May was a good month for us. We had a good attendance and a lot of fun. Two of our members competed in the So. Cal East contest, and we’re very proud of both Mike Werner and Stan Haymaker; they came in 11th and 5th respectively with their quartets. That is just terrific. Not only that, but Cheers, Mike’s quartet, came to the meeting and gave us a preview of their contest package. If you missed that meeting, you missed another treat. The Club was there. That quartet has Colby Stroud in it, a previous member of ours, as well as present Gold Medallist Gary Texeria, tenor of Gotcha. What a fabulous night!

Don’t go away. We have more fun in store for you. Save June 13. We’re going to visit out sister chapter in Rancho Capistrano. Actually, they are going to have their meeting at a tavern called Boosters. It’s located in a shopping center at the corner of Marguerite Pkwy and Avery, about 1 block from the freeway. The exact address is 28621 Marguerite Parkway, Mission Viejo. The phone number of Boosters is 949-347-0111. The meeting starts at 7 pm.

We will have a car pool leaving the church that evening at exactly 6 pm. Anyone wanting a ride, be there before that time because we will be leaving at 6 pm. Otherwise, drive south on I-5 to the Avery offramp (next one after Crown Valley). Turn left on Avery and go under the freeway. About 2/3 of a block from the freeway there is a driveway entering the center on your left. Watch out for oncoming traffic. If traffic is too heavy, go to the intersection of Avery and Marguerite and make a left turn onto Marguerite and a left into the center. Boosters will be on your left. If you miss this one, you will have missed a great time.

And we have three brand new members, and they are not just members but good singers. Paul Sandorf, Wes Reed and Ken Kline. That’s the kind of news I like to hear. New singers! Real singers! If we keep this up, we’re going to have a heck of a lot of fun in the future. By the way, did you ask someone that likes to sing to come on down? He will thank you for the rest of his life. Remember, if you’re too busy to sing, you’re too busy.

Go For The Gold
It’s “Quartet Heaven”!
By Stanley Tinkle

Saturday, June 18 will be here before we know it! That’s the date of the “Go For The Gold” show--that parade of the top Far West District quartets who have qualified to go on to the International Convention and Contest at Salt Lake City this July. If you’re a member of the Orange Quartet Chapter, you must like to hear good, clean barbershop harmony. That means you won’t want to miss this show.

Most of us were present recently when O.C. Times dropped by our meeting and gave us a sample. Their harmony was drop-dead gorgeous. They’ll be at Go For The Gold. Later in May, many of us attended the SoCal East Division Contest, where we heard the top college quartets, Men-So-Forte, Afternoon Delight, and Four Score, who stole the show. They too will all be at Go For The Gold. Mark June 18 at 8 pm at Plummer Auditorium (in Fullerton at the corner of Lemon and Chapman) on your calendar. Just remember that I’m talking about Chapman Avenue, Fullerton, not Chapman Avenue, Orange. I won’t name anybody, but some people do forget that, at times.

If the beautiful and historic Plummer Auditorium had a big marquee, it would place these names in lights on that night: Metropolis! O.C.Times! Stardust! Hi Fidelity! Dazzle! Champion quartets often show up to make this event a veritable potlatch of musical magic. The quartets that will compete at Salt Lake City will present their competition numbers for our pleasure. That means O.C. Times will sing a pair of Elvis songs that will make you wish they had them on a CD already. They probably will also sing “Come Fly With Me”, as will Men-So-Forte. That song alone will be worth the price of admission (which incidentally is a $15 donation, to cover plane fare for the contestants to Salt Lake City).

So, will any choruses perform at Go For The Gold? Well, I’d be pleased if Westminster did, because as you know, they too are going to compete, and they’re our younger generation. But this event is a spotlight for quartets, and because these quartets are getting better every week, you can prepare to be astonished by a quantum leap in quality by every one, if you can imagine that. They may even inspire you to go on to hear them again at Salt Lake, by which time they will have evolved again. Of course, on June 18th you’ll be getting Spring Delight for only fifteen bucks. The Salt Lake City Summer Ecstasy will cost you more like a thousand, plus at least 96 hours of your time. It’ll be worth it; we could ring a tag in the Salt Palace. But you may want to take one step at a time. The Plummer Auditorium has great acoustics, too. I’ll listen for you there.

New Society Logo

Letter sent by Dave Gryvnak to Rob Hopkins President of SPEBSQSA, Drayton Justus VP SPEBSQSA, Roger Lewis interem CEO SPEBSQSA, Ray Rhymer Westunes Editor, and Peter Feeney President FWD.

You don't gain new members by getting a new logo. To me changing the logo and the name of the society is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. What you must do is improve the image of the society. When you do just that, improve the image, you won’t have to stage a bountied manhunt for new members. They will seek us out.

