No bones, I’m a big fan of the music from the late 80′s and early 90′s. It’s when I started making my own music collection, and when I started listening to a cappella music extensively… so for show #64 it seemed the perfect time to do an 80′s focus. Specifically on 1988. Get it? 64=8*8? Of course you get it. All my listeners are smart. (And good looking too, right? And talented.)

So here are a bunch of songs that all topped the charts in 1988, starting with the first (and only, so far, I think) a cappella song to hit Number One on the US music charts. Only fair to feature an original song by the original artist.  In a cool tie to the last show, the original music video for the song stars Robin Williams in addition to Bobby McFerrin.  And it connects with another song in today’s show, as they both were in the movie Cocktail.  I remember “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” being on the radio about the time I first joined my grade school chorus… aaaand right about now I’m going to tell all my listeners still in college (or high school) to stop sniggering. One day you’ll be where I am.  In the meantime, go to Audible.com and get some learning on the Eighties, alright? Those of us who don’t know our vocal history are doomed (or blessed?) to repeat it.  In the meantime, listen to the following on this show:

Track Title	Artist	Album	Original Artist
Don’t Worry, Be Happy	Bobby McFerrin	Simple Pleasures	Bobby McFerrin
Sign Your Name	The House Jacks	Drive	Terence Trent D’arby
Sweet Child o’Mine	Deep Treble	All Kinds of Treble	Guns n’ Roses
Kokomo	The King’s Singers	Spirit Voices	The Beach Boys
Faith	The Coats	Your Joy	George Michael
Wild Wild West	Boyz Nite Out	Harmony Sweepstakes 1995 / Very Best of the Harmony Sweepstakes	Escape Club
Never Gonna Give You Up	On The Rocks	Best of College A Cappella 2009	Rick Astley

Wow.  I’ve been utterly unable to find any place to pick up a copy of Deep Treble’s album ‘All Kinds of Treble’.  If you know of a place to get that, let me know.  Likewise, the recording of the 1995 Harmony Sweeps is completely unavailable and out of print.  If you get lucky though, you can still occasionally find a copy of ‘The Very Best of the Harmony Sweepstakes’.  This is not one of those occasions, sorry to say.

The Shipyard Sings – you can find this, as mentioned during the show, at http://www.hinghamlaunch.com .   I’m really sorry to everyone who was hoping to go see NoTA live..  They were there back on June 26th, a few days ago as of this posting.  There are still opportunities to see other great groups, including the Tufts Beelzebubs.

For now, go ahead and listen to the Acapodcast #64, and let me know what you think…

P.S. I can’t find the video showing Bobby singing the different parts (I thought I’d seen that somewhere…) but here’s the original video with Robin Williams in it.

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Who doesn’t love The Beatles?  One of the most loved, respected, and covered artists of all time, they helped define a new movement in music, and even today there are fans, critics, and imitators.  I’ve pulled together ten of the best A Cappella covers of Beatles songs for this episode.  If you like it, let me know.  I started with over 120 tracks, so I may do another Beatles episode at some point.  Here’s what you’ll hear in the show:

Track Title	Artist	Album
Strawberry Fields Forever	The Bobs	Come Together: An A Cappella Tribute to the Beatles
Eleanor Rigby	Overboard	Help!
Penny Lane	The King’s Singers	The Beatles Connection
Got To Get You Into My Life	Firedrill!	...Sings Without Music, Vol. II
Blackbird	Clockwork	Tesseract
Paperback Writer	Toxic Audio	Chemistry
Let It Be	The Nylons	Fabric of Life: Vocal Percussion Remix
Day Tripper	Swingle Singers	Ticket to Ride: A Beatles Tribute
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band / With A Little Help From My Friends	Da Vinci’s Notebook	Bendy's Law
Come Together	Robin Williams and Bobby McFerrin	In My Life

Don’t forget to leave your comment below for a chance to win a copy of ‘Chemistry’ by Toxic Audio, which includes that fabulous rendition of Paperback Writer.  If you like the idea behind this show, which artist or theme should I tackle next?

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Click here to listen to the Acapodcast show #63!

