Another suitcase in another concert hall

Samuel Johnson maintained that "[Music is] the only
sensual pleasure without vice," but it's safe to as-
sume that Samuel Johnson never joined a Yale singing group's winter tour. While the rest of us vegged out over break, groups as diverse as the Yale Glee Club and the Baker's Dozen were busy blending wild parties, violent confrontations, and general nudity (more on that later) with mellifluous sounds and good intentions. Camaraderie and in-jokes abounded, but so did disaster and debauchery. At times, these groups put the harm in harmony, but they could also be intensely close surrogate families. And who ever said that the high arts couldn't be exciting?

Since music is often wedded to the mystical, solemn, and holy, it comes as no surprise that some groups performed in hallowed places, from churches to the White House (or, as in the case of Out of the Blue, in the sacrosanct American venues of restaurants and record stores). The results were sometimes surprisingly profane. As Pia Luedtke (ES '99) of the Yale Glee Club relates, after a performance of the sacred piece "Sicut Cervus" by Palestrina in a "really liberal, evangelical, and aggressive" in Walnut Creek, CA, the pastor prefaced his sermon with "I don't know what they said there in Latin, but Mark here knows Latin, and he tells me it means `Jesus gonna win!'"

Likewise, the Duke's Men stopped in Philadelphia to find an appropriate backdrop for their rehearsal of the national anthem (to be performed at an upcoming Flyers-Bruins game)--the Liberty Bell. They were, however, kicked out mid-note, according to Mike Sagalowicz, ES `97. They were booted by a "Nazi named Lawrence, now employed by the Park Service," he said. The story does have a happy ending, however. As Jeremy Marwell, MC `99, recollects, the Men were allowed into the very room where the Constitution was signed in order to practice some more, and shortly thereafter performed the anthem before a
stadium crowd, wearing
Flyers jersies.

Monuments may have been sacred, but hotels and houses were not. Mike Gallo,
SM '99, wistfully remembers the invasion of the Alley Cats: "They come and sing and trash your
house." As Tour Manager, Gallo boarded many of theCats in his own home in northern NJ, and persuaded reluctant
neighbors to do the same. "It's a strange experience...18
of your closest friend living next door,"he said.

Glee Club members also had a wild party at a Super 8 Motel, and before being encouraged to move outside to the parking lot, offered security guards alcohol in an attempt to soothe them. Yet, to YGC member Chris Ray, BR '99, the strangest housing experience came during a home stay in Palo Alto: "In my bedroom there was an enormous African beetle collection." Apparently, his host couple's son was an entymologist, currently working in Africa.

The Sons of Orpheus and Bacchus also hosted a party, relates David Siedzik, JE '00, which almost turned tragic. On the night of the last concert, the SOBs had a wild party on Whitby Island off the coast of Seattle. Siedzik and his friends awoke with hangovers only to find that "the guy with the keys to our rental cars had left twenty minutes before, and was already on a ferry in the middle of the Sound." They called the AAA, and went through the laborious process of having new keys made, before a call came from the singer on the ferry, who claimed that he had left the old keys with someone who was still passed out. After searching their already-ransacked quarters, they found the keys-- just as the AAA delivered new ones.

Cars and transportation are central to any account of winter tours, and also figure into a "distinctly SOB" tradition that Siedzik describes as the "Rocky Mountain Freeze-Out." To make driving more interesting on the highways of Montana, the transporting cars speed up to over 80 miles an hour, the passengers open the windows, and everyone present disrobes, a good example of the SOB proclivity towards group nudity.

Moving from the ridiculous to the absurd to the downright vulgar, Dan Dinero, JE '98, of Out of the Blue places driving and the joys of CB radios at the center of his winter tour experience. Dinero remembers driving down I-95 to Miami, forming a caravan and telling jokes on the radio in "trucker/military lingo," much to the consternation of professional truckers on the highway. The arguments between truckers and Blue members became so vehement at times, in fact, that the group developed the slang "fuck trucks" to summarize their adverse feelings for their brothers of
the road.

Besides the more general incidents involved in extended travel, though, group tours were affected by such temporal events as the release of Evita and winter sicknesses. In the case of the latter, Proof of the Pudding was severely reduced in number because of illness and catastrophe. Jenny Heikkila, MC '00, recalls a group of only 8 singers, in which she was the only first soprano for half of the tour. Many Proof members spent the vacation sick of everything from the common cold to advanced cases of la grippe, although the strangest, by far to Heikkila, was when "one girl had to go to DUH because she had weird dots on her eyebrows."
The cause of the weird dots was, alas, not treated by the time of the tour.

In the case of Evita, some singing groups restructured their entire tours to see Alan Parker's movie musical. According to Dinero, Blue bought tickets a day in advance, and had to cancel an opportunity for a return engagement to a record store concert "for fear that the group would mutiny if it didn't see Evita." The film and its artifices formed the basis of many in-jokes for Blue members -- and for Whim `N Rhythm as well. Kristin Ault, MC '97, recalls many Evita-isms from her tour, particularly the high-pitched "Peron!" and "Evita!" from the balcony scene at the Casa Rosada repeated ad nauseum. Nelson's nasal "Ah-ha!" laugh from The Simpsons was also a staple of the Whim tour. The "monorail" episode of the The Simpsons, a parody of the Music Man, was a popular selection on Glee Club buses, and along with interminable re-showing of "Wallace and Grommit" claymation cartoons formed an everpresent
back-drop to singers'
memories.

During the vacation, in-between all the rushing around (Jenny Heikkila remembers only having half an hour to tour the Guggenheim Museum, which was "all right because there wasn't that much to see there anyway"), groups also found time to just relax and have fun. Kristin Ault fondly remembers long bus rides spent watching Adam Sandler movies on their 10 day tour: "we saw Happy Gilmore -- it's a good movie!" And the center of every Glee Club account involves an extended recounting of an oddly American Studies-inspired sandcastle built at a beach in Carmel, where singers constructed a suburb complete with a `Barnes & Noble,' and Ethan Youngerman, SY '99, created an authentic red light district. Later, YGC members swam out to a sand bar and molded the sand into the letters "YGC, with letters perhaps as big as forty feet," Chris Ray remembers.

Ray also remembers a dinner cruise for alumni sponsored by YGC benefactor Anita Sheff, which combined the dual spirits of the friendly and the far-fetched on tours. The group sang, ate, and mingled while sailing in the San Francisco harbor, interrupted by Ms. Sheff's speech about "how much she loved baritones...she kept talking about one in particular." Needless to say, the baritone section was flattered, if a bit embarrassed.

Certainly, these events themselves--now well-worn references and catch-phrases within groups--are
important reminders of winter tours, but the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. As Ault explained, "most of the
in-jokes are really personal," attached to specific members of the groups, and, to Dinero, "they don't make much
sense without a lot of explanation." As in any tight-knit bunch, they are symbols of affection, funny accounts of the past that both unite and define the spirit of a time, a
place, and a group of people. Jillian Montgomery, JE '98, explains that "the jokes and stories formed from these events are "often one word references...when you
get together, something reminds you of something
else on tour."

Photos courtesy Lika Miyake, Mirriam Weiner.

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