UPDATE: The full Daily News story is here.
There was a great piece in the New York Daily News today about the onslaught of collegiate a cappella in the mainstream media.
One thing I'd never heard before: a cappella referred to as part of the green movement. "No electricity," Jim Farber of the Daily News writes.
Love it.
The piece isn't up on the web yet, but here's a snippet.
Farber writes: "There’s a lingering image of glee clubs—as glassy-eyed geek squads grinning their way through music as antique as a barbershop quartet and as corny as a hootenanny. You can hear the snickers over this collegiate, a cappella style in running jokes on TV shows like The Office and Saturday Night Live as well as in movies like Jennifer Aniston's The Break-Up. But is this condescending image set for a serious makeover?
It certainly looks that way, given a host of new projects hellbent on changing a cappella's dorkish aura.
They include:
A rash of a cappella albums on the way from groups covering songs by artists as edgy as Vampire Weekend and Bjork.
A major, NBC reality-TV singing competition show fetishizing the style (The Sing-Off), coming this fall.
A Fox comedy show based on the phenom, previewing next month and running in prime time by September ( Glee).
A feature film set in this demimonde, produced by Sony Pictures
A film comedy from Universal Pictures, inspired by a book about the movement ( Pitch Perfect)."
Farber interviewed Joel Gallen, the director of the upcoming Sing Off show. In the piece, he quotes Gallen as saying: "I found myself enthralled by how they 'sing' all the instruments. On YouTube there's a version of (The Who's) 'Baba O'Reilly' where those opening synthesizer chords are done by voices... When people see the talent level that's there in these groups, they'll be blown away."
I'll paste the link here if the story goes up online.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment