Pile a dozen average Tufts men into a van and send them west for a weekend - you've got a potential disaster (or an equally painful episode of MTV's Road Rules). Do the same with a bunch of the Beelzebubs, and it's just another series of gigs in a long and busy semester.
Starting on Wed., Nov. 8, the Bubs went on an extended weekend tour of the Midwest. With two of the group's officers - Mike Flynn and Ed Boyer - hailing from the region, it seemed time to pay their homes a visit. They stopped in Ohio and Indiana for a series of performances, and were kind enough to let the Daily in on some of the fun.
Day 1: As is usual for all their tours, the Bubs rented a 15-passenger van for the weekend. "If you saw them afterwards," sophomore member Greg Binstock pointed out, "you'd know why we return them to be cleaned."
At least the van was a little more spacious this time. Normally the Bubs would bring all 14 current members on a gig, but only 11 were in attendance, with Phil Struzziero, Henry Lee, and Dan Manvitch all out with excuses. "In general, if we're invited to a gig and only 11 people can go, it gets questionable - and you never want to do a gig without all your brothers," explained Binstock, "but we've been planning this trip since June, so it's a special case." Fewer members meant reorganizing all the songs and eliminating any numbers that are now missing their soloists, but this Midwest weekend had plenty of advance notice. None of the missing three sing the same parts, anyway, so most of the problems were surmountable.
With Friday classes cancelled for Veterans Day, and with Wednesday as a Tufts Friday (they try very hard to avoid Friday classes), the Bubs got themselves on the road by 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday. They typically drive in about three hour shifts, with someone riding shotgun in charge of directions, and - most importantly - keeping the driver awake. It's about a 12-hour drive from Medford, MA, to Marion, OH, their first stop and Boyer's hometown. Most of the Bubs slowly settled off to sleep as the van rolled on.
Day 2: Of course, they started to wake up when Flynn was pulled over at 1 a.m. by a Pennsylvania state trooper. "Officer, we're on our way to Notre Dame," Flynn tried to explain. "We're part of a chorus."
The officer's reply: "Keep your hands where I can see them."
The group got off with a verbal warning, and Binstock, riding shotgun, found the whole thing hilarious. "Mike always plays the part of the dumb chorus boy," he said, "one who has no idea where he is in this large, large country." He then led a round of confused and effeminate imitations of "Occifer, occifer, we're from Iowa...Which way is east?"
"I've been pulled over three times for the Bubs," bragged Flynn, "and I've always gotten away with it. He said we were going seventy? We were going at least eighty-five." Was this a point of pride for Flynn? You bet. "Only Changmo drives the speed limit," he said, pointing at his fellow Bub, Changmo Park.
"It's great to have Changmo drive, though," pointed out junior Marty Keiser. "When we get to the gig, you can hop out and yell, 'Changmo! Park!' It's a name, it's a command, it's efficient use of language."
No one said the Bubs were funny.
Thankfully, the rest of the trip to Marion was uninterrupted, with the group stopping at Boyer's house at 6:30 a.m. to crash and rest up until 10 a.m. The day's first gig - at Marion's Technical College branch of Ohio State University - was small. "Pretty assy," as Binstock put it. "It was intended to be small, but the audience was tired and it was hard to solicit energy from them. But an assy gig is unavoidable now and then, because you just never know."
The follow-up, however, was well worth it. The Bubs went to Ed Boyer's former high school, Marion Harding, to play for a crowd of 500 - all orchestra, band, and chorus members. The gym and its bleachers were decked out in streamers and paper for their homecoming weekend - "We're in high school again," observed one of the Bubs.
And the concert was awesome. From the Bubs characteristic skits to the choreographed dancing of "Disco Inferno" to the radio hit "Bills, Bills, Bills," the crowd loved every moment. When Binstock started off "Bills, Bills, Bills," the audience fell silent, "Waiting," as he said, "to see if I could pull it off." When it seemed that indeed he could, he was joined on the solo by a screaming chorus of high school girls for the second half of the song, as they stood up and danced in the bleachers.
