1939, picture of the medal here) when they competed again in 1942, essentially in the same configuration as the Phillip’s 66 Barflies. It was just the year before when the 1941 champ Chord Busters declared that they saw no reason to compete again now that they’d won, beginning a tradition that years later became a rule: Champs don’t re-compete, and no more than two members of a champion quartet can compete together thereafter. (Thanks for the info, Grady!)
But what if the champs could and would compete in the years after they won? How many championships would the Buffalo Bills (1950) have won had they continued to compete? Based on their singing level through the 1950s, would they have continued to win all the way until the Suntones (1961), or would The Confederates (1955) have stolen a few? Would Dealer’s Choice (1973) been a true novice champ if the quartets ahead of them had still been competing? How many championships would Bluegrass Student Union (1978) had under their belts? Would they have beat Boston Common (1974-1980) in 1980? Read the rest of this entry »
Lead legends Joe Connelly, Chuck Sisson, Rick Knight, Mike Slamka, & David Harrington
While it truly takes ‘four to tango’, the quartet’s failures and successes overall hinge primarily on the lead’s ability to take command of the ensemble during a performance.
This isn’t to take anything away from all the legendary basses, baritones, and tenors throughout the history of our Society, but when it comes down to it, isn’t it a lead contest?
As a lead who constantly struggles to improve his own feeble skills, I often ask myself, “If I were to step down from my current OR previous quartets and be replaced by one of the legendary leads in their prime, would the net gain be bigger than replacing any other part with comparable talent?” I think yes.
This holds true in secular music as well. Just imagine U2 without Bono… The Stones without Mick… Led Zepplin without Robert Plant. Queen was never the same without Freddie Mercury. And we’ve seen Van Halen without David Lee Roth. Not even Eddie Van Halen’s guitar magic could return the band to its previous heights under Diamond Dave’s tenure.
So to the leads out there, stay strong! And as my hero Mike Slamka says, “Sing it from the heart, or don’t sing at all.”
Chapters are constantly sending me clips and links from news coverage they get, mostly from their local newspapers, and sometimes in local and even national magazines. (The above is a recent clip from NEA Today, the magazine of the National Education Association. They got our membership numbers off by about 6,000, but we and Al appreciate the plug!)
Here’s the deal: What these chapters are doing is awesome, and it turns out they’re only sending us a fraction of what’s out there. But I have no idea what to do with most of these clips or how to share them. We already put some of the best on the front page and news section of barbershop.org and also in Livewire. Is that enough? Read the rest of this entry »
BUT…As a competitor, judge, and staff guy, I get around to many contests each year in several different districts and I always find it interesting how varying barbershop audiences can be with the way they welcome the competitors to the stage. Read the rest of this entry »
As opposed to “What did we start doing that we never should have started?”
This one’s for the old-timers, or at least the historically enlightened. It’s the promised follow-up to my last post, “System reboot: If we’d started the Society today, what would be different?” (In retrospect, maybe today’s post should have come first.) In either case, I’m hoping for some insightful answers and discussion.
We’ve had a lot of wise men among us during our Society’s 72 years. Still do. At headquarters, we have access to every copy of The Harmonizer ever printed, going back to 1941. (And we’d love to digitize all those issues and provide them to our members online. Biiiiiiiig scanning project. Any volunteers?) These old Harmonizers record many trends that have come and gone, some things that never change (style debate anyone?), and occasionally a cringe-worthy image or sentiment from a bygone era that has thankfully not survived to the present.
Here’s something for all you snowed-in barbershoppers to chew on: How would we have structured things if 30,000 barbershop singers had somehow gotten together just today to form a singing Society? How would we be structured? What would we do that we don’t do now? What would we modify or drop that we are doing?
On balance, we’re far too critical of ourselves as barbershoppers. We’re so intimately aware of our own warts and unrealized hopes that we rarely realize that the outside world is far more impressed with us than we are. Ever heard the “Wow!” from a sharp music professional once he starts to become familiar with our educational system, our contest and judging system, our organizational structure, youth outreach, fraternal culture, etc.? (Maybe that’s a post or Harmonizer article for another time!) So I don’t want this to devolve into a gripe session of “What’s wrong with the Society,” cuz frankly we hear plenty of that already.
That said, organizations can be like computers. After you’ve had one for a while, installed this program, tweaked that, added this data, both a computer and an organization can start become sluggish. There’s really no way to avoid it, but all those necessary tweaks and changes can build up “lint” that can hamper system performance. For all the customizations you can’t live without anymore, you still wish your machine were operating the way it did when it came out of the box. Read the rest of this entry »
This is a well-produced piece about Les Weiser, a barbershopper out of California who sings with 7-time International Gold Medalist Chorus The Masters of Harmony. It shows the joy and satisfaction of performing in a top barbershop ensemble through the eyes of a man who has dedicated much of his life to the artform, and perhaps puts into words (and picture) what many barbershoppers also share in their own quartets and choruses.
