Pitch Perfect: The Quest for Collegiate A Cappella Glory [Hardcover]

Mickey Rapkin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 29, 2008

Pitch Perfect is a behind-the-scenes look at the bizarre, often inspiring world of collegiate a cappella groups.

The first collegiate a cappella group, the Yale Whiffenpoofs, was founded by Cole Porter back in 1909. But what had been largely an Ivy League phenomenon has, in the past fifteen years, exploded. And it’s not what you think. There are now more than 1,200 a cappella groups at colleges across the country. The very best of these collegiate groups square off in the annual International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella—a showdown marked by wrenching close calls and exhilarating triumphs. And, really, where else can you hear Michael Jackson’s “Bad” in four-part harmony?

In Pitch Perfect, GQ editor Mickey Rapkin follows a season in a cappella through all its twists and turns, covering the breathtaking displays of vocal talent, the groupies (yes, a cappella singers have groupies), the rockstar partying (and run-ins with the law), and all the bitter rivalries. Along the way are encounters with boldfaced names such as President George W. Bush, Prince, David Letterman, Barack Obama, Barbra Streisand, Hillary Clinton, Marisa Tomei, Amanda Bynes, Nick Lachey, Merv Griffin, Jim Carrey, Microsoft’s Paul Allen, John Legend, and Jessica Biel.

At the heart of the narrative are three a cappella groups whose interactions are anything but harmonious: the historic Tufts Beelzebubs, founded more than forty years ago with 40,000 albums sold since—and struggling to record a new album that lives up to the hype; Divisi of the University of Oregon, a relatively new, all-female group attempting to overcome a loss in the 2005 championship; and the University of Virginia Hullabahoos, the so-called bad boys of collegiate a cappella, who will attempt to compete on a higher level this year while retaining their casual soul.

Bringing a lively new twist to America’s fascination with talent showdowns and peerless performers, Pitch Perfect is sure to strike a chord with readers.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

According to GQ senior editor Rapkin, today's lively collegiate a cappella groups boast hip-hop repertory, professional vocal arrangements, competitions at Lincoln Center and a world shrunk by the Internet. During the 2006–2007 college season, Rapkin, an alum of a Cornell all-male singing club, followed three a cappella powerhouses: Divisi, an all-girl group from the University of Oregon, the testosterone-driven Hullabahoos of the University of Virginia, and Beelzebubs, from Tufts. Each is a collective with a score to settle, a tradition to honor. Robbed of a championship in 2005, Divisi wants payback; the Hullabahoos want respect without forfeiting their frat-boy charm; and the controversial Bubs want to hone their edge. Throughout, Rapkin engages with celebrity trivia (Heroes' Masi Oka sang a cappella at Brown) and music criticism. He profiles the cottage recording industry built from college a cappella. Most notably, he riffs through signature events and crisis moments with a snarky humor (onstage Divisi looks like the women in that Robert Palmer video) that turns each chapter into a picaresque progression toward graduation. (June)
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From Booklist

Designating unaccompanied singing, a cappella literally means “like the chapel,” appropriately since the form, Rapkin says, began with Gregorian chant. In the prologue, Rapkin cheerfully clambers through a cappella’s roots and varied branches, from shape-note singing and call-and-response singing to barbershop and the folk-pop hit “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” and gospel classics by the Soul Stirrers with Sam Cooke. Yet a cappella has come fully to life on college campuses. While the phenomenon’s “gold standard” remains the Whiffenpoofs, founded in 1909 at Yale, there are now more than 1,200 collegiate a cappella groups in the U.S. A cappella is the opposite of cool, Rapkin concedes, yet such now-famous folk as Diane Sawyer, Art Garfunkel, and Osama bin Laden (!) once sang in a cappella groups. The bulk of the book examines three current groups—the University of Oregon’s all-female Divisi, the Tufts Beelzebubs of Tufts University, and the University of Virginia’s Hullabahoos—as they compete against one another in a scenario that makes American Idol look rather tame. A fascinating, behind-the-scenes look at an underappreciated musical subculture. --June Sawyers

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 275 pages
• Publisher: Gotham; First Edition edition (May 29, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 159240376X
• ISBN-13: 978-1592403769
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,056,355 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars not quite as good as I expected from the other reviews..., June 28, 2008

By 

Jonathan (Burlingame, CA USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Pitch Perfect: The Quest for Collegiate A Cappella Glory (Hardcover)

I sang in my college and graduate school a cappella groups, so I was very excited to hear about this book and eager to read it hoping to relive the many unique and hard-to-describe experiences and emotions that I experienced during my years in the two cappella groups. While I think Mr. Rapkin does a good job relating some of the novel situations and inside stories of some of the best groups in Collegiate a cappella, once I finished the book (and even several times while reading it), the stories and anecdotes never sufficiently grabbed my interest. At the heart of it, that may be the biggest hurdle to overcome in relating these experiences--what happens to the members of an a cappella group is fundamentally only really interesting for those same members. The events just aren't as entertaining in the narrative as they must have been for the subjects as they occurred. Furthermore, the characters featured in the book show themselves through numerous examples to be so self-absorbed and self-aggrandizing that once I finished it, the book seemed to me to be a squandered reading opportunity--I wish I had read something else.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Perfect Summer Read!, May 31, 2008

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J. Withers (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Pitch Perfect: The Quest for Collegiate A Cappella Glory (Hardcover)

After reading about it in Rolling Stone and USA Today on the same day, I decided to buy it. AND IT'S GREAT. It reads so well and is so funny, kinda like the movie Bring It On, but this is about college singers. I had no idea that this whole world existed and I didn't even go to college that long ago. It didn't matter that I didn't know about a cappella, though, because the author gives you all the background you need, while also keeping the story going. Apparently, Mickey Rapkin's an editor at GQ; I'll have to look out for him.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Captures The Feel, June 2, 2008

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Captain Recursion "Captain Recursion" (Marquette, Michigan, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Pitch Perfect: The Quest for Collegiate A Cappella Glory (Hardcover)

Mickey Rapkin, who himself sang a cappella with Cayuga's Waiters at Cornell University, covers a year in the life of three a cappella groups, two male, one female. People unfamiliar with this college subculture will get a good introduction to the competitions groups have with each other, both formal and informal, the clash of egos, the battles over trivial issues, and the other social aspects of collegiate a cappella singing groups collectively referred to in his book as "aca-politics."

While one of the groups described is a female group, it is clear that Rapkin is more intimately familiar with the male group experience, which is fine. Female groups have a different social dynamic, and mixed groups (which are barely mentioned in this book) are different from both. I am not bothered by the relative lack of coverage of these other social dynamics since it is clearly not the point of the book to be completely comprehensive, but rather to describe the experience from the point of view of three specific (and very different) groups.

I do have to penalize a star, though, for a number of errors concerning the history of a cappella music. (For example, he refers to The Manhattan Transfer's "Mecca for Moderns" as an a cappella album when, in fact, it contains only one a cappella track.) However, this book is not intended to be a historical tract; it intends to convey the feeling or the experience of being in a group, while at the same time discussing (and not impartially) the merits and drawbacks of the recent commercialization of the art form. To my knowledge, this book is unique for what it does and it is definitely a worthwhile read to anyone interested in music, even if the a cappella scene is somewhat alien.