Pitch Perfect: The Quest for Collegiate a Cappella Glory (7 page)

Secretly, quietly, in the days leading up to the Homecoming Show on September 29, the officers talked about who might replace Ben as music director. They called Lucas Walker. They called Alexander Koutzoukis. They called Chris Van Lenten (who wasn’t interested). They wanted someone to take the job for the entire year. Lucas balked. He knew the work it would take, and he was honest about his shortcomings. For one thing, arranging music didn’t come easily to him. Second, he was majoring in physics and philosophy. Plus, Lucas had a girlfriend. She barely saw him as it was. Lucas remembers the night he got into the Beelzebubs, how he sat outside a party talking to a Bub alum’s girlfriend. “She was trying to reassure me that joining the Bubs was totally worth it and that I could absolutely handle the time commitment, ” Lucas says. “She was completely right about the former and completely lying through her teeth about the latter. This is the great paradox of being in the Bubs: My life is simultaneously perfectly fulfilling and completely ruined, both due to the same group of fourteen other dudes.”

Alexander Koutzoukis, a skinny sophomore, might have been the strongest musician, but the officers questioned his ability to command the group—he was soft-spoken, shy even. And more than anything the Bubs needed a leader, and so a decision was made: If Lucas would only commit to one semester, then so be it. “I still didn’t really want to be music director,” Lucas says. But he took the job. Now they just had to tell the rest of the Bubs.

After the homecoming concert, Ben Appel sat the group down in the Bub room and came clean about what what had been going on. He would be leaving school, he said. It was quiet in the room, the proceedings very matter-of-fact. Lucas Walker gave a short speech about what he’d like to do that semester, the music he’d arrange, the alumni he’d call for help. He talked about the album, which would, of course, still come out in the spring—answering the call of
Code Red
and the legacy of the Bubs. The Beelzebubs have released a studio album (more or less) every other year since the beginning. This year would be no different. This class would not be the ones to ruin tradition.

CHAPTER THREE

THE HULLABAHOOS

The University of Virginia, home of the Wahoos, was founded in 1865, and not much has changed since—the only color on campus comes courtesy of Ralph Lauren. Just ask Dane Blackburn. "People stop me on campus and they’re like, hey, aren’t you the...” Pause. “What?” Dane says. “The
black guy
in the Hullabahoos? ” It’s eased up a bit since they took a second black guy, Brendon Mason. He’s loud and hard to miss. Plus, he was a former child star, having appeared on Nickelodeon’s
Bug Juice
. “There are clips on YouTube,” Brendon says apologetically.

The Hullabahoos were born in 1988 as an alternative to the Virginia Gentlemen, the staid offshoot of the campus glee club. Unlike most men of collegiate a cappella, the B’hoos (for short) don’t often wear khakis or blue blazers. The first thing one notices about the Hullabahoos is the Technicolored robes draped over their street clothes. The robes are their trademark look, and it’s inspired a series of cheeky fan T-shirts, like this one: ROBED FOR YOUR PLEASURE. Believe it or not, the robes are bespoke, handmade by a seamstress at Mr. Hanks discount fabrics in downtown Charlottesville. “I’ve still got the original pattern in the back,” says Mr. Hanks—which, incidentally, isn’t his name. (It’s Tom.)

While the Hullabahoos may be UVA’s most popular all-male a cappella group, they are not beloved everywhere. The a cappella community simmers with rivalries—sort of an East Coast/West Coast rap shakedown in sequined vests. The University of North Carolina Clef Hangers have had beef with the Hullabahoos dating back almost a decade. On that group’s 2001 recording of “Nuthin’ But a ‘G’ Thang,” the Clef Hangers called out the B’hoos, rapping: “Dropping the funky tracks and making the Hullabahoos mumble.” The Hullabahoos don’t know why the Clef Hangers hate them—the incident long forgotten as students graduated. But Carolina-based producer Dave Sperandio—the Timbaland of a cappella recording and a former member of the Clef Hangers—remembers exactly how the feud started. “The Hullabahoos used to come to UNC and hook up with our girlfriends, ” he says. They still do, by the way. Even the lone, endearingly awkward Hullabahoo (the kind of guy prone to non sequiturs) managed to get some on a recent road trip to UNC, hooking up with a member of the all-female a cappella group the Loreleis—a girl whose grandfather just happens to be the cantankerous owner of a major league baseball franchise.