The aftermath: "It was like being the Backstreet Boys." Every Bub found himself surrounded by a crush of students, forced to sign autographs and shake hands. A group of girls forced Binstock to sing "Say My Name" with them as a follow-up to his solo, while various others focused on pinching the dance-happy butts of Marty Keiser and Isaac Brody. A boy told Keiser that his dancing had inspired him to go to college, while one girl ran away, squawking, "I pinched the booty-shaker's ass!"
"It was insane," Brody said afterwards. "One girl asked me how old I was. When I told her that I was 21, she just said, 'That's the same age as my fianc?©,' and walked away."
After that, it was pizza at Ed Boyer's house and then back to the Technical College for the day's last gig - this time for a crowd of around 100 people. The appreciation of the slightly older audience was more subdued than the psychotically enthusiastic high schoolers, but the applause was rousing after each song.
Enough singing for one day for the Bubs - it was back to Boyer's house for much-needed rest.
Day 3: Friday, and finally the main event started. The Bubs had been invited to participate in a two-day event called Big Men On Campus (organized by Indiana University's group Straight No Chaser) and consisting of all-male groups from universities like Duke, Brigham Young, and Indiana performing at Notre Dame and Indiana University. The drive to the Notre Dame gig took around five hours, a far cry from the first night's ordeal.
Most interesting about the Big Men shows was the fact that both days would be recorded, and each group would eventually select two songs to put on a CD. Equally important for the Bubs, however, was the attendance of three "Bub-alums" from Chicago - former members who made the trek down to see them perform.
The Bubs set provoked no ass-grabbing this time around, but Keiser did get a shock from one of the older audience members. "This old woman came up to me," he recalled, "and said, 'Your dancing reminded me of something I used to do when I was young and naughty.' I just didn't know what to say to that."
The after-party for the various groups gave the Bubs some much-needed decompression time: everyone was told to meet at the van by 9 a.m. and they were off.
Day 4: Miraculously, everyone showed up alive and well in the morning in time to drive on. On the way to the final gig at Indiana University, the Bubs passed Straight No Chaser's van - nailing it with a Super Soaker on a whim. Surprisingly, Straight No Chaser still bought the Bubs dinner when they made it to Indiana.
With the show not due to start until 8 p.m., the Bubs were left with little to do. "We watched a bit of a football game against Wisconsin," explained Binstock, "scored some free hats, and just hung out and relaxed in general."
Having wasted all that time, however, the group was told 30 minutes before showtime that the microphone arrangement - and every song's configuration - had to be changed to match the recording conditions for the upcoming CD. Normally, the group used two or three microphones in the front, but for good recording and mixing, Indiana used more microphones and a wider spread. With only fifteen and then ten minutes to go, the group sound-checked and tested out the configurations, finally being whisked off-stage just before the audience poured in.
It was worth it: the final show went off without a hitch and the Bubs were done.
Day 5: Of course, "done" meant leaving at 2 a.m. to drive back to campus. With the van due back at the rental agency by 4:30 p.m., Business Manager Mike Flynn made a command decision to let the group go back a bit later, and incur the late charges, since the weekend had gone so well.
The Bubs arrived home in style, firing the still-present Super Soaker on students waiting for the shuttle at the campus center. Other things were not so ever-present, however. "I lost two buttons off my jacket," said Changmo Park, "but that didn't matter, because I lost the whole jacket." Somewhere along the way, his bag was lost.
Marty Keiser was even less lucky. He returned to campus to find his house had been robbed. "They only stole the DVD player and all the DVDs," he said. "Whoever it was must really like my taste in movies."
The Bubs move on, though. They reunited with their three absent members and retired to their rehearsal room in Curtis Hall to officially end the Midwest weekend by singing their traditional anthem, "Brothers In Song."
