Pitch Perfect: The Quest for Collegiate a Cappella Glory (28 page)

The thing is, in 2007, even Don Gooding—the owner of Varsity Vocals, the proprietor of
a-cappella.com
—decided it was too much, that it was time to get out of the business. After buying the NCCAs from Adam Farb in 1999, Don hired Jessika Diamond, a Canuck, one of the few people in a cappella who never actually
sang
in an a cappella group, to run the competition. (She also happened to be Farb’s ex-girlfriend.) It took a lot of legwork to revive the competition after the Lost Year. Jessika got in touch with the groups who had competed in recent years to find out what they liked (and what could be improved) about the NCCAs. She soon uncovered a secret: Adam Farb was not a popular guy. The Golden Overtones at UC Berkeley had hired Farb to produce a CD—which they received. Unfortunately, he handed them just one copy. They had been expecting five hundred. There was a disagreement over who was going to pay to print the discs, and when the university bursar wouldn’t cut Farb a check, he disappeared. The Men’s Octet at Berkeley, who’d won the NCCAs in the 1997-1998 school year, never saw the advertised prize money, Jessika says. (Farb doesn’t have the records anymore, but says the organization had plenty of money and would have surely paid the winner.) Such was the resistance that Don Gooding went so far as to actually post photos of the entire NCCA staff on his Web site just so people could see that Farb was no longer on the payroll. In three years, Jessika Diamond managed to restore the competition, and in 2001 she launched the first international show at McGill University in Toronto. The next year the competition was officially reborn as the International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella, the ICCAs. "Deke used to call me the queen of a cappella,” Jessika Diamond says.

Jessika ran the ICCAs for three years. And from the outside, anyway, it seemed like everything was in order. In her final season, she’d received two hundred tapes from various college a cappella groups hoping to compete. But now Don Gooding wanted out. “The ICCAs lost money every year that Jessika ran it,” Don Gooding says.

Jessika sighs. “There’s going to be a lot of finger pointing here,” she says.

Jessika Diamond, who’d had her hand in so many a cappella projects—from CASA to the ICCAs—parted ways with Don and largely retreated from the scene. She was, however, still running the Contemporary A Cappella Recording Awards (the CARAs). She would leave that behind, as well, but not before a stint in the hospital. “I developed shingles over forty-five percent of my body,” she says.

The CARAs had been haphazard at best. Here’s how the nominations worked. Jessika would have listening parties at her apartment in the Bay Area. Five people would come. There would be stacks of a cappella CDs around the room. Together they’d nominate in thirty-three categories, including best female collegiate soloist, best professional a cappella group, that sort of thing. They’d listen to thirty seconds of each track. People would go to the bathroom. People were drinking. They’d skip whole categories while eating chips in the kitchen. Still, at the end of the session, they’d emerge with a final list of CARA nominations. From there, Deke Sharon (who’d started the awards in 1992) would make cassette tapes of all the nominated music, which he’d ship out to qualified voters. But as the numbers grew—some one hundred and twenty collegiate albums alone are released every year—this became cumbersome. Soon, voters were receiving three-cassette sets in the mail. Who was even listening to cassettes anymore? Besides, the nominations were something of a joke. The nominators rarely listened to an entire track; they just didn’t have the time. Once the committee actually nominated a track that had a piano on it.

At what would turn out to be her final listening party, Jessika’s skin started to burn. She was lying down on the floor, scratching her back. She couldn’t stop. Eventually she had to kick everyone out of the house. “I literally had to take my pants off,” Jessika says. “And I didn’t know any of those people well enough to do that in front of them.” The next day she went to the doctor. By the end of the week she was hospitalized.

Julia Hoffman, an alum of the Stanford Harmonics, stepped in to run the CARAs. Maybe “stepped in” isn’t right. “We had a coup,” Julia says.

Don, meanwhile, hired Amanda Grish, an alum of the University of Illinois a cappella group No Strings Attached, to run the ICCAs. In her new role she’s had several surprising phone calls. “I’ve had parents call me to ask, Of the schools my child is applying to, what are the places with good a cappella?” she says. “The parents are desperate. They say, My kid wants to sing, and I want to know where he’ll have the best chance.”

