Saturday, July 12, 2008
Jaw-dropping a cappella tracks
I wrote this for a thread on the RARB forum, entitled Favorite jaw-dropping a cappella tracks. Since this has quite a bit of biographical info, I decided to post it here to my blog as well.
___
[Warning, lengthy post alert]
As evidenced from my compilation a couple of posts ago, I like this thread a lot. After thinking about the topic seriously over the past couple of weeks, and after browsing through my entire a cappella collection with this topic in mind, I’m now going to post my own list of jaw-dropping songs. Sorry about the length. And please forgive the personal reminisces. When selecting my songs, I tried to keep the original post in mind: “it's that moment where you forget you're standing/sitting/breathing/anything, and the only thing going through your mind is what you're hearing. Big eyes, open mouth.”
So these are not just songs I liked a lot, but songs that made me say, “Did I really just hear that? Wow! Let me listen to that again. And again.” I’d say that I literally listened to over half of these back-to-back-to-back on first hearing.
Originally I was going to restrict my list to 10 tracks. I found that to be impossible. Then I decided to restrict it to 10 groups. I found that almost do-able—as long as I lumped all the ones from BOCA CDs into a single entry. :-)
So here you go, listed more or less chronologically based on when I first heard the group. Albums where I heard the songs are given in parentheses.
1. The Nylons. My real introduction to contemporary a cappella came as a college freshman in 1988-1989 with the Nylons albums Happy Together and Seamless, and then a few months later, One Size Fits All and The Nylons (self-titled album). Here are the Nylons’ songs that really made me drop my jaw:
Rock & Roll Lullabye (The Nylons)
Up On The Roof (The Nylons, and also on Seamless)
Because (Because) – 20 times better than the King’s Singers cover of this song. I heard the King’s Singers version first and thought I didn’t like the song. Go figure!
Will You Still Love Me (Because) – One of the best songs ever written, the Nylon’s version stacks up well against the Roberta Flack and Carole King versions I also love.
2. The King’s Singers. I heard the King’s Singers before I heard the Nylons (my parents were fans), but I didn’t really know they did more contemporary songs until a friend told me about Good Vibrations. I got the album in ~1992, was suitably impressed, and the rest was history. I now own 16 King’s Singers albums, probably the most I own of any single group in my entire CD collections. Out of all the songs on all the albums, these ones deserve special mention:
Father to Son (Good Vibrations)
Down to the River to Pray (Six) – Six is a great album, and cheap to download since there only six tracks. Blackbird is also an amazing song from the album, but this is the one that continues to make my jaw drop.
April Come She Will (Simple Gifts) – Original song from Simon & Garfunkel Sounds of Silence album
Always A Woman (Simple Gifts) – All current a cappella arrangers should listen to this version of this Billy Joel song. Immediately. It’s amazing.
3. The California Golden Overtones. My introduction to collegiate a cappella came a couple of years into my graduate studies at UC Berkeley (physics) when I discovered The California Golden Overtones’ free weekly outdoor concerts. I was blown away, and started attending so many of their concerts (free and otherwise) that my wife started referring to them as my “girlfriends”.
Dreams (Bear All) – I just about freaked out my cousin when the original version of this song came on the radio. I hadn’t heard the original before, but I started shouting “I know this song!”, and started singing along.
House That Jack Built (live) – The only live song on my entire list, sadly their recording on Bear All doesn’t do it justice. I blame the producer. Come to think of it, most of the albums I have from the Overtones and the U.C. Men’s Octet suffer from production problems. What’s up with that? But anyway, they killed this song in several performances I saw, I believe even winning a “best soloist” award in one ICCA regional competition.
4. UC Men’s Octet. The Golden Overtones introduced me to the U.C. Men’s Octet (the Men’s Octet opened for them at a concert). Then I became a weekly attendee at the free weekly outdoor concerts of the Men’s Octet as well.
Baby One More Time (Octopella). Wow. The passion. And I’m not even a Britney Spears fan at all.
The Promise/A Little Respect (Gold) – I usually hate medleys, but does a merge count as a medley? Anyway, I loved both of these original songs--from my senior year in high school, how could I not? :-)--and was floored when the Men’s Octet combined them. In all the years I had heard the two songs separately, I had never seen this coming.
