Pitch Perfect: The Quest for Collegiate A Cappella Glory

by Mickey Rapkin

  It turned out to be a good night for Morgan and the elder Hullabahoos, anyway, to visit Vegas. Their trip happened to coincide with the annual AVN Expo—the weeklong trade show and convention for the porn industry. Chad Moses (the group treasurer) and Morgan sat down to play a few hands of blackjack at the Luxor.

  “Where you boys from?” a man in a cowboy hat asked.

  “Oh,” Chad said, “we don’t know each other. We just met.”

  “Oh,” the man said. “OK. What line a work you in?”

  “I’m in the adult industry,” Chad said, smiling confidently, all dimples and teeth.

  “Oh,” the man said, tipping his hat. “I thought you looked familiar.”

  “No,” Chad said. “I’m not in front of the camera. I’m a casting director.”

  “You here for the convention?” the man asked.

  “Yup,” Chad said, taking a sip from his free drink. (Free drinks!)

  The man in the cowboy hat turned to Morgan. “You in the adult biz too?” he said.

  “Nah,” Morgan replied. “I’m in the Internet business. I founded Facebook.”

  "What’s that?”

  "Forget it.”

  Though no one got much sleep that night, the Hullabahoos were up bright and early, heading back to Los Angeles. The Lakers game was that night. But first, they had a reservation for lunch—at Spago, Wolfgang Puck’s fabled eatery in Beverly Hills.

  Still dressed in their blazers and khakis from the night before, the B’hoos descended on the restaurant, sipping wine in their own private dining room. It was a lazy lunch, far from the UVA cafeteria. Here they ordered off a personalized menu that read WELCOME HULLABAHOOS. “I don’t even know what this bread is,” Matt Mooney, a freshman, says, reaching for the plate beside him, “but it’s awesome.”

  How the Hullabahoos ended up at a tony spot like Spago is simple enough: Julie Neupert Stott, their benefactor, the woman who’d flown the boys out to Portland a few months earlier, had arranged the lunch—and generously paid for it. Sitting in Spago, Morgan proposed a toast. “To Patrick’s arranged marriage!”

  Mrs. Stott was nothing if not detail oriented. She even called the maître d’ in advance, asking him to point out any celebrities who might be dining in the restaurant that day. “I thought it would be fun for the Hullabahoos,” she says. There was, in fact, at least one celebrity there that day—Paul Allen, the cofounder of Microsoft and one of the world’s richest men.

  As the meal was wrapping up, Myles “Harry Potter” Glancy went to the bathroom. He was standing at the urinal when he heard a voice over his shoulder, a voice that belonged to none other than Paul Allen.

  “Where are you boys from?” Paul Allen said, standing at the sink.

  “The University of Virginia,” Myles said.

  “What brings you out here?”

  “Oh, we’re an a cappella group. We’re singing the national anthem at the Lakers game tonight.” Myles zipped up.

  “Good luck with that,” Paul Allen said, making his way toward the door. He paused to look back at Myles. “Be careful,” he says. “You don’t want to wind up like that group from Yale.”

  It was a flip comment from the billionaire, all things considered. That group from Yale would be the Baker’s Dozen. And much like the Hullabahoos, the Yale boys were also out in California for winter break that week. The Baker’s Dozen, founded in 1947, had been coming to Los Angeles every Christmas for nearly twenty years. It was one of their favorite traditions not least of all because of Bruce Cohen’s annual Yuletide party—which was sometimes held in January but always featured a celebrity guest. Bruce Cohen graduated from Yale in 1983 and had himself been a member of the Baker’s Dozen. “Yale divided pretty quickly into those people who love and obsess about a cappella singing,” he says, “and those who want to take a gun and shoot everyone involved.” Bruce fell into the former group. After graduation, he went on to have a hugely successful Hollywood career, producing American Beauty (for which he won an Oscar). He never thought he’d see the BDs again. “In my day,” he says, “you kept in touch with your friends, but there were no reunions. You wouldn’t be caught dead going back to the BD Jam. You went on with your life.” But in January 1992, Bruce got a call from a friend: The BDs were singing at a school in Pasadena.