It’s not just the Clef Hangers who’ve had problems with the Hullabahoos. A couple of years ago, there was an incident with a Cornell University a cappella group, Last Call. Both groups were performing at NYU one night. Keith Bachmann, a Hullabahoos alum, tells the story. “After the show, the Callboys— that’s seriously what they’re called—were like,
Hey, do you guys wanna trade CDs!
” Bachmann says. No, the Hullabahoos did not want to trade CDs. And their refusal apparently offended the bevested Callboys. The confrontation came to a head later that night when the Hullabahoos saw the Callboys coming toward them on East Ninth Street. “They were doing the
West Side
Story
snap!” Bachmann says. “We just did not know how to respond to that.”

A lot of it is just plain jealousy. Because being a Hullabahoo has its privileges. Like that time they went to Asia and sold out the Hard Rock.

Ron Puno graduated from UVA in ’99 and as that year came to a close, his father, a diplomat living in the Philippines, sent a handful of Hullabahoos CDs to some local radio stations. Somehow, the music started to get major airplay on the island nation, and a production company offered to fly the Hullabahoos to Manila to perform at the Hard Rock Cafe. When the plane landed in Manila, however improbably, a throng of screaming reporters and photographers met the B’hoos at the airport. Because Puno’s father was a big deal, the Hullabahoos were assigned a security detail of six motorcycles. The Hullabahoos concert, by the way, sold out—some twelve hundred tickets. Or roughly five hundred more than the Hard Rock’s previous headliners: Nick Lachey and 98 Degrees.

The seventeen Hullabahoos—an all-star team of members past and present—took advantage of their sudden international fame, appearing on the Filipino answer to David Letterman. They signed autographs at the mall. “There were fans screaming for us by our
individual names
,” Puno says. For some, however, this attention proved problematic. “You have to understand,” Puno says, “in that part of the world, there are a lot of effeminate-looking men that dress up like females. You’re in a dark corner hooking up, and then you’re like,
Wait, what is that!
It was like
The Crying Game
.” Puno managed to avoid that particular Shanghai surprise, but some Hullabahoos (who shall remain nameless) were not so lucky.

As the fourteen-day international tour came to a close, the group’s popularity only grew. And their brief appearance seems to have kicked off a wave of pop-appella in the Philippines, Puno says. (Shortly after their departure, a
Making the Band
-style TV show for a cappella swept the nation.) As unlikely as it sounds, the Hullabahoos still have a following in South Asia. Ron Puno, now thirty and a senior manager in the IT department at Enterprise Rent-A-Car, went to visit his dad in Manila in 2005. As he was standing at a bar, a man approached him sheepishly. “Are you Ron from the Hullabahoos?” the man said.

“It was shocking,” Ron says.

It’s not surprising that the Hullabalumni (that’s what they call themselves), nearly a hundred strong, have such fond memories of their collegiate days. Though most never sang again—a few are trying to make it in Nashville, some on the indie circuit— they can take comfort in the fact that (much like Hasselhoff in Germany) the B’hoos are big in the Philippines.

Though the Hullabahoos would hate to admit it, they’re more of a fraternity than most a cappella groups. (They’re also a bit like the United States Marines. Before each concert they circle up, put their hands in the center, and shout,
“Unit. Corps. God. Country. Hullabahoos.”
) For one thing, the Hullabahoos have their own de facto frat house, aka the Hullaba-house—a four-bedroom, off-campus apartment on Wertland Street, across from a local landmark, Georgia O’Keeffe’s old place. Seven of the Hullabahoos live in the house, which, like most college residences, contains a glut of inherited furniture—food caked into the cushions like amber fossils of years past. The attic alone holds an efficiency kitchen, a full bath, a Ping-Pong table, two oversize papasan chairs, a futon, a magnetic darts game, and some scattered folding chairs. There is a thirty-two-inch television, an Xbox, and several predictable DVDs—
Fight Club, Reservoir Dogs,
the unrated edition of
The Girl Next Door
. One of the B’hoos also lives in the attic, having sectioned off a corner with a bedsheet and some rope MacGyver-style. The Hullabahoos have been renting the place for three years and it’s home to their postconcert parties.