5. Rockapella. I thought I knew what Rockapella was about from Carmen Sandiego, and assumed they were just another Nylons wanna-be group. Wrong! I went to a concert in ~2004 and was blown away at how up-tempo and energetic everything was. Then I bought a few CDs, and continued to be blown away by some of the songs. In other news, why is there just one “p” in their name?
Moments of You (Don't Tell Me You Do) – More than any other song, this one says “Rockapella” to me.
Jenny Come Away (Smilin’) – This must be in the top 10 or maybe even top 5 of “songs that get stuck in my head”.
Shambala (Smilin’)
6. BOCA. After years of coveting it, I finally bought the “BOCA Mega Box”, which I think included all the BOCA albums through 2005. I expected something like the Overtones and Men’s Octet CDs that I had--the Men’s Octet was a recent two-time ICCA National Champion and hence I assumed among the best in collegiate a cappella. They probably are in live performances, but not in recorded a cappella. My jaw dropped when I heard how much better the production was on nearly all of the BOCA songs than on my CDs from the Cal groups. That was my introduction to the larger world of collegiate a cappella
Insomniac – Virginia Gentlemen (BOCA 2) – This gets my nod for the most jaw-dropping collegiate a cappella track ever. It is nearly perfect. [already mentioned in this thread]
Angel - Wheaton Gentleman Callers (BOCA 1997)
Go Rest High On That Mountain – Emory No Strings Attached (BOCA 1997)
Yellow – On The Rocks, Oregon (BOCA 2004)
Fix You – James Madison Exit 245 (BOCA 2007) [already mentioned in this thread]
Telephone Message – Brown Derbies (BOCA Humor) – about 5 seconds into this track, I said “What the…? This is the Mentos song!” I actually used it on my answering machine for about a year. Probably a copyright violation there, sorry about that!
The 12.5 Days of Christmas – Washington U Pikers (BOCA Humor) – I was in a community choir (mostly classical a cappella), and tried to get our director to have us do this for our Christmas concert. He declined. :-(
7. Acappella. On a short list for “worst name for an a cappella group”, Acappella blew me away when I discovered them in 2006 through emusic.com. I had no idea that Christian a cappella like this existed. If you are not familiar with them, picture Rockapella with a Christ-centered message...with (in my opinion) even better voices/blend/tuning than Rockapella. If you are Christian and also a fan of contemporary a cappella, you need to discover this group for yourself. Here are four songs in particular that continue to blow me away:
O Wretched Man – Acappella (All That I Need)
He’s Gonna Let You Know – Acappella (Act of God)
House of Praise – Acappella (Act of God)
Let’s Show And Tell – Acappella (Act of God)
8. Rescue. I discovered Rescue about the same time I did Acappella, and some of their songs made my jaw drop as well. Both groups are very similar in style and content; overall I prefer Acappella, but Rescue is amazing at times as well, such as in these four tracks:
Mary Did You Know (The First Christmas)
Rescue (Rescue) – self-titled track on self-titled album… it had better be good! And it is; this one must vie for my “most consecutive listens upon first hearing” award. The version on Reunion Live might be even better though.
Shine On Us (Two Thousand Years Ago)
Please Come (Before the Throne)
9. Noteworthy (BYU). When I found out that I was moving to BYU in 2007, and that Noteworthy had just won the ICCA competition, I had to get their album. I was floored, and these three songs are the primary reason why:
How Great Thou Art (On the Horizon) - The first verse is pretty boring, but when the soloist comes in to start the second verse with a slightly different melody, it’s just magic from then on.
Never Gonna Get It (On the Horizon) – For me, this song vies with Insomniac as “the perfect collegiate a cappella track”. It’s got it all—lots of energy, fabulous harmonies, a driving beat, etc. Wow.
When I Think About Angels (On the Horizon) – Another one for the “songs that most get stuck in your head” list.
10. Vocal Point (BYU). In the last year, I’ve purchased a number of Vocal Point albums as well, but it wasn’t until their last album, Nonstop, that I found myself being as impressed as I was at Noteworthy’s On the Horizon. These were my two most jaw-dropping tracks on the album.
Bigger Than My Body (Nonstop)
Superstition (Nonstop)
Honorable Mention: Eclipse and The Blenders. Sorry guys, I decided to cut the list to 10 groups! Otherwise you’d each have a couple of tracks.
Teaser: There’s one other group I’ll add to the list before too long, but I can’t comment on them yet because I was an official RARB reviewer for their album but the review hasn’t yet appeared.