  “This was shocking to us,” Bruce says. “That the BDs could afford a plane trip in our day was unimaginable. We went to Florida—and we drove! From Connecticut! In vans!” It turned out that, in the years since Bruce Cohen had left New Haven, the West Coast tour had become an annual BDs tradition. Bruce was overcome with nostalgia and in 1993 he invited the BDs to perform at his annual Christmas party. The location would change over the years—from a Los Angeles nightclub to Bruce’s house in West Hollywood, the one above the Chateau Marmont with views all the way to Catalina—but the BDs have become a constant presence, singing two sets at every party. “They do a coherent set at nine-thirty,” Bruce says. “Then they take an hour break. And when they come back they do a trashed, sloppy set.” Still, even if the kids are enjoying a little eggnog, Bruce maintains order among the guests. The BDs are not a novelty act. “I have a strict complete-silence policy during the performance,” Bruce says. “You can clap and enjoy the show. But you can’t be talking— even in another room.” He’s not kidding.

  Jim Carrey was at Bruce’s Christmas party in 1993, the first to feature the BDs. Carrey was on In Living Color at the time and was prepping Ace Ventura: Pet Detective with Bruce’s buddy, director Tom Shadyac. In 2005, Hilary Swank was there. Marisa Tomei is a veritable Christmas party regular. “I fell into the trap of presenting celebrities to the BDs,” Bruce says. “It’s a thing now. I feel like I have to deliver a big name.” But, he acknowledges, it’s easier than one would think to wrangle stars. “It’s a two-way street,” he says. “They come as a favor to me, but when they get here and they go into the bedroom and get a private concert from the BDs, they’re loving it. Hilary Swank fell in love with them!”

  In January of 2007, Bruce snagged a last-minute “set piece” for the BDs, a young actress named Amanda Bynes. “I didn’t know her personally,” Bruce admits. He didn’t even know who she was. But the BDs, who’d grown up with Nickelodeon’s Amanda Show and a bunch of the actress’s teen movies, certainly did. “You can pull movie stars for days,” Bruce says. “But I’ve never seen the BDs so excited. Amanda Bynes. I was a big hero.”

  But if Bruce Cohen was nervous about the party this year, it had nothing to do with Amanda Bynes. A few days before the Baker’s Dozen had made international news. “People were e-mailing me from all over the world,” Bruce Cohen says, his voice suddenly grave. The San Francisco Chronicle reported extensively on the incident. This is what happened:

  The BDs had been invited to a New Year’s Eve party at Rose Dawydiak-Rapagnani’s house. The girl was a sophomore at Willamette University and she’d planned the party with her childhood friend Stephanie Soderborg, then a sophomore at Yale. Rose’s parents were remodeling their three-story Edwardian home in San Francisco’s Richmond District. The house was mostly empty, which made it a great space for a party, and the night was to be something of a reunion for the girls and their friends from St. Ignatius College Preparatory. But Stephanie was tight with the BDs and knew they’d be in town for winter break, and so she invited them to join in the revelry. (The e-vite read: A NIGHT OF MAYHEM.)

  The girl’s father, a retired police sergeant, and her mother (a sergeant out on disability) had vacated the house for the night, taking a room at the nearby Grand Hyatt. They’d locked the liquor cabinet and arranged for relatives next door to check in. “I had been a risk manager for the legal division of the police department, ” Rapagnani told the San Francisco Chronicle. “The last thing I wanted was kids served alcohol at my house.”

  The relatives did drop by, though they would later deny seeing any signs of alcohol. (Guests at the party insist it was essentially an open bar.) The Baker’s Dozen, dressed in bla
zers and khakis, arrived at ten-thirty carrying, of all things, cheesecakes. At midnight, many of the revelers, including the BDs, locked arms and sang “The Star-Spangled Banner.” An uninvited guest, dressed in a Santa Claus hat, declared this scene “the gayest shit I ever heard. What a bunch of fags.”

  A handful of BDs retreated to the back porch. That’s when Sharyar Aziz Jr. of the Baker’s Dozen was struck in the face with what he described to the Chronicle as “an open-handed slap.” The party supposedly ended there, and Santa Claus and friends left. But twenty minutes later, as the BDs walked out the door, a blue-and -white van pulled up outside and ten or twelve young men jumped out.

  It took five minutes for a police car to arrive. Witnesses heard the gang yelling about “being in the four-one-five”— the San Francisco area code. One of the BDs was thrown to the ground where, in the fetal position, he weathered a series of blows. When the dust settled, Aziz had suffered a fractured jaw and nerve and tooth damage. He returned home and was treated at New York Presbyterian Hospital. His jaw was wired shut for eight weeks.

