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Barbershopping: Harmony College 2004 |  |
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Off to Harmony CollegeEarly in the spring of 2004, way before Independent Mobility Systems was bought by The Braun Corporation, my chapter president in New Mexico had applied for a district scholarship to Harmony College/Director's College, which is held every year in August. This week-long event is an all-out orgy of barbershop, where singers from across the country and around the world gather to learn, listen and sing. Since all of the arrangements were already made, my wife and I decided that I would go ahead and attend HC/DC, then fly back to Farmington to complete our move to the Midwest. When I landed in Kansas City, there were already guys in the airport singing in ad hoc quartets. More singing on the bus, with guys hammering out pole cat tunes as we circled the airport waiting for all of the seats to fill up. After reaching Missouri Western State College and going through registration, I swam across campus through the 99.9% humidity and took my bags to my room. Several of my roommates were already there, and we decided that, rather than eat what was at the cafeteria, we should go out and find something relatively nice to eat. We found a steakhouse and had dinner there. On the way out, we realized that there were four of us, with all four vocal parts represented. So naturally, we stood out in the parking lot for a little while and sang some songs. The whole week was kind of a blur. We had morning warmups, morning classes, lunch, afternoon classes, dinner, then performances and tag singing until the wee hours of the morning. Oh, and the ice cream. I'd heard FRED sing about ice cream at HC/DC, but the reality (and the quantity) was astonishing. One of the most memorable moments from Hamony College was very small, but very telling. On Wednesday night we were in our room doing our homework (yes, we had homework), and one of our roomies busted into the room, slammed the door and leaned against it, like he was trying to hold off an onslaught. "Man," he said, "the tag whores are out in force tonight." And that's how it was. You couldn't walk through a hallway without being pulled in to sing a tag, or a pole cat, or one of the songs we were learning in classes and warmups. You might end up having dinner with a barbershopper from Sweden, or with last year's quartet champs, or with Bill Rashleigh or Greg Lyne. Great ExperiencesIn between all of the singing and homework and ice cream eating, I had time to make some pretty good friends. The three guys I ended up quarteting with—Coby Foster, Chris Foster, and Harrison King—still trade e-mails from time to time. You can watch and hear us singing (very late on the last night of Harmony College) below. You can watch and hear another quartet singing their song about Colorectal Surgeons below. It was almost painful to leave Harmony College. I had that feeling I've had before when a good thing comes to an end and you feel an extreme letdown. On the plane back to Albuquerque, I found myself looking around at my fellow passengers and thinking, none of these people will never experience a musical, magical week like the one I just spent at Missouri Western State College. It was a sad thought. Images:
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What's New?If you don't know me, or don't know me well, you can get a pretty good picture of who I am and what I do from snooping around in this site. How I pay the bills:
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