If you made it this far, then thanks for reading! Comments welcome.
___
[Warning, lengthy post alert]
As evidenced from my compilation a couple of posts ago, I like this thread a lot. After thinking about the topic seriously over the past couple of weeks, and after browsing through my entire a cappella collection with this topic in mind, I’m now going to post my own list of jaw-dropping songs. Sorry about the length. And please forgive the personal reminisces. When selecting my songs, I tried to keep the original post in mind: “it's that moment where you forget you're standing/sitting/breathing/anything, and the only thing going through your mind is what you're hearing. Big eyes, open mouth.”
So these are not just songs I liked a lot, but songs that made me say, “Did I really just hear that? Wow! Let me listen to that again. And again.” I’d say that I literally listened to over half of these back-to-back-to-back on first hearing.
Originally I was going to restrict my list to 10 tracks. I found that to be impossible. Then I decided to restrict it to 10 groups. I found that almost do-able—as long as I lumped all the ones from BOCA CDs into a single entry. :-)
So here you go, listed more or less chronologically based on when I first heard the group. Albums where I heard the songs are given in parentheses.
1. The Nylons. My real introduction to contemporary a cappella came as a college freshman in 1988-1989 with the Nylons albums Happy Together and Seamless, and then a few months later, One Size Fits All and The Nylons (self-titled album). Here are the Nylons’ songs that really made me drop my jaw:
Rock & Roll Lullabye (The Nylons)
Up On The Roof (The Nylons, and also on Seamless)
Because (Because) – 20 times better than the King’s Singers cover of this song. I heard the King’s Singers version first and thought I didn’t like the song. Go figure!
Will You Still Love Me (Because) – One of the best songs ever written, the Nylon’s version stacks up well against the Roberta Flack and Carole King versions I also love.
2. The King’s Singers. I heard the King’s Singers before I heard the Nylons (my parents were fans), but I didn’t really know they did more contemporary songs until a friend told me about Good Vibrations. I got the album in ~1992, was suitably impressed, and the rest was history. I now own 16 King’s Singers albums, probably the most I own of any single group in my entire CD collections. Out of all the songs on all the albums, these ones deserve special mention:
Father to Son (Good Vibrations)
Down to the River to Pray (Six) – Six is a great album, and cheap to download since there only six tracks. Blackbird is also an amazing song from the album, but this is the one that continues to make my jaw drop.
April Come She Will (Simple Gifts) – Original song from Simon & Garfunkel Sounds of Silence album
Always A Woman (Simple Gifts) – All current a cappella arrangers should listen to this version of this Billy Joel song. Immediately. It’s amazing.
3. The California Golden Overtones. My introduction to collegiate a cappella came a couple of years into my graduate studies at UC Berkeley (physics) when I discovered The California Golden Overtones’ free weekly outdoor concerts. I was blown away, and started attending so many of their concerts (free and otherwise) that my wife started referring to them as my “girlfriends”.
Dreams (Bear All) – I just about freaked out my cousin when the original version of this song came on the radio. I hadn’t heard the original before, but I started shouting “I know this song!”, and started singing along.
House That Jack Built (live) – The only live song on my entire list, sadly their recording on Bear All doesn’t do it justice. I blame the producer. Come to think of it, most of the albums I have from the Overtones and the U.C. Men’s Octet suffer from production problems. What’s up with that? But anyway, they killed this song in several performances I saw, I believe even winning a “best soloist” award in one ICCA regional competition.
4. UC Men’s Octet. The Golden Overtones introduced me to the U.C. Men’s Octet (the Men’s Octet opened for them at a concert). Then I became a weekly attendee at the free weekly outdoor concerts of the Men’s Octet as well.
Baby One More Time (Octopella). Wow. The passion. And I’m not even a Britney Spears fan at all.
The Promise/A Little Respect (Gold) – I usually hate medleys, but does a merge count as a medley? Anyway, I loved both of these original songs--from my senior year in high school, how could I not? :-)--and was floored when the Men’s Octet combined them. In all the years I had heard the two songs separately, I had never seen this coming.
5. Rockapella. I thought I knew what Rockapella was about from Carmen Sandiego, and assumed they were just another Nylons wanna-be group. Wrong! I went to a concert in ~2004 and was blown away at how up-tempo and energetic everything was. Then I bought a few CDs, and continued to be blown away by some of the songs. In other news, why is there just one “p” in their name?
