Pitch Perfect: The Quest for Collegiate a Cappella Glory (6 page)

Some angry (and likely jealous) a cappella readers wrote into the RARB forums insisting
Code Red
was a studio project, or that it was unfair to penalize a group that couldn’t afford to record at a place like Long View. John Sears, an ICCA judge, had his own concerns: “The album bores me to tears. It’s more of an album I can pop in for my friend just to say, Look what can be done when you take college a cappella to an extreme level.” But the thing is, the Bubs didn’t just sing those songs live—they killed them. “Every song was a showstopper,” says Dr. Michael Miller, Bubs class of ’74. He singles out Greg Binstock, Bubs class of ’03, who sang “Nothing Compares 2 U,” by Sinéad O’Connor, and Björk’s “It’s Oh So Quiet.” Dr. Miller isn’t exactly in the Björk demographic. “But that song would knock people out,” he says. “The group had such control.” Love it or hate it,
Code Red
was a game changer.

The Bubs never went back to Long View Farm Recording Studios. It was too expensive, and frankly, with advancements in computer technology, it was probably overkill for a self-financed a cappella project. Ed Boyer, Bubs ’04, stepped up, negotiating a deal with the group. If the Bubs bought him recording equipment, he said, he’d learn how to make a Bubs album. In the spring of 2004, the group bought Ed an Apple PowerBook G4 for two thousand dollars, a Pro Tools rig for another two grand, and a preamp—later he picked up a Neumann mic from eBay. The Bubs recorded 2005’s album
Shedding
in Ed Boyer’s bedroom closet. It was an entirely different operation. The Bubs gave up the personal chef and camaraderie of Long View but were spoiled in other ways. Because Ed wasn’t really on the clock like an engineer they’d pay at Long View, they could experiment wildly. They could do fifty takes of the same
dim dim bop
bass line. A song from a Divisi album might be made up of forty individual Pro Tools tracks layered on top of each other, but on
Shedding
, each Bubs song was made up of closer to 120 individual tracks (or more).

But something was missing. While
Code Red
had a clear mission—imitative, produced a cappella—
Shedding
was really more of the same. At least to the naked ear. Ed Boyer insists there’s a difference, something about the difference between technology that’s apparent and technology that’s transparent. It’s a valid point—if you’re an engineer. The mortals didn’t pick up on the subtleties. Trey Harris reviewed
Shedding
for RARB, writing: “Once you release an album like
Code Red
, it’s hard to follow up. You’ve raised the bar for a cappella covers and production so high that it’s nigh impossible to beat. After a group comes out with an album as perfectly imitative as
Code Red
was, I’d expect them to move on to different ideals.” Still, it was hard to argue with perfection and
Shedding
swept the Contemporary A Cappella Recording Awards, winning Best Male Collegiate Album, Best Male Collegiate Song for “Let’s Get It Started,” Best Male Collegiate Solo for Andrew Savini’s “Epiphany,” and Best Arrangement for “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.”

The pressure of the Bubs legacy mounts each year. “With
Code Red
,” says Sean Zinsmeister, who graduated in ’06 and shared music director duties with Ed Boyer on
Shedding
, “we really pushed it as far as we could go in terms of mimicking instruments. ” He talks a lot about “responding to the critics.” It seems Sean graduated at just the right time. “I really wasn’t sure where we could go after
Code Red
,” he says. “I’m glad I don’t have to be there to figure it out. I’m glad that isn’t my problem.”

No, that would be Ben Appel’s problem.

The first thing one should know about Ben Appel is that he’s young. He ran for music director in the spring of 2006, at the end of his freshman year. It wasn’t so much that he felt ready for the job—he just felt he was more ready than the other prospects. “I felt it was my duty to run,” he says. It seems the group agreed.

Still, Ben did not run for music director on a whim. You can’t in the Beelzebubs. There is an established protocol for seeking higher office here and it involves consulting every current member of the Beelzebubs
individually
, stating your intention, presenting your platform, and opening the floor to questions. (It becomes especially awkward when one candidate for music director must approach the other candidate for the job.) Second, it’s become customary for candidates to call a litany of past officers— Bub alums stretching back forty years—to get an understanding of what the job entails. In some cases, a phone call with Danny Lichtenfeld ’93 or Deke Sharon ’91 might turn into a three-hour conversation on the intricacies of the university administration or on navigating internal group politics. Ben Appel ran on a platform of the Bubs’ motto: Fun Through Song. “He didn’t want to rule with an iron fist,” says Matt Michelson, the current president. “Ben didn’t want to do things just because of protocol.” How so? “There have been times when the Bubs ran like a machine, ” Michelson says. “We’d have a gig. We’d sing. We’d leave. Ben wanted to focus more on the performance.” He wanted to take the machine apart.

