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Friday, July 13, 2012

I liked that before it was cool.

Once upon a time I was a student at the University of Oregon. We'll say, 2005 ish. A boy I had the hots for (Hey, Neil!) was trying out for an a cappella group called On the Rocks. When he told me this, I thought- all male singing group? I'm intrigued. But also, that's weird. Boy bands are soooo 10 years ago (except now they're cool again. Who knew?)
Naturally I dragged all of my friends to go watch the first performance after he made the group. It was basically the best thing I'd ever seen. Best thing WE had ever seen. We swooned, picked our favorites, we attended all their shows (which still occur every Friday at the EMU.) If we saw one of them on campus, we would text each other and include lots of exclamation marks "I JUST SAW CALEB IN FRONT OF THE VOLCANOLOGY BUILDING. swoooooon!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
It was basically the most ridiculous thing ever. I was more 13-year-old crazy over a cappella at 18 years old than I ever was over anything when I was 13. My stalking tendencies and crush on Neil have since faded-although I'm pretty sure Neil is still a rad guy.
My love for singing groups and a cappella has not- and it turns out, it's totally cool now. Glee probably has a lot to do with that. And of course, I love Glee. Also, NBC did 2 or 3 seasons of an a cappella competition show called The Sing Off. On the Rocks(OTR) competed on the show, but didn't win. (They were robbed!)
This was shortly after videos of OTR went viral- one of them rickrolling a subway, and another of their cover of Lady Gaga's Bad Romance. They're basically a really big deal.
But NOW- NOW there is going to be a movie about collegiate a cappella called Pitch Perfect. It looks to be in the style of such great films as Bring it On, Step Up, and Center Stage- featuring battles, inspiration, self-discovery, and a character called Fat Amy.
So what I'm saying is now that there's a movie out, and a cappella is cool- I want you to know that I liked it before you did and I have throwback OTR CD's to prove it- BEFORE THEY WERE AVAILABLE ON ITUNES. (Visit uoontherocks.com to buy their CDs or mp3s or whatever)

This is the OTR I fangirled about. Of course, because it's a collegiate group, the members change constantly. The new guys are great too but this is the group I stalked freshman year. 
Lots of parentheses in this post. (Deal with it.)