It’s like that with the Hullabahoos—most don’t fit the a cappella archetype (such as there is one). Morgan Sword—last year’s president, now the soul of the Hullabahoos—is a six-foot-four prep-school kid, the kind confident enough to wear Birkenstock clogs with white socks. As a freshman he expected to play club baseball at UVA before some girls in his dorm convinced him to audition for the Hullabahoos. When he got into the group he called his high school sweetheart, Lindsay Friedman (then a student at Williams College). She was indignant. “You can
sing
?” she said. Morgan’s friends back home in Princeton, New Jersey, still make fun of him for being in an a cappella group. But Morgan is recognized on campus at UVA almost daily, and stardom—albeit the kind relegated (mostly) to a five-mile radius—is a nice comeback to any ribbing his buddies might dish out. “Girls I don’t know will come up to me and say, Hi, Morgan! I’m like, Hey,
friend
! I never thought I’d get social respect for a cappella.” Pete Seibert is the music director of the group and his friends on campus make fun of him too. When they see him at a party, they like to run up to him and shout, “Oh, my God, are you a
Hullabahoo
!”

If there is one thing the Hullabahoos are most proud of—more than selling out their campus concerts, more than their reputation overseas—it is their intramural flag football team. They’re called Hullabahoos B. What’s with the name? Well, Hullabahoos B implies that there is also an A team. The Sigma Chi frat house might have a Sigma Chi A team and a Sigma Chi B team—such is the demand for flag football among their brothers. “When we beat a frat,” says Patrick Lundquist, a brickhouse of a Hullabahoo, “we like them to think they just lost to the
scrubs
from an a cappella group.” Patrick’s can’t-miss plan for on-field domination in the 2006-2007 season: “A Peyton Manning-style hurry-up offense.” Before they called themselves Hullabahoos B, the team was known by a different name, the equally ironic Jazz Hands. They’ve placed as high as third in the UVA intramural league. Brendon “Bug Juice” Mason, a onetime high school football star who was recruited by William and Mary, is a second-year in the Hullabahoos, and he’s been a boon. How heated are the games? Last season, during the intramural play-offs, Morgan Sword felt so sick that he had his girlfriend drive him to the emergency room. With an IV in one arm and a raging fever, Morgan told the doctor that he absolutely
had
to get out of the hospital that afternoon.

“I’ve got a game,” Morgan said.

“Do you play for UVA?” the doctor asked.

Morgan replied the only way he knew how: “Sort of?”

When Morgan was a first year, he was actually accepted to all three all-male a cappella groups. UVA is not known for its music program, and as such, competition for fresh meat is fierce among the a cappella groups. He told the buttoned-up men of the Virginia Gentlemen that he wasn’t interested, that he was deciding between the Academical Village People and the Hullabahoos. Still, one of the Virginia Gentlemen called, offering to take Morgan to dinner. “Morgan, you’re making the biggest mistake of your life,” the kid said. That’s called dirty rush, Morgan explains. The Hullabahoos consider themselves above all that. “We’d rather take the high road,” Morgan says. “We don’t have a single guy in the group who wanted to be somewhere else.” The Hullabahoos are not, however, above shamelessly padding a kid’s ego.

When the Hullabahoos came back to campus in August 2006, they began planning for auditions. The Hullabahoos were looking to pick up a bass or two. “But more than that,” Morgan says, “we just need good Hullabahoos.” He’s not talking about good singers. “We spend so much time together,” he says, “the first requirement is that we’re gonna get along. We’ve certainly turned down kids before who sang way better than any of us. But if you take them, you’re compromising the integrity of what you’re doing. ” People can contribute in other ways, he says, like looks. You can always teach a cool kid to beatbox.

Turnout was solid for the first round of auditions this year— and fairly standard, save for one curveball: An openly gay member of the Hullabahoos watched his ex-boyfriend audition for the group. Now, the Hullabahoos are very welcoming—especially considering their relation to the Mason-Dixon Line. But most everyone was relieved that the kid’s sound wasn’t right for the Hullabahoos. Even if it had been, they admit, they probably wouldn’t have taken him. “Hullabahoos hooking up with other Hullabahoos?” one member says. “We just can’t have that.”

To get to know the potential new members better before the callbacks, Morgan and the B’hoos resurrected an old tradition, the Hullabahoos-versus-Auditionees football game. The Hullabahoos have a strategy. “We dominate early,” says Joe Cassara, the current president of the B’hoos, “but we let the kids win so we don’t look like assholes.” The Hullabahoos even throw interceptions to kids who are on the fence—kids who are auditioning for other a cappella groups. The game isn’t about athletics. (Which explains why Pete, the music director, runs the field with a can of beer in his hand.) “It’s about seeing who is a leader,” Morgan says.