In the fall of 2006 the Bubs returned to campus with plans to record a new studio album (as decades of Bubs have done on alternate years practically since the beginning). And this group was taking the task seriously, to be sure. Early in the year, the Bubs had a nine-hour meeting where they did nothing but debate the
title
of the new album. They have had similarly endless conversations about the direction the album should take, about the problem with verisimilitude. When your music is indistinguishable from the original tracks, what do you do next—get
more
real? That will be the essential question of this album, and the biggest hurdle for Ben Appel and the Bubs. The group will have help with the task—namely, from Ed Boyer, who shared music-director duties on
Code Red
and is now a full-time a cappella producer living in the Bronx. Boyer—paunchy, red-faced—graduated in 2004 from the dual-degree program at Tufts and the New England Conservatory. He and his business partner, John Clark (an alum of the coed Tufts Amalgamates), have made a name for themselves in a cappella circles. “Bill Hare got ninety percent of the credit for
Code Red
,” Ed says, “which is fine, even though I did most of the work.” Boyer has agreed to produce the new Bubs album, which is scheduled for release in the spring of ’07.

But the album’s direction falls squarely in Ben Appel’s lap. And Ben has his own ideas—ideas the Bubs are thrilled about. There is talk of going in an entirely new direction, opting for a real organic sound. Ben is even talking about making this a concept album, with tracks leading directly into each other, possibly with dialogue as connective tissue. But Ben Appel’s biggest asset may be his attitude. To lead a group with such rich history, a group whose alums are often still involved in the day-to-day business of the undergraduates, one must not be awed by the legacy. And Ben isn’t.

Unfortunately, though most of the Bubs don’t know it yet, just a few weeks into the 2006-2007 school year, Ben Appel, their new music director, is about to drop out of school.

In late August 2006, just before the Orientation Show, Ben Appel disappeared for three days. He’d literally left rehearsal for a lunch break, said he’d be back, and got on a Greyhound bus to see his parents. It was poor timing, to say the least. The Orientation Show would be the group’s first big performance of the year, and it was crucial in establishing the Bubs’ alpha reputation among freshmen. Plus, it was a great place to recruit new members. The Bubs had graduated a handful of guys the previous spring and were down to ten. They needed a few good men. The Bubs had been learning Gnarls Barkley’s “Smiley Faces” and hoped to debut the song at the Orientation Show. In Ben’s sudden absence, Lucas Walker ’08 took over, teaching the song to the Bubs. The group was curious to know where their music director was, but the officers kept his troubles a secret. “We didn’t know whether he’d be coming back,” Matt Michelson says. “We thought it was better to wait.”

Ben Appel did return to campus a few days later. He sat down with the officers. He’d been suffering from depression and social anxiety, he said, and he was on academic probation. To make matters worse, he and his girlfriend were in the process of splitting up. But the only time he felt like himself was onstage with the Beelzebubs, he’d said; that’s when his other problems—the obsessive-compulsive disorder, the crippling inability to focus on even the simplest decisions—went away. He was seeking help, he told them—that was the important thing. Ben Appel said he wanted to resume his position as music director of the Bubs. The officers asked questions, but they didn’t pry. Ben Appel had returned to campus just in time for the Orientation Show on September 4 and perhaps his issues really were under control. And so life went on. The Bubs held auditions. They picked up five new members, including Nick Lamm (a fey potential soloist) and Matt McCormick (a curly-haired kid who’d never had a beer in his life). But Ben’s problems returned. With a vengenance.

A few days before the Homecoming Show, Ben Appel called his friend Andrew Savini, a senior in the Beelzebubs. The two sat in Savini’s room smoking nearly a pack of cigarettes. Together, they walked over to the Bub room (part museum, part rehearsal space, on the second floor of Curtis Hall) for a meeting with the officer corps. Ben spoke first, slowly but decisively. He was going to leave school, he said. He needed to take care of himself. He needed to get better. “I needed a drastic change,” he said.

