Worst Ivy League A Capella Tournament, Day Two: Enter Brown
Welcome to Day Two! Day One featured two landslides, with #1, Penn's Chord on Blues, trouncing #8, Harvard's Fallen Angels by like 70 percent. Dartmouth's Cords (#4) also steamrolled the competition and beat Columbia's Nonsequitur (#5) by like 70 percent too. Thanks for playing, Harvard and Columbia!
But let us celebrate not! We must trudge forth with today's matches, however aurally painful that becomes. One of today's contestants will introduce two thus-far overlooked a cappella tropes: white rapping and beatboxing. LOTS of both.
In our #2 versus #7 seeds matchup, respectively, we bring you the Brown Jabberwock's epic rendition of Talib Kweli's "Get By" (strongly urge you to watch it all!) against the Princeton Roaring 20 performing that Third Eye Blind song.
Brown Jabberwocks:
Princeton Roaring 20:
Still with us? The last opening round match-up squares the #3 seed, Cornell's famous Absolute A Cappella singing Oasis' "Wonderwall," against the #6 seed, Yale's Living Water performing some Jesusy song.
Cornell Absolute A Cappella:
Yale Living Water:
Voting will go through 5:00 tomorrow (Wednesday), and then we will have the semifinals around 6:00. At least tomorrow you won't have to watch any new videos, right?
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October 30th, 2007 at 4:49 pm
The Yale group was way better than that nasaly Cornell dog and pony show…and I’m Juwish!
October 30th, 2007 at 5:04 pm
Wow, the Princeton group was good before the white kid with the 5 year-old girl’s voice started singing!
October 30th, 2007 at 5:41 pm
Aw, I thought Brown’s dog and pony show was fun! The guy who did the John Legend solo has a beautiful voice. And the beatboxer is talented. The Princeton group wasn’t bad either. The soloist wasn’t actually singing, but the background was quite nice. You guys must be able to find worse a cappella than this! Brown was more entertaining, so I’ll have to vote Princeton worse.
October 30th, 2007 at 6:10 pm
The Brown and Princeton groups are pretty good compared to the rest of the competition. I wonder if that’s why they were pitted against each other. How sadistic.
October 30th, 2007 at 6:29 pm
Actually, that Brown group was terrible, painfully so. Couldn’t listen to the whole thing.
October 30th, 2007 at 6:37 pm
i don’t base my opinions on “sound quality” a lot, mostly on (a) how many white kids are rapping (b) if the backup people are raising the roof and/or using other “rap hands” and (c) how many minutes of beatboxing there are until they actually start. that said, the sound quality of the brown one seems to sharply decline around 5:00, and then it’s just a complete mess on all levels. i’m sure they’re really nice kids though!
October 30th, 2007 at 6:45 pm
I don’t know why the hell the Brown group was placed in the second seed. Just because it’s a bunch of white boys doesn’t make it bad (and they clearly added there for street cred, plus he was amazing). The white kid who did rap, was not half bad. They also put on a fun show, unlike the Princeton kids who stood in a circle with sticks up their asses.
October 30th, 2007 at 7:14 pm
You gotta give the yale group some credit for having the balls to sing Christian music in front of any Yale audience. I hear that Yalies aren’t just atheists - they actively hate every major religion.
October 30th, 2007 at 7:45 pm
i like poop.
October 30th, 2007 at 7:46 pm
There are far worse a capella groups to be found at Brown. Far, far worse.
October 30th, 2007 at 7:51 pm
with the obvious exception of the lead man, those are the whitest kids you could ever meet
October 30th, 2007 at 10:34 pm
princeton didn’t sound bad, but their arrangement was terrible… seriously, you have to very the background a little bit at least, “jamajamajama” gets old reeeeeal fast. brown was pretty bad, clefs at columbia does a much better version of that song though, so maybe im just biased (and no, im not in the group).
musically, the yale group wasn’t that objectionable, but there’s something about the lyric “the blood of jesus” that turns me off… guess i have weak/non-christian stomach.
October 30th, 2007 at 11:47 pm
Excuse me, but I don’t know what university “ivyrumors” goes to… I mean the stupidity of his/her comment is nigh unfathomable. Most of my friends are actually pretty devout Catholics (note that I myself am agnostic). But yeah, there are plenty of religious people here, and we’re all fairly tolerant. You’re an idiot.
That said, I still hate a capella groups passionately. The Princeton group pretty much exemplifies what I’ve noticed about the majority of groups- they have the back up stuff DOWN! Great, congrats. But damn, can they ever find a decent soloist?
I also hate that they all pretty much uniformly ignore real a capella literature- that is, where there’s more than just back up + solo… there are actually interacting harmonies and whatnot, something approaching the complexity of a choir arrangement… bah.
October 31st, 2007 at 1:09 am
So white kids aren’t allowed to rap?
October 31st, 2007 at 1:57 am
All of these groups are greatly lacking, like most of college a cappella. Hence the reason they are in the Worst a cappella group competition. Poor blending, poor musicianship/musicality, poor stage presence. Only group with a concept of how to put on a show is the Jabberwocks.
