It seemed like a
good idea, last January when the days ended at 4 p.m. when it was dark and cold
out and the shows on tv were like watching sands through an hour glass. Add the encouragement of a fellow enthusiast
from Kansas who assured me he was going to enlist. We could get together again in Estes Park.
It was only $20
and you got four songs, the sheet music and “learning tracks”. So I sent in my check. In early February via email, the music
arrived. AND the news from my “friend”
that he couldn’t be there, a wedding in Nebraska.
Well, it might be
fun anyway, so I printed off the music and transferred the recorded versions to
the MP3. I could put on the head phones
and listen. I couldn’t sing out loud much,
unless I had the house to myself.
Folks don’t mind
hearing a lead sing his part solo—it’s usually the melody. The bass can get by because he has the chord
roots and maybe a catchy rhythm. If you
hear a baritone singing all alone, you might think he was having a close
encounter of a third (or fifth or seventh) kind with another world.
If you hear a
tenor practicing his part, you want to dial 911 and request an ambulance. The guy has to be in unbearable pain, whining
as he is in the troposphere. So I tried to learn my part using my imagination. I don’t know how many times I might have
forgotten myself and sang out loud. I’m
afraid to ask.
When April got
here and I couldn’t sing my part to the four songs without either the music or
the MP3, I began to get a little nervous.
A couple of trips to the farm allowed me to howl out loud without
disturbing anyone but the bunny rabbits.
They deserve it.
It took a lot of
time, which I had in February, but without a place. In April I had the place, but there were a
lot of other things to do, farm work, tractors to get ready, trees to plant, a
grain bin to finish emptying. None of
that got done this week. It was
barbershop week.
Well, there was a
trip to the airport to send the Goodwife off on her tri-monthly visit to check
on her mother. And the regular
barbershop meeting (show coming up on May 8), quite a few errands to run, a trip up the hill
to visit the grandson (going to be walking soon), and then it was Friday.
More than once
did I think I should not have devoted all the time to learning tenor part to
four songs just to have a good time with a bunch of other guys. Or was it going to be fun? Would I be the only one who wasn’t sure he
could hold up his part in a quartet.
(Singing in a quartet requires a lot more confidence than singing in a
chorus. In a chorus you can rely on
someone else when you forget the words or lose your way.)
Of course I found
many, many guys in the same boat with me.
Most of us toughed it out, but a few violated a cardinal rule of platoon
or brigade singing: no paper music on
stage.
The platoon
handlers took playing cards and taped our names to the face. The cards were placed in four rows, one row
for each part, name up. You turned your
card over when you arrived. After
warming up as a group on each of the four songs, the head guy played a game of “brains”
or concentration with the turned-over cards.
He drew one card from each row and that was your quartet.
In the first
round each quartet was assigned one of the four songs and had thirty minutes to
go practice. My quartet was assigned “Daydream”
(“what a day for a daydream. . . “).
There were eleven
quartets in the first round. Two
quartets had to do two songs with different baritones because there were two
more baritones than there were guys singing the other three parts—a little bit unusual. Normally there would be more leads and basses
and fewer baritones and even fewer tenors.
Two of the four
songs were sung twice and two were sung three times by the eleven quartets. Each quartet gave itself a name. Your name went into a hat and a panel of
judges, who listened to the same songs over and over again, drew out a name. When your name was drawn, you got up in front
of the judges and all the other guys and sang your song.
The first place
quartet in the first round got to sing first (“mike testers”) on the evening
show, the college quartet contest. The
winner of the second round sang last after the college contest (“mike coolers”
I think). My first round quartet also
sang (as in also ran). We didn’t win.
In the second
round, my quartet was one that had to do two songs with two different
baritones. So we only had fifteen or twenty minutes to practice each song. The “Hard Day’s Night”
quartet did okay but no medal. The “Sweet
Caroline” quartet nearly crashed and burned because the bass, who has the
melody on the verses, couldn’t remember the words. He started ad libbing and we became a comedy
quartet. We got lots of laughs and
applause but no win.
The third round
began Friday afternoon. We drew for our
quartet assignment, but we wouldn’t know what song we would sing until, in front
of the judges, when we would draw the song and sing it. That would be the final round on Saturday
morning. My third round quartet
practiced for 45 minutes before the dinner bell sounded.
Friday ended with
the-afore mentioned college quartet contest.
There were other activities, but I had to drive down the hill in the
dark, and Saturday was another day. So I
switched gears and listened to the Rockies come from behind and beat the Giants
as I descended.
Saturday morning
found the competition reduced by scheduling conflicts. Some guys had to attend quartet-coaching
sessions, some a chorus-coaching session.
Our lead had a class he wanted to attend (it was “Harmony College” after
all). So a guy stepped in to sing lead
with us. There were eight other quartets
in this round.
When we sang “You’ve
Got a Friend” (from Toy Store), it was for the first time with our new lead. We tied for first place.
In the sing-off
we chose to sing “Daydream”. We did
fairly well. The other quartet developed
problems in the middle of “Friend” and we were declared the winner.
The third round
winner got to sing on the Saturday night show.
This show featured the chorus and the quartets that were coached Friday
and Saturday (quartets registered with the society, not the “pickup” quartets
of the Platoon.)
The coaches were
the members of the current senior champion quartet, Saturday Evening Post. There were other coaches, too, one from the
Barbershop Harmony Society staff. The
quartets move from room to room where for an hour or so the expert listens to
them and helps them improve. Saturday
night, the quartets get to show on stage the improvements they have made.
Society protocol
calls for the best to be last, or the worst first. Saturday
Evening Post ended the Saturday night show in fine fashion. The coached quartets went through a random
draw to see when they sang.
First on the show was the Platoon chorus made
up of the 40 of us who participated. We
began the show with “You’ve Got a Friend in Me”, which we did very well as a
chorus. We ended our set with “Sweet
Caroline” with the audience’s help on the “Ba, ba, ba’s”. It was a hit, like most audience
participation events.
In between the
two numbers, the third-round-winning quartet, my quartet, sang. We chose “Daydream” again. We got to the “time ain’t really on my side”
and some of us jumped ahead to “time passes me by a lot” (me? I can’t honestly
say).
We came to a halt,
not a spectacular crashing train wreck halt, but a slowly dying out, feebly embarrassed-looking-at-one-another
halt. The audience folk tittered away
their embarrassment for us. We looked at
each other. What to do?
“Can we start
again?” I asked. “No” said the
baritone. “Start again,” said the
lead. The bass nodded. Conceding, the baritone pulled out his pitch
pipe and sounded the “C” again.
“Buh doom” went
the bass. “Doo” went the baritone, lead,
and tenor. The train was on the track again. This time we got there. We did a pretty good job, too, if I do say
so myself. The audience warmly rewarded
us for picking ourselves up and getting back in the race.
Now for the Paul
Harvey “Rest of the Story”. The panel of
judges consisted of VIP’s from the Rocky Mountain district.
The judges,
after having to listen to the same four songs over and over again, try to get
even with us by singing US a song.
Our baritone is a member of the RMD board
of directors.
Our substitute
lead was the guy directing the platoon who came all the way from Las
Vegas. He stepped in to keep things even and still have have nine quartets.
Might the judges
been prejudiced? Nah. Anyway, it was fun in the end, train wreck
and all.
My reward for hours and hours of trying to learn four songs, some stress, and two trips up the hill: a golden trophy cup on a golden
chain—all made of plastic. (What did you
expect for a $20 entrance fee?)
