Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Asexual healing on UBM-TV

Back around the turn of the century, when I was going wild with Napster like everybody else, I downloaded a few tunes from collegiate a cappella groups.

Collegiate a cappella... what an odd little subculture that is. Groups with goofy names like the MIT Logarhythms, Brandeis VoiceMale and the University of Michigan Compulsive Lyres.

What tickled me was, some of these groups would do contemporary R&B songs like “No Diggity” or Prince hits like “When Doves Cry,” in that corny group-harmony style. (Actually, I kinda dug “Thieves in the Temple” by the UNC Loreleis. It’s not quite so corny when girls do it.)

For some reason, Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing” has become a collegiate a cappella standard, as illustrated by the clips I’ve pulled up on my Video Bar.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

If you like A Capella, I'd recommend a group called the Bobs. Found a few of their songs in my download days, they did a pretty good rendition of 'Particle Man' by TMBG. Thanks for all the recent music, it's been a nice addition to your usual commentary.

Anonymous said...

I wish I could find the link/mp3 for it, but I once heard an a capella version of The Police's Synchronicity II. It was pretty good, albeit disturbing.

Unknown said...

For some reason, the white beat box dude in the group reminds me of Gary Fencik in the SuperBowl Shuffle video.

Lola Gets said...

At Smith, we had the Smiffenpoofs, and the Smithereens. I think that was it, lol. I can honestly say that a capella singing is my least favorite style. I need some instrumentals to take me away!
L