A few years ago a terrific quartet, 139th Street, appeared on the Cheers show. They were portrayed as a bunch of buffoons. That did not help our image; it definitely hurt our image. And 139th Street quartet has been, and always will be, one of my favorite quartets. But that series of shows hurt our image badly. Recently, Power Play sang on the Jane Pauley show. That show allowed different singing groups to show off their style of music and the abilities of the performers. I watched that show with great anticipation while the other groups did their very best with their talents. Then came the representatives of Barbershop Harmony, the International Quartet Champions, Power Play. What a let down. They did what every barbershopper has done in the past: demonstrate four-part harmony by singing My Wild Irish Rose, one part at a time. What a waste of time and talent! Did it show how great our craft is? NO WAY!!! It showed how we are a bunch of buffoons that sing in some old time style, with some dated song that the audience cannot enjoy. That show did not help to change our image nor did it help to bring in any new members. The general public thinks of barbershoppers as a bunch of drunks under a street lamp singing Sweet Adeline, off key! Let’s change that image. You won’t do it with a membership drive that is based on a award for each new member.

What will bring in new members? Present a terrific image. Show the world how great our hobby is. Why doesn't SPEBSQSA put on a PBS show with quartets the likes of Gotcha, Nightlife, and Acoustix, and choruses such as the Vocal Majority and Masters of Harmony. Blow the audience away. Give them some good barbershop. Give them something to compare. You won't do it with My Wild Irish Rose, or with four stooges in a bar room. Pay for one of our top quartets to go on the Tonight show, the Oprah show or some other well publicized show and show the world what we can do.

And by the way, that LOGO sucks. The logo looks like a NIKE Shoe logo! The four lines were explained as representing the music staff!!! Are you crazy? You expect to get someone with any musical background to join a group that has a logo that has a four-lined musical staff? He will say, "Don't these people know that the musical staff has five lines?" And those wiggly lines are singers? Get real!!!

The Society can do better to promote our craft than to make a new logo, change the name of the Society and have a membership drive contest. We, in the Orange Quartet Chapter, are continually trying to get new members. I personally have been a member for over thirty years and have approached everyone I know to try our hobby. But the majority of the population doesn't know about barbershop harmony--not good barbershop harmony. That is where the Society can come in. That money can be put to better use by really improving our image. I would like to see the Society work on changing our image, not having a membership contest. Spend our money on PR, not on a manhunt!

On behalf of the Orange Quartet Chapter
Dave Gryvnak, President of the Orange Quartet Chapter

Slow Bleed
submitted by Dave Gryvnak

This is part of a letter from Kirk Young to Dick Girvin dated 4/20/2005:

Please allow me to call your attention to the Jan/Feb 2002 issue of THE HARMONIZER. In that issue, from pages 18 through 25, our membership position was outlined in great detail by Ev Nau, Dick Bek, Scott Hoge and Brian Lynch. Our membership position was supported by demographics, charts and actuarial facts and figures from the American Insurance Institute showing what was happening to our Society and where we would be in a very short time-frame. They did a fabulous job of laying out the problems we would face. It was (and still is) a sobering treatise, to say the least. (It's is also interesting to note that three of the four authors are no longer on the staff. Hmmmmmmm....)

That magazine feature predicted we would be under 30,000 members by 2005, 24,139 members by 2010 and 18,277 members by 2020 if the status quo continued. Wow. The first prediction has come true, so what happens now?

"Slow Bleed -- The Pachyderm In Our Tonsorial Parlor" (as the article is titled) didn't just predict doom and gloom, get everybody scared and then leave it that way. Great pains were taken to outline plans, suggestions, success stories, data about why people left and how to handle it, what chapters have to do in helping, how to recruit, points about dying chapters and a wealth of other information that I’m leaving out on how to increase our membership by taking care of the local chapter. I challenge each and every one of us to go back and re-read the article.

(Editor's Note: I went through my box of BBS bulletins, and I do have the Jan.-Feb. 2002 issue of Harmonizer that features the article "Slow Bleed," in case anybody doesn't remember it or missed it. I vividly recall reading that article when it came out. Scarey. But the feature offered 152 good ideas to stem the tide. Let me know if you want to read this article. The Society has many articles from Harmonizer online, but not this one.)

Old Classics
If you want to hear some old classics, check out this website.
http://www.6thcorpsmusic.us/
Dave Gryvnak, President

Bill Merry, R.I.P.
By Paul Kelley

Once more we've been called upon to write about one of our dedicated and celebrated barbershop buddies after his passing. Bill Merry was certainly such a man by all measures, and I'll relate a few that come to mind.

First and foremost, Bill was truly a fine, kind gentleman who happened to find barbershop singing to his liking many years ago. I became acquainted with him as he sang bass with (Get this!) "The Merry Chords," who made their mark as featured show quartet not only in the FWD but all over the map. Can't recall the other members now, but "Dutch" Holland was the lead singer, quartet loudmouth and troublemaker (ethics committee's favorite target). Anyhow, they were great entertainers in their time. Happened to see Dutch's widow, Shirley, at Bill's funeral.