In 2007 Amanda Grish bought Don out. “I’m forty-nine,” Don Gooding said. “I’ve been at this for sixteen years.” He’s selling
a-cappella.com
as well (though he’ll retain a small stake in future profits for five years). He wants to get involved with the centennial celebration of his old Yale Whiffenpoofs, set for 2009. “Besides, I have the constitution of an entrepreneur,” he says. “Once businesses are up and solid I lose interest in the day-to-day operations. I like to reinvent myself.” More than that, it was about the music. “I’m hoping to sing again,” Don says. “It’s the old saw about the cobbler’s kid not having any shoes. I’m the a cappella guy who isn’t singing.”

The thing about collegiate a cappella is, no one wants the party to end. That’s the buried—but not too deep—emotional hangover of all this CASA infighting, lawsuits, and shingles. It shouldn’t be surprising. Isn’t collegiate a cappella just another
Behind the Music
story? But in place of Grammys and world tours, it’s CARAs and spring break trips to Mexico. The emotional scar may be proportional. Leif Garrett winds up homeless and in rehab for heroin. The a cappella idols just graduate, forced to weather sudden anonymity and BlackBerry slavery. Most adjust. For others it’s like being cast out of Eden. You can’t really blame these adults for mourning the loss of their campus fame— even thirty years later.

If there truly is an a cappella Garden of Eden, it might just be on Martha’s Vineyard. This is the story of Vineyard Sound—a summer job that celebrates all that is holy in a cappella: sex, music, and camaraderie.

In the early nineties, Townsend Belisle was a student at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York, majoring in music and economics. In his free time he sang with the university’s all-male a cappella group, the Bandersnatchers. (The name, among the best in a cappella, comes from a Lewis Carroll poem, “The Jabberwock. ”) In the summer of 1991, while his friends were pursuing résumé-padding internships, Townsend waited tables at the Seafood Shanty on Martha’s Vineyard, the tony playground of the Kennedys, among other noble families. Townsend loved the sea air. He loved Captain Parker’s chowder. Life was good. It would turn out to be a formative summer. Upstairs at the Shanty, you see, there was a makeshift cabaret where a bunch of Yale kids would perform for cash. Townsend had an idea.

Townsend called up his buddy Chris Bettencourt, a member of Connecticut College’s all-male CocoBeaux. He had a proposition: I want to create a ten-member all-male a cappella super-group made up of guys from the Wesleyan Spirits, the CocoBeaux, and the Bandersnatchers. Martha’s Vineyard was surely starved for entertainment, he said. “We’ll learn
Sesame Street
songs for the kids,” Townsend told Chris, “and Sinatra for the older crowd. We’ll call ourselves Vineyard Sound.” He didn’t have to work very hard. Chris was in. It would be the a cappella equivalent of being a cabana boy.

Over spring break in 1992, Townsend took the ferry to the Vineyard and, with the help of a broker, found a spectacular house for that summer—a three-bedroom on the Bay of Edgartown with hardwood floors, cedar siding, and a hot tub. The landlord was nervous about renting to a bunch of college kids. But Townsend, a self-described mama’s boy, convinced him to do the deal and Townsend signed the lease that day. The rent on the house: sixteen thousand dollars for the season.

Back at school, Townsend and Chris recruited for Vineyard Sound. And for the first two weeks of the summer, the group rehearsed eight hours a day, learning some twenty songs. To introduce themselves to the locals, the Sound set out on a listening tour. They’d walk into a restaurant, find the manager, and ask to sing a song for the patrons. That song was usually “Taking Care of Business.” “It was upbeat,” Townsend says. “And most people couldn’t imagine it being sung that way.” By
that way
, he means without instruments. On the way out, Townsend would hand a Vineyard Sound business card to the restaurant’s manager.

Their big break came at the Seafood Shanty, where Townsend had seen the Yale kids perform the summer before. Townsend negotiated a regular gig at the Shanty. They’d charge a five-dollar entry fee, collecting additional tips in a bucket that read FINANCIAL AID. But for the most part the gigs were slow in coming. They would cover the cost of the house, but Townsend couldn’t guarantee the guys would go home with any money. It was a disappointment—most of them had to get other jobs— some at the Yacht Club, others at the grocery store. The lucky ones were lifeguards. But there was momentum.

The members of Vineyard Sound would never need a second job again.

That second summer—all ten original members returned— the Vineyard Sound expanded their repertoire. They even booked a few regular gigs in advance. They were also back at the Seafood Shanty—with one slight change. That first year, the boys had fought with the waitresses. “They’d disrupt our set,” Townsend says. It wasn’t pretty. He had an idea: Why didn’t the men of Vineyard Sound just serve the tables themselves? In place of one long set, the Sound would do several short sets, serving drinks in between. Tips skyrocketed. Even better, chatting up diners between sets, they got to know the locals, which led to more gigs. Eventually they were performing at the Shanty three nights a week, not to mention church gigs and community center events.