  Rose Dawydiak-Rapagnani’s parents were called shortly after midnight. They did not come home, believing everything to be under control. At ten the next morning they went down to the police station to investigate. The police told them (incorrectly) that no one had been hurt. Television crews descended. Truth be told, the case was hard to resist. A Yale singing group accosted outside a New Year’s Eve party? Sean Hannity from Fox News even got in on the action, offering a ten-thousand-dollar reward for information leading to the arrest of the suspects. It’s not that he was an a cappella fan, but this was an issue of national pride. These boys had been attacked for singing the “Star-Spangled Banner.”

  The media depicted the Yale kids as, ahem, choirboys. The truth is more complicated. Of course no one deserves to be on the end of a beating like that. But at Yale, a campus with at least fifteen a cappella groups, the Baker’s Dozen are known as “the drinking group with a singing problem.” They’ve had an on-campus house for nearly a decade and the BDs regularly throw Yale’s first big party of the school year. “I think people are surprised to arrive at a party with hundreds of people and learn that it is being thrown by an a cappella group,” says Brian Smith ’01, a BD alum. From 1999 to 2003, the police were called to the BDs house at 235 Dwight Street twenty-eight times, according to The Yale Herald.

  Gavin Newsom, the San Francisco mayor, gave an interview to a KGO-TV reporter. “People are hiring attorneys everywhere and there’s a lot of PR and spin that’s been provided,” he said. “So I’m hoping everyone tempers things, we have a professional investigation, investigations don’t happen overnight and they certainly don’t happen in the media. Why were these kids—they’re all underage—why were they in a home with a lot of liquor, how’d they get the liquor, what the heck were they doing down there, why is everyone hiring an attorney, who’s culpable, who’s not?”

  In March 2007, Sharyar Aziz Jr. filed suit against five men: Richard Aicardi and Brian Dwyer (both nineteen); Aicardi’s twin brother, James, and twenty-year-old brother, Michael; and Marino Peradotto, twenty. He accused them of committing a “brutal ambush.” Peradotto is a Marine lance corporal stationed overseas. A separate criminal suit was brought against Richard Aicardi and Dwyer. According to the suit, Aziz’s doctors say that his jaw was broken by either a blunt instrument or “a blow by a professionally trained fighter.” Still, it is doubtful that anyone will face jail time—a mix of alcohol, conflicting identifications, and the ages make it hard to seek incarceration. Even though Dwyer allegedly admitted in his statement to police, “[I] kicked someone on the ground. I kicked him hard and I meant to hurt him.”

  If there is a lesson to be learned from all this, it’s not about class warfare, or even underage drinking. It’s about dedication. It’s also about jealousy—and the attention paid to a cappella singers. For all of the ink spilled, the media largely ignored the fact that the BDs continued their winter tour. Just a few days later, black eyes and all, dressed in their standard coats and ties, the BDs showed up for a previously scheduled gig at one of San Francisco’s toughest public high schools. The school has seven full-time security guards and one full-time police officer (armed). One of the BD alums, Lance Alarcon ’93, is a teacher at the school. Following the show that morning, Lance sent a message to the alumni listserv of the Baker’s Dozen. “Our cop literally felt the need to personally escort the group—when he saw them arriving in their coats and ties—because he feared for their safety.” It was a triumphant performance. “Despite what all these guys went through, with several of them sporting black eyes, that BD magic absolutely transcended socioeconomics, race, clothing style, culture, musical taste,” Lance wrote. “It is not an exaggeration to say that it was more than a concert for our school. Our most badass security guard—he does ‘scared straight’ seminars at San Quentin with young juveniles—told me it was ‘a beautiful experience.’ Months later I still have students and faculty asking me about the BDs.”

  The BDs showed up at Bruce Cohen’s annual Christmas party too. “They were in a little bit of denial and they were closed off,” Bruce says. “On the one hand, they wanted to pretend it hadn’t happened and go on with their tour. On the other hand, they didn’t want to trivialize it and say, ‘We’re over it. And we’re fine.’ Because they weren’t. I think they really didn’t know what had happened, how to contextualize it. Was it a bunch of college boys in a brawl that got carried away? Or was it something much darker and more serious?” Amanda Bynes was a nice distraction.

  In comparison, what happened to the Hullabahoos wasn’t so newsworthy. Though it certainly felt like they’d been kicked in the face.