Besides displaying his fine bass singing talent, Bill was a certified judge in the now extinct interpretation category, was an area counselor, and served as Chapter extension chairman for our District while we were trying to get our Orange Quartet charter. (Ahem, we forgive you, Bill, for all that help!) As the years passed, Bill probably got his biggest kicks by coming to our weekly meetings. The last sighting we had was with a gig we did Valentine's Day at Kirkwood Manor. The Orange Town Four can normally wake the dead, but Bill was nodding off in a chair against the wall. We roused him to sing a couple of songs, which he handled very well. But then we needed a tire iron to detach and finish our gig.

I thought the Merry Chords were FWD champs, but my books do not reflect my memory, so I'll try another. "Gentlemen Songsters" reigned for the 1979-80 year, and I'll bet a dime Bill helped with his wonderful bass.

I'll sign off before more bad information comes out, but my usual "I'm glad he came our way" does hold true.

Paul Kelley, obituary and curmudgeonly writer

New Guys—And Gals
By Stanley Tinkle

The Orange Quartet Chapter has welcomed a parade of new singers this spring. We have the Peralta Brothers, who have sung as a gospel quartet for over fifty years and now are trying out barbershop. They performed for us in May, and I hope they join. There is Wes Reid, a savvy and multitalented four part man who likes to be plugged in wherever he’s needed. Dave Parks is a new bass who sings with Fullerton and who is feeling his way into the quartet experience. Dave does his homework; he plays the bass Polecat tape wherever he drives.

We also have several high school grads who want to form a quartet: Steve, Luis, Hiroki and Mami. They all sound like music majors, but three of them are new to barbershop. I’ve been working with them, and I appreciate the help that many of you have given them by backing them up in a Polecat song. They really work at it; if you’ve heard a sort of hum while we sing at the afterglow, it’s probably the Young Guys singing along with you under their breath. We don’t know what the future holds for them, but we know it will include good memories of their evenings singing with us.

Don Engels, our Board Wizard, has managed to form quartets out of our motley singing pool. Imagine matching a “greenie”, two Kibbers, and a jazz singer, lighting the fuse, and hoping for a sparkling performance! But Don is an inspired alchemist. He could probably throw in a pair of bullfrogs and make it work.

As I see it, we have two groups of singers. One group likes to be learning new songs all the time. They rarely hold still long enough to do a really good job ringing Shine On Me, not to mention Down Mobile. They like to sight-read music, and their worst fear is that on their deathbed someone will show them a list of 200 fabulous songs they’ve never tried. These guys can be a terrible pain in the neck for Don. I like to sing with these guys.

The other group likes to sing The Old Songs, which include a couple that were written after 1900. They’ll even try to woodshed Old Dog Trey. They would rather dispense with sheet music, because they have already learned and forgotten more songs than they’ll ever need. They have a lot of fun on Mondays as long as nobody shoves the charts for Blue Velvet under their noses. These guys are a kick to harmonize with, though my baritone woodshedding makes Old Dog Trey sound more like a coyote. At any rate, if thirty guys show up every Monday, we can match quartets for both of these interest groups.

What we haven’t done yet is designate an “auditor”—a member who will pull every new guy aside right away and test whether he can carry a tune or a harmony. If he can’t, he deserves to know, so he can save his time and ours. My chorus chapter does this, and about a third of our visitors are invited to support the chapter as audience members but not as singers. So…..who wants to be the auditor for the Orange Quartet Chapter? Do I see any hands?

Barbershop 101, NO!
By Paul Kelley

You thought your Chapter curmudgeon had dropped dead, didn't you? Not so. We negatives outlive you positives. But you'll never live to see the truth, will you?

We have had an influx of guests recently, due to what? Computer info, big page ad in Westunes, arm twisting??? So what's so bad about that?? Here's my feelings.

As the premier Quartet Chapter in our Society, we deserve a little respect, and we get some. Notice the quartets that come around near contest time to try out their stuff on an audience? We can sing pretty well on average and hear well, too. Just because a lot of us wear hearings aids doesn't mean we're deaf. To the point, this isn't a class of barbershop 101!!

More to my personal point--we've allowed people to come repeatedly to our meetings that obviously have no musical ability whatsoever. One week with them should be sufficient to deliver some advice. A few weeks with some of those birds, cooped up in a practice room, is enough to cause sudden illness and stay home with the boob toob. A couple of weeks ago, I greeted one of our more knowledgeable singers with a question--Why haven't you been here? A few mumbled words plus lack of interest tumbled out. Think that over and over and over. A lot to chew on.

Now all is not bad news. We've picked up a few guys who will fill our needs perfectly: good singers who can stay on key (how about that for a start!). They crave quartetting and have varying degrees of experience. How about that. No preschool or kindergarten classes! I might even try to learn some new songs myself. But back to my point. If a guy isn't capable of working in a type "C" quartet, why should the whole Chapter wrestle their problem for weeks, months or years? We have a unique thing going for us, and I've had it with their problems.

Board of Directors, do your stuff and quickly, please!