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One of the best things an a cappella group can do is to sing the national anthem at a ball game.  I don’t care what group you are, what country you are singing for, or what kind of game it is at.  You could be a high school group at your cousins jai-lai game in Ecuador singing the Ecuadorian national anthem.  It doesn’t matter.  And here’s why it’s a good thing for your group to do:

1. National Anthems were made to be sung.  Every national anthem is simple enough to be sung by everyone. That’s part of instilling national pride.  It is hard to sing a national anthem and sound bad at it. Well, certain notable exceptions (Sorry Ms. Barr) aside.
2. They’re short.  Or at least, the portions you sing at a game are short.  No one sings all the lyrics.  So you can focus on perfecting just a small bit of song. Plus, I’d be willing to bet you already know the words and melody.
3. The heart of the song is pretty basic. This ties into part one.  But this means that you as a group have the freedom to innovate, to build on that structure and hang your own style off of it.  Start with the core that everyone recognizes, but make it your own.
4. Sports fans are a great audience. They’re eager, excited, happy, perhaps already a little drunk, and they love their national anthem. It’s a tradition and a hallmark.  They are at the stadium to cheer someone on, and they will cheer you on with just aas much fervor.  Plus, because you’re not competing with another team, everyone is cheering for you, not just half the fans.
5. You  get to put yourself and your art out in front of a lot of people that, let’s face it, probably aren’t coming to your concerts. This is marketing gold. Untapped markets that are ready to hear your product. And if you are a high school group singing at a high school game, this is -not- a bad way to get noticed by that team member or cheerleader you might have an eye on…
6. You’re only out there for a minute and a half, singing a song you know well, to an audience that is happy to hear you and isn’t listening with judgmental ears.  It’s a chance to relax, have fun, and learn to let go of performance jitters.  Even I can belt out the melody as a soloist at a ball game, and I’ve got pretty bad stage fright when it comes to solos.

Check out this clip here of Firedrill! (yay!) singing the national anthem at a recent Red Sox (yay!) game at Fenway Park.

Do be careful though, there are some big pitfalls if you’re not careful.  Don’t sing for more than about a minute and a half.  The audience isn’t there to see a concert.  Actually, I know for a fact that they don’t want you to sing longer than that at major venues like Fenway.  Also, don’t get so crazy with your arrangement that you lose the audience. Key to this is keeping the well known melody front and center.  Be as jazzy as you like, but don’t depart too much from that.  Also be careful changing the familiar tempo too much.  Remember, everyone in the stands knows this part of the song really well, and getting too far away from it will make them uncomfortable.

Mouth Off already spilled the beans on their Twitter feed, but here’s a brief rundown of the results of tonight’s ICCA showdown:

3rd place: UGA Accidentals
2nd place: Berklee Pitch Slapped
1st place: SoCal VoCals

In addition, the VoCals won best choreography (well deserved!), and best solo went to a gentleman from UGA, and best arrangement went to a lady from Pitch Slapped. Apologies that I didn’t catch the names well enough to type up here (I’m typing this from my slightly fuzzy memory before catching the bus back to BOS).

It was a strong showing from all the groups. Every group more than deserved to be there, and every group brought their ‘A game’. Compounding things was the fact that each group had a different style, making comparisons even -more- difficult. I can honestly say I was impressed by every group.

Host group Duwende brought the house down, closing their time on the stage with the same French Rap that brought down SoJam a few years back. And three of the High School groups from the ICHSA finals last night also took the stage and each sang a song. And to paraphrase EmCee Dave Brown (a gentleman and a scholar), it wouldn’t have been a surprise if the judges gave the awards for the evening to the high school groups. There was some serious heat and fire there from Enharmonic Fusion, the Town Criers, and the ICHSA champions, Limited Edition.

All said, a stellar evening, and I wish I’d been able to spend more time at the afterparty. Time to go catch a bus and maybe some sleep….

I’m writing this from the megabus to NYC. I’m riding down today to catch the ICCA finals at the Alice Tully Hall. If you see me there, come up and say hi! After the show, I’ll be catching the 1:30am megabus back to Boston because I’m stage managing a show that goes up tomorrow night… yeah, I’m that kind of crazy.

See you again after the show!

P.S., wifi on a bus? GENIUS. That’s all.