Townsend graduated in 1993 but went back for one last summer with the Vineyard Sound. That’s how he met Merv Griffin.

It was the summer of ’94 and Vineyard Sound was performing upstairs at the Seafood Shanty. One of Townsend’s buddies from Martha’s Vineyard happened to be Merv Griffin’s pilot. Townsend asked for an introduction. And so, one night after dinner, the guy brought Merv Griffin and his six-member entourage down to the Shanty to watch Vineyard Sound perform. Merv was sitting at a table, chomping on a cigar. “Merv was shit-faced,” Townsend says.

Billy Joel’s “Lullaby” was a big part of the group’s repertoire that summer. Garth Ross, a founding member of the Sound and an alum of the CocoBeaux, remembers that night Merv Griffin showed up. (In 2008, the self-same Garth Ross would organize a ten-day a cappella festival for the Kennedy Center, called Singing Solo.) When the Sound came to the end of “Lullaby,” it was dead quiet. In that breath of silence before the audience begins to applaud, one husky, cigar-stained voice could be heard way in the back. “Beautiful,” Merv Griffin said.
“Beautiful.”

“That sound,
Beaaauutiful,
is ingrained in all of our minds,” Townsend says. In fact, they printed it on a T-shirt.

That would not be the last Vineyard Sound saw of Merv Griffin. The pilot took a Vineyard Sound business card and passed it on to someone in Merv’s camp. And, lo and behold, three days later Townsend Belisle was standing in the Vineyard Sound house when the call came through. He signaled to the guys to quiet down. “It’s a guy from Merv Griffin Entertainment,” Townsend whispered, pointing at the phone. The Sound gathered in close.

The man wanted to hire Vineyard Sound to open for Paul Sorvino at Merv’s property in Atlantic City in the fall. “He kept saying to me, ‘What’s your fee?’ ” Townsend says. Generally, if the Sound made five hundred dollars for a gig they were thrilled. But this was Merv Griffin! Townsend was stalling. “Well,” he said, “a lot of us have significant others. Can we bring our girlfriends? ” Yes, the man said. He even agreed to pay for travel. Again, he said, What’s your fee? Townsend blurted out five thousand dollars. “Done,” the man said.

And so, in the fall of ‘94, Vineyard Sound reunited in Atlantic City to open for Paul Sorvino. “We sang three songs,” Townsend says. There was a big discussion over what three songs to sing, though today no one actually remembers what those three songs were. What they do remember is how bad the show was. First, they were poorly mic’d. Also: It was Atlantic City. “Three-fourths of the crowd was over seventy years old,” Townsend says. The show was over in less than fifteen minutes.

Merv was in the audience that night, however. And after dinner, as the Sound went to hit the tables, Townsend ran into the entertainment director for Merv Griffin Resorts International. “Let’s go back into this room over here,” the guy said, taking Townsend by the arm.

Suddenly, Townsend found himself in a small private room with Merv Griffin, the actor Robert Loggia, and Barbra Streisand. Merv Griffin was eating his favorite frozen yogurt—chocolate, always. And everyone was talking about the yogurt! “Barbra Streisand, Robert Loggia—they were gushing over Merv Griffin’s frozen yogurt. They were kissing his ass,” Townsend says.

“What do you want to do with your life?” Merv Griffin asked Townsend.

“I want to learn marketing within the entertainment industry, ” Townsend said, smart enough to take advantage of this very bizarre introduction.

A few months later, Merv Griffin hired Townsend to be one of his six personal assistants. “I was a scout,” Townsend says. “I was always three days ahead of Merv’s traveling schedule. I had to make sure his yellow pillows were warm and fluffed and that we could find the right brand of chocolate frozen yogurt.”

Townsend meanwhile had bigger dreams for Vineyard Sound. He liked the formula. The guys were having fun. And by now they were making good money—more than four thousand dollars
each
for the summer (all expenses paid). Townsend felt they could re-create the magic on nearby Cape Cod. And so he found a two-family house in a shady part of town, close to a strip mall and a U-Haul rent-a-center. "If there was such a thing as a ghetto on Cape Cod,” he says, “that’s where it was.” But the house was within walking distance of the action and it had a big backyard with a volleyball court. He christened this new group Hyannis Sound.