This was my second time seeing Rockapella at the Birchmere, in fact my second time seeing them, period. I went with my parents and three brothers and met my friend Connie and her husband Alan there. We got a table right next to the stage, though not center-stage as Connie would have liked. The fun was only slightly dampened by the Birchmere's recent "no cameras" rule. My brother Vincent took plenty of pictures after the concert to make up for it.

This was Seinfeld night, of course, and Barry quipped, "This must be the techno-elite group; you all know how to program your VCRs." And thus began the Seinfeld theme for the evening. I, personally, am not a fan of Seinfeld and I rather enjoyed the light-hearted stabs they occasionally made at the show. Fortunately Connie *is* a Seinfeld fan and was able to explain one or two of the inside jokes that I didn't get.

They came on singing Lift Up, which seems to be a standard opener for them. One amusing slip-up occurred in this song when Scott turned away from the audience and found himself face to face with his mic stand, which he then rode hobby horse-style to the back of the stage. From Lift Up they went straight into Dancing in the Streets, where all except Barry display their best dance moves. Jeff did some mighty fine hip gyrations, at the same time showing off all the electronic gizmos he has hooked up to his person. As my brother Gordon puts it, he's got more wires than a Bill Gibson character. (Bill Gibson writes cyberpunk.) Scott, eschewing his usual stand-on-the-head move, showed us his version of the hula as he learned it when they were recently in Hawaii. More about that later.

It was here that Barry made his quip about the techno-elite audience. Out of curiosity, when I got home I checked the individual bios that I had gotten in my new-member pack from the fan club. Sure enough, three of the guys (i.e., Jeff, Elliott, and Kevin) listed Seinfeld as one of their favourite shows. And here they were performing a concert on Seinfeld night. Oh, the sacrifices performers must make!

After singing I Am Your Man, where first Kevin then Elliott steal the spotlight from Scott by singing directly to a young lady sitting next to the stage, Elliott introduced them as, "Jerry, Elaine, George, and Kramer. And I guess that makes me Uncle Leo."

"Which one was I?" Scott demanded.

Elliott quickly replied, "George," even though when he had waved his hand in Scott's direction, he had been saying Jerry and Elaine.

Next they sang Just You, Just Me, then Have a Little Faith. Jeff gave the cue line for the latter, saying, "Have a little faith in us."

There was a pause, then Scott said, "Oh, that was my cue, wasn't it? And I missed it!"

Next came 16 Tons and Barry told us how when he was a little boy he wished for a deep voice like Tennessee Ernie Ford's. This is a great song for Barry, the best one he's done so far, I think. I can't wait till they put it on one of their recordings.

Now Kevin told us that he and his wife would be having a baby, a little girl, or so the ultrasound tech says. I personally