Pitch Perfect: The Quest for Collegiate a Cappella Glory by Mickey Rapkin Page B

proceeded, the incident destined to be just a footnote in Marissa’s childhood. Or so the family hoped. But in the summer of 2004 the dark times returned. Her father went to rehab again. It was terrible for all involved. Because the man was a highly functioning addict, he’d actually convinced his co-workers that his wife and kids were crazy. “We were the bad people ,” Marissa’s mom says. He closed his practice—having lost his license, he had no other choice. And in February of 2005, without much warning, he served his wife with separation papers. Now, after rehearsals for Company , and her class work, and Divisi, there’s that manuscript on Marissa’s computer, that one-woman show about this man she no longer knows, this man she has not seen in over a year.
    On the night of the Divisi Christmas party, Marissa Neitling finally breaks down. It’s not what you think. “I don’t know what shoes means!” she blurts out. Marissa had missed the trip to Alaska. Someone clicks over to YouTube and shows her the video. And the conversation returns—as it often does—to the ICCAs.
    Keeley McCowan attempts to rally the troops. Forget the video. She’s enlisted the help of Lisa Forkish and Erica Barkett, legendary Divisi alums who will come back to campus in January to work with the girls on their competition set. Keeley has the best of intentions. But what she doesn’t know, what she can’t foresee, is that this, too, will end in tears.

CHAPTER FIVE
    Wherein we pull back to explain the collegiate a cappella explosion of the late nineties, meet the self-proclaimed father of contemporary a cappella, and find out how an a cappella album can possibly be overproduced
    Deke Sharon is commonly referred to as the father of contemporary a cappella, and while he may have bestowed that title upon himself, the name rings true. In 1990, Deke started the Contemporary A Cappella Society of America (CASA) out of his dorm room at Tufts. The organization’s mission was (in part) to foster communication between all of the disparate a cappella groups popping up across the country. CASA began with the “Collegiate A Cappella Newsletter,” which featured album reviews and classified ads, where groups like the Bubs would offer their services to other schools. Like everything in a cappella, the newsletter was better known by an acronym, the “CAN.” (Letters to the editor were printed under the rubric KICK THE CAN.) When Deke graduated, so, too, did the “CAN,” which quickly expanded to include coverage of the professional a cappella scene, where groups like Rockapella (which grew out of the Brown University High Jinks) were suddenly thriving, touring as far as Japan. “The Collegiate A Cappella Newsletter” was reborn as “The Contemporary A Cappella Newsletter,” so as to keep the acronym. “The only reason this whole movement isn’t called modern a cappella,” Deke says, “is because I needed to use the letter C .”
    In 1992, Deke founded the Contemporary A Cappella Recording Awards—the CARAs. He started the ICCAs (then the NCCAs) with Adam Farb in 1995. He and Adam also created the BOCA series—the Best of College A Cappella compilation. If there’s an acronym in a cappella, Deke Sharon probably had something to do with it.
    In the mid-nineties, collegiate a cappella exploded from an Ivy League curiosity to a full-blown coed pursuit. “We went from two hundred and fifty groups to more than twelve hundred and fifty,” Deke says. He credits the growth spurt to a number of factors, from Boyz II Men to the Internet. Deke’s role is easier to quantify. While collegiate a cappella groups everywhere were singing four-part harmony reminiscent of the choral tradition, he began arranging music instead for a vocal band. In short, it was the difference between a bunch of guys singing an A chord or a bunch of guys singing the guitar part. This innovation might have remained a local phenomenon had Deke not figured out a way to