Don’t you basses ever get tired of singing “dum”, “doom”, “jen jo”, “bum” and all the other nonsense syllables? COMPLEX, INTERESTING HARMONIES, PEOPLE!
October 31st, 2007 at 7:58 am
MHSTTD G. Awesome.
October 31st, 2007 at 8:28 am
MHSTTD is right! Superior beatboxing! A little long in the beginning, but I don’t think the Jabberwocks will go much farther in this competition
October 31st, 2007 at 10:46 am
mocking living water is like mocking that one home schooled kid who came to school for the first time in 9th grade.
Living Water is a very niche a cappella group, and since the only people who consider joining are devout Christians (a fairly rare commodity at Yale), the general singing quality of the group will be lower. Don’t hate. They make no pretenses about their quality.
October 31st, 2007 at 10:57 am
Living Water actually isn’t the worst a cappella group at Yale. I mean their Christian schtick is annoying, but musically they aren’t horrible (I think it helps that Christian music is already really bad so you don’t get that awesome/horrifying feeling when a really bad a cappella group bites off more than they could chew). They are pretty harmless as far as a cappella groups go.
Proof of the Pudding (I mean there should really just be a Special Olympics category for all-female a cappella) and Red Hot and Blue are much much worse.
October 31st, 2007 at 11:02 am
Also, Living Water is made almost entirely of closeted Gaysians and the sexually repressed girls who love them. It’s almost endearing.
October 31st, 2007 at 12:33 pm
Yale’11 - Somehow, I don’t think “we’re all fairly tolerant,” “You’re an idiot,” and “I still hate a capella groups passionately” should be used in succession. Jeez! You are only a freshman and already so defensive!
I heard those rumors (a bit exaggerated, of course) from my older brother who went to Yale. He is a devout Christian. In fact, he was in Living Water for two years. I went to a “Woolsey jam” once where large groups of drunk people booed and hissed at LW. Reason enough to believe that Christianity isn’t exactly popular at Yale? Judge for yourself.
As for myself, I went to the “other” school. There. I dropped the H bomb. I look forward to urinating on your residential college in a few weeks.
October 31st, 2007 at 1:52 pm
I don’t think the fact that a group of drunk students booed at Living Water (at a concert where all of Yale’s a cappella groups sing, including the senior groups) says anything about how Yalies feel about Christianity. I think it says more about what some Yalies think about living water as an a cappella group.
October 31st, 2007 at 3:18 pm
I rushed at Yale this year and, from what I gathered, everyone at Yale (at least in the other groups I rushed) is nice to Living Water and refuse to pick on them even if they tear the other groups apart. I thought Living Water was the worst-sounding group, but they’re not as bad as the recording makes them seem. I disagree with ywhat, I thought Proof was the second-best of the four all-female groups at Yale (behind the senior group), and that Red Hot was the second-best mixed (behind Shades). I just rushed a couple of all-male groups, though, because the sound is better.
October 31st, 2007 at 3:30 pm
Just because I’m tolerant of other religions doesn’t mean I have to like anyone in particular, or respect their intelligence, or enjoy a capella. I also thought the juxtaposition of “We’re all fairly tolerant” and “You’re an idiot” was pretty clearly meant to be funny… but I’m not a very funny person, so I apologize for the lack of clarity. :P
October 31st, 2007 at 5:31 pm
Cornell’s troupe makes me wonder when the freshmen 15 turned into the freshman 50.
Any loving God would have raptured me up two seconds into Living Water’s song. The fact that I had to sit through the whole thing has caused me to renounce my faith. I’m off to get a Satan tattoo on my left ass-cheek. Thanks, LW.
November 1st, 2007 at 1:09 am
poor living water. they mean well but oh lord. I want them to be good, I really do, but compared to the rest of the yale groups they’re pretty much the standout worst one. poor christians.
November 4th, 2007 at 9:32 pm
MHSTTD word.
November 7th, 2007 at 8:33 pm
MHSTTD, keep it hangin’
Jabberwocks & R20 are definitely the better of the 4 remaining. And the beatboxing is still impressive, even if it’s a little long (and by a little i mean a lot).
cornell got rid of the video. thank god.
November 7th, 2007 at 8:34 pm
MHSTTD, keep it hangin’
Jabberwocks & R20 are definitely the better of the 4 remaining. And the beatboxing is still impressive, even if it’s a little long (and by a little i mean a lot).
cornell got rid of the video. thank god.
November 7th, 2007 at 8:40 pm
MHSTTD, keep it hangin’
Jabberwocks & R20 are definitely the better of the 4 remaining. And the beatboxing is still impressive, even if it’s a little long (and by a little i mean a lot).
cornell got rid of their video. thank god.
November 9th, 2007 at 4:29 am
for the record, i actually think Red Hot sounds better than Shades. they’ve really stepped it up since my freshman year… it’s pretty obvious that their arrangements are the hardest on campus and they actually pull them off. can we talk about how most of the girls’ groups can’t manage to stay in key while singing that ONE measure over and over that seems to make up the background for all of their solos? okay, thanks. but yeah - red hot pulls off a way harder rep. that’s saying something.