The First Nerd Package

Prior to the nerd package, we had considered some pretty horrible ideas for contest packages, most notably we wanted to come out dressed in barrels held over our shoulders with straps and sing "Side by Side" & "Roll Out the Barrel".  Brian pointed out to us that after the first time we sing the word "Barrel", the joke will been done and repeating it will be just... well - repetitive and not terribly funny. 

The Nerd package, however, changed the way other people viewed us as a quartet.  I remember the very moment that we decided to do this package.  We were sitting in the Big Boy restaurant in Belleville MI, when Scott mentioned that he went to see the movie "Revenge of the Nerds".  Scott, thinking we weren't going to go for it, said we should dress up like Nerds for the next contest package.  We all just looked at each other and said, almost as one, "Yeah!!!".  The rest of the meal was spent brainstorming songs and gags we could do, and thus started us on journey from which we never returned. We spent the rest of our existence trying to come up with a better package than the previous. 

The two songs we came up with were "They Go Wild Over Me" and "My Cutie's Due at Two to Two".  We rehearsed this regularly in front of the mirrors in the Orchestra room of the Alexander Music Building at EMU (Easter Michigan University).  The mirrors were integral to the success of the package, because we were able to see our characterizations appear and get ideas from watching ourselves and each other, as well as synchronize the choreo & timing of the gags. 

We planted people in the audience to chant "Nerds, Nerds, Nerds", before we came on.  The crowd didn't know what to think of us as we came from behind the curtain.   As each member hit the stage that the laughter built. The minute we got  to the edge of the stage, they went absolutely nuts After taking our bows, we came back to the mic and ran into each other, then we each grabbed our own pitch pipe and blew our starting notes.  The gags went on from there.  After the first  song, the audience was in hysterics. Of all the comedy packages that we put together, this was the easiest.  All we had to do was act real goofy, not a problem for us. 

The following Fall, we sang a parody that Scott wrote.  "How to Impress the Beautiful Girls Medley" netted us a +24 , which, in the old arrangement category, was quite a high score.  The song starts with an intro that Scott wrote, then parodied a some classic barbershop songs.  "Shave Your Face" (Baby Face) "Buy Lots of Clothes" (My Wild Irish Rose)  "Brush and Floss" (Down Mobile).  It was Scott's first attempt at arranging for contest and a record in the arrangement category (highest we'd heard of at that point was Don Gray's "Wild Irish Rose" which received a +26 with three judges at international - we only had 2 per category).  The category specialist, (Al Baker) who'd written the parameters for scoring Parody was in the pit for that contest and said it was a near-perfect parody. The next time  we sang that song in contest, we scored a  -12 , go figure. I guess we can all be glad the arrangement category is now extinct.
 

.

Tourists
April '87
.

Cub Scouts
April '88
.

Crazy
April 89'
.

WhiteTux
July '89
.

'