  Our fabled Hullabahoos were on their way to the Staples Center to sing the national anthem at the Lakers game—a gig that had been on the books for months. Joe Cassara had just gotten off the phone with his contact at the Lakers. He had a pretty good poker face, and tried not to let on just how dire this traffic situation was. If they somehow missed tonight’s performance, Matt Mooney, a Semitic-looking freshman with perma five o’clock shadow and frogs on his robe, would be particularly crushed. At a dorm picnic on the first night of school a few months ago, Mooney had made the mistake of admitting to Chad Moses, the Hullabahoos’ treasurer who (as luck would have it) was also the kid’s resident adviser, that he’d come to UVA specifically to join the Hullabahoos. Chad already knew this about Mooney because, earlier that afternoon, while Mooney was unpacking his things, the kid’s mother had cornered Chad to grill him about the Hullabahoos. Chad’s first thought? “Oh, shit.” Mooney wasn’t just one of Chad’s advisees. The two were neighbors. “We share a wall,” Chad says. “Awkward!” It would have been a long year had Mooney been tone deaf. Luckily, the kid could sing.

  Sitting in the van, Joe Cassara was thinking back on the day they’d just had. The thing is, it had been a lazy afternoon. After lunch at Spago, the Hullabahoos spent hours lounging around. They took showers. They fell asleep on the couch. They watched television. They warmed up their voices. One sentence kept running through Joe’s mind: We could have left earlier. That’s when Morgan (in the minivan) called to say, “We gotta stop for gas.” The gas gauge was reading close to empty.

  “What?” Joe said.

  “We gotta stop for gas.”

  “I heard you.”

  Pause.

  “We don’t have time to wait for you,” Joe said. “Give me the directions to the Staples Center.”

  Morgan passed the phone to Pete Seibert, who’d lived out in L.A. last summer interning for Warner Music. “I think I remember how to get there,” Pete told Joe. For all the time spent putting this gig together, no one had bothered to print out directions.

  Joe looked around the big white van. It was six-forty. He was fairly certain the minivan, once they stopped for gas, wouldn’t make the show. The twelve Hullabahoos in the white van began to rehearse the national anthem. “We have all the voice parts,” Joe
said. “We could do it.”

  They wouldn’t get the chance. The Hullabahoos pulled up to the Staples Center at seven thirty-five. Joe Cassara was cursing, loudly. The Hullabahoos had officially missed the gig and Joe took his aggression out on a phone booth. Morgan, driving the Dodge Caravan, pulled up a few minutes later. No one was smiling. And for once, the Hullabahoos were dead quiet.

  “It was poor planning,” Joe said to no one in particular, shaking his head. He takes count of the group. “Where’s Dane?”

  Dane Blackburn hadn’t wanted to come on this trip to begin with. “I wanted a break,” he says. “It’s called winter break.” He saw enough of the Hullabahoos on campus. But the group had pressured him to come. Dane had some family in Los Angeles, and so he relented. He’d come for the Lakers game. With that obligation erased, he took off.

  “His aunt just picked him up,” someone said. “He said he’d meet us at the airport.”

  “What?” Joe said. “That’s it? It’s Thursday. We won’t see him again until Sunday?” Joe dialed Dane’s cell phone. It was a tense conversation. “We’ll talk about this later,” Joe said.

  “Are we still going to the game?” Matt Mooney asked.

  Brian Duhon, a baby-faced sophomore, sat fifteen rows behind the backboard. These seats had a face value of a hundred dollars. He looked like he might cry. “Seeing how big this place is makes it worse,” he said. He did not crack a smile for over an hour—even as the Laker girls danced to “Fergalicious.”

  This was not the only disappointment for the B’hoos that week. They’d come to Los Angeles with dreams of hanging out at the Playboy Mansion—swimming in the Grotto, flirting with Hef’s girlfriends. And darn they were going to try. So one afternoon, they pulled up to the front gate of the Mansion and innocently rang the bell. Brian Duhon talked into the video intercom. He told the voice on the other end that they were an a cappella group from UVA. He wasn’t getting anywhere. In a hail mary bid to prove their worth, Pete Seibert blew the pitch pipe and the Hullabahoos sang “One” into the intercom. When it was over, some say they heard clapping on the other end. Others insist it was merely the crackle of the intercom. Regardless, the gates did not open.