Keep singing, Les!
Video produced and directed by Tammy O’Connor and David Dowell
(Note: Load times for video may vary, depending on Vimeo.com’s bandwidth capabilities)
Posted by eholt | Posted in Just for Fun | Posted on October 2, 2009, 10:51 AM
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The Barbershop Harmony Society’s 2009 International Convention in Anaheim was treated with a special surprise guest appearance by NBC’s The Tonight Show host Conan O’Brien and a camera crew who spent an afternoon visiting the convention site and the contest venues. In classic Conan fare, his commentary on the entire experience ranged from the hilarious to the bizarre, and at times somewhat edgy and perhaps considered by some to be borderline offensive.
Whether or not the segment put barbershop in a “positive” or “negative” light can be debated, but barbershoppers can agree that even just a few minutes of exposure (free exposure, no less) helped show the world the lighter side of the hobby, and displayed a wonderful cross-section of barbershoppers who represented themselves and barbershop with a healthy sense of humor. Props to Rick Spencer, champ quartet OC Times, Tom Jackson from the VM, The Harmonious Hunks, BHS judge Alan Gasper, Jerilyn Evans in the Marketplace, and many others for playing their part in the segment with class.
The segment even aired out an issue with some assumed sterotypes of barbershop harmony singers, and the convention’s inability to effectively live up to them.
In Conan’s words, “My biggest disappointment is people don’t have the handlebar mustaches, they don’t have the striped vests, the straw hats, and the arm garters… that’s what I came for! And now I see these kids walking around with their backwards baseball caps…”
Was barbershop well represented? See below and decide for yourself!
I’m about to launch into what amounts to a pep talk, and I hate pep talks. They don’t work for me. The emotions fade quickly, and then I’m left with the same circumstances and no more solutions than I had before. I’m left even more cynical. Don’t give me a pile of shiny, trite mantras that don’t point me where to go next.
I’m not pretending to have all the answers here, so why am I even writing this? Because I see a lot that makes me feel positive about the future. You choose whether I’m being trite or not. If I get to be dismissive about empty motivational speeches, it’s only fair that I be equally dismissive toward the gloom and doom demotivational speeches many of us have been giving lately, even if unintentionally. Read the rest of this entry »
We’d save a lot time if we’d all been born with a big scrolling LED sign implanted on our foreheads, one that displayed our brain’s default settings. We would think twice about engaging someone in a discussion about the Society’s future if we saw the following message scrolling just below his toupee: “I am the messenger of truth and light, and I share no arguments or perceptions—only facts. Disagreement proves that you’re trying to bring down the Society!”
Most people are much more reasonable than this, although many folks seem to drop 30 IQ points the moment they sit down at a keyboard. Wouldn’t it be great if we could access everyone’s default settings menu, like we can with our computers and cell phones? It sure would help the folks “debating” (i.e., talking past each other) regarding U.S. health care legislation. The defaults of opposing sides reveal far more than particular policy points: Read the rest of this entry »
The Society just released the Ambassadors of Harmony’s performance of “76 Trombones” to our YouTube site, youtube.com/barbershopharmony38. We were able to work out an agreement with the copyright holder to make this happen legally. AND…we also worked with AOH to make that happen. (Thank you AOH!!!)
It is our intent to upload more performances, starting with some Public Domain songs, but we want your feedback on what else you think absolutely MUST be up there.
And oh by the way, please be realistic. “Every song from every performer” would cost a fortune.
Let’s answer some frequently asked questions about The Harmonizer:
When am I getting my next edition of The Harmonizer?
It’s in the mail. (I finished it earlier in the week while we were in Ahaheim, so unfortunately, the staff didn’t have time to copy edit a couple of sections!) You’ll probably have it sometime this week, unless you’re in Canada, in which case you’re getting it when Canada’s post office is good and ready to deliver it! (We’re working on that, but a lot of this is unfortunately out of our hands!)
What’s in the upcoming issue?
The cover story is about a barbershopper who is little known outside the Rocky Mountain District, but is representative of some of the other great barbershoppers you’ve never heard of. Phil Ricks — remember that name, but if you’ve never met the guy, you’re not going to. He died a few weeks before I traveled to Rexburg, Idaho to photograph and research the story. He was not known for his singing, but few barbershoppers have brought so much harmony to so many people in so little time.
We also have an interview with Mark Hale where he discusses 14 things any quartet can learn from OC Times, even if they have no competitive ambitions. And we have a recap of the slam dunk Vocal Majority appears at the ACDA convention in March.