The officers were quiet. Matt Michelson, the president, said something about wanting to help Ben. He reminded Ben of what he’d told them a few weeks earlier—that the Beelzebubs had made him happy. “Wasn’t that what you said?” Matt mumbled. And then tempers flared. No one involved is particularly proud of what happened next. Andrew Savini fears some of his fellow Bub leaders lost sight of the human problem—that Ben was their
friend
first and foremost, that it was about his health and not the health of the Bubs. Still, the Bubs did have the new album to think about, not to mention the Homecoming Show in a few days. The officers wanted to make sure Ben had thought this through. Earlier in the semester, Ben Appel told the officers that he’d need to see a psychiatrist and seek help from the Academic Resource Center. “Have you gone through the steps?” Matt asked. “Have you been doing what you were supposed to do?” Matt just wanted to understand what his friend was going through. But he’s not sure it read that way.

Matt had an ulterior motive. He hoped the Homecoming Show might help Ben Appel. That the crowd noise might ease whatever white noise was troubling Ben’s mind, that the applause, the affirmation, might take hold and fire the right combination of neurotransmitters to restore Ben’s delicate balance of serotonin. But that wasn’t to be. The decision had already been made. Ben Appel wanted to tell the entire group, before they went onstage for the Homecoming Show, that he was leaving Tufts. But Matt convinced him otherwise. “I didn’t want to distract from the show,” Matt Michelson says. “I didn’t want to ruin the night.”

The Homecoming Show was held at Goddard Chapel—all dark wood and stained glass. At the right hour, the sun casts a glow inside the chapel that can only be described as divine. In the late 1800s, the entire Tufts student body would squeeze into the chapel for events. Tonight, it only feels that way. Fifteen minutes into the show, Ben Appel steps forward. He looks like he’s raided Alex P. Keaton’s closet, what with the khakis, navy blazer, starched white shirt, and Republican power tie. His movements are so lazy he actually appears to be moving in slow motion. Yet somehow his innate, low-energy cool makes him stand out the most. The Bubs love their group members equally, but some more equally than others. And when Ben Appel stands in front of the group, there’s a perceptible change in their posture. The Bubs are not objectively as attractive as lore would have it, or as the four hundred (mostly) female members of the audience would suggest. But when the Bubs get onstage, when they stand behind a soloist like this, they look like different people. It’s that way with performers.

The song is “19-2000” by the Brit band Gorillaz. The background starts in simply enough, with the Bubs repeating in a near monotone, distorting their voices:
“It’s the music that we choose // It’s the music that we choose // It’s the music that we choose.”
Ben comes in on the solo, singing:
“You got the cool! // You got the cool shoeshine!”

There is a tension here that was missing in earlier songs. At the bridge, the Bubs suddenly grow quiet, pulling in tight around Ben, affecting a don’t-mess-with-us attitude. Ben sings, all serious and mysterious:
“They do the bop.”
On
bop,
the Bubs, in unison, raise their left hands defiantly and snap twice.

“They do the bop!”
(
snap snap
)
“They do the bop!”
(
snap snap
)

And just as suddenly, Ben Appel stands bolt upright and shouts,
“You got the cool!”

It had been a rough couple of years for the Bubs leadership. Until 2003, it had been almost unheard of for an officer of the Beelzebubs to quit midterm—especially a music director. But then, in January of 2006, Ben Kelsey ’08 stepped down. He wasn’t a bad guy. He just realized he wasn’t qualified for the job and did the only thing he could: He fled the country, taking a semester abroad in Spain. Sean Zinsmeister ’06 took over, which came with its own set of problems. Sean was a divisive personality and some say he encouraged politics within the group, which resulted in a mammoth rift. Andrew Savini, now a senior, had actually contemplated quitting the Bubs. “It was like no one could lead the fun except Sean,” Savini says. “People wouldn’t laugh at jokes if Sean didn’t laugh first.”

The truth is, Sean and Matt Michelson had a complex friendship, loud disagreements punctuated by good times, and Matt was particularly looking forward to this new school year. With him as president and Ben Appel as music director, he thought they could restore some lost Bubs spirit. The Bubs would face other obstacles for which Ben was uniquely qualified. In the spring of 2006, the Bubs graduated six guys—six of fifteen. As president, it would be Matt Michelson’s job to turn the new guys (including several pasty-white freshmen with oversize Afros) into Bubs, and Matt was feeling the pressure. A cappella is big at Tufts, he explains: “No one is here for Division One athletics.” (It doesn’t help that the school’s mascot is an elephant called the Jumbo.) Worse, there was a time in the late nineties when the Bubs got by on their name alone—and were embarrassed to find that their on-campus rival, the coed Tufts Amalgamates, had surpassed them in musicality. Never again, they said. Matt was looking forward to Ben Appel helping him set the agenda. But that wasn’t to be.