Moments of You (Don't Tell Me You Do) – More than any other song, this one says “Rockapella” to me.
Jenny Come Away (Smilin’) – This must be in the top 10 or maybe even top 5 of “songs that get stuck in my head”.
Shambala (Smilin’)
6. BOCA. After years of coveting it, I finally bought the “BOCA Mega Box”, which I think included all the BOCA albums through 2005. I expected something like the Overtones and Men’s Octet CDs that I had--the Men’s Octet was a recent two-time ICCA National Champion and hence I assumed among the best in collegiate a cappella. They probably are in live performances, but not in recorded a cappella. My jaw dropped when I heard how much better the production was on nearly all of the BOCA songs than on my CDs from the Cal groups. That was my introduction to the larger world of collegiate a cappella
Insomniac – Virginia Gentlemen (BOCA 2) – This gets my nod for the most jaw-dropping collegiate a cappella track ever. It is nearly perfect. [already mentioned in this thread]
Angel - Wheaton Gentleman Callers (BOCA 1997)
Go Rest High On That Mountain – Emory No Strings Attached (BOCA 1997)
Yellow – On The Rocks, Oregon (BOCA 2004)
Fix You – James Madison Exit 245 (BOCA 2007) [already mentioned in this thread]
Telephone Message – Brown Derbies (BOCA Humor) – about 5 seconds into this track, I said “What the…? This is the Mentos song!” I actually used it on my answering machine for about a year. Probably a copyright violation there, sorry about that!
The 12.5 Days of Christmas – Washington U Pikers (BOCA Humor) – I was in a community choir (mostly classical a cappella), and tried to get our director to have us do this for our Christmas concert. He declined. :-(
7. Acappella. On a short list for “worst name for an a cappella group”, Acappella blew me away when I discovered them in 2006 through emusic.com. I had no idea that Christian a cappella like this existed. If you are not familiar with them, picture Rockapella with a Christ-centered message...with (in my opinion) even better voices/blend/tuning than Rockapella. If you are Christian and also a fan of contemporary a cappella, you need to discover this group for yourself. Here are four songs in particular that continue to blow me away:
O Wretched Man – Acappella (All That I Need)
He’s Gonna Let You Know – Acappella (Act of God)
House of Praise – Acappella (Act of God)
Let’s Show And Tell – Acappella (Act of God)
8. Rescue. I discovered Rescue about the same time I did Acappella, and some of their songs made my jaw drop as well. Both groups are very similar in style and content; overall I prefer Acappella, but Rescue is amazing at times as well, such as in these four tracks:
Mary Did You Know (The First Christmas)
Rescue (Rescue) – self-titled track on self-titled album… it had better be good! And it is; this one must vie for my “most consecutive listens upon first hearing” award. The version on Reunion Live might be even better though.
Shine On Us (Two Thousand Years Ago)
Please Come (Before the Throne)
9. Noteworthy (BYU). When I found out that I was moving to BYU in 2007, and that Noteworthy had just won the ICCA competition, I had to get their album. I was floored, and these three songs are the primary reason why:
How Great Thou Art (On the Horizon) - The first verse is pretty boring, but when the soloist comes in to start the second verse with a slightly different melody, it’s just magic from then on.
Never Gonna Get It (On the Horizon) – For me, this song vies with Insomniac as “the perfect collegiate a cappella track”. It’s got it all—lots of energy, fabulous harmonies, a driving beat, etc. Wow.
When I Think About Angels (On the Horizon) – Another one for the “songs that most get stuck in your head” list.
10. Vocal Point (BYU). In the last year, I’ve purchased a number of Vocal Point albums as well, but it wasn’t until their last album, Nonstop, that I found myself being as impressed as I was at Noteworthy’s On the Horizon. These were my two most jaw-dropping tracks on the album.
Bigger Than My Body (Nonstop)
Superstition (Nonstop)
Honorable Mention: Eclipse and The Blenders. Sorry guys, I decided to cut the list to 10 groups! Otherwise you’d each have a couple of tracks.
Teaser: There’s one other group I’ll add to the list before too long, but I can’t comment on them yet because I was an official RARB reviewer for their album but the review hasn’t yet appeared.
If you made it this far, then thanks for reading! Comments welcome.
# posted by John Colton @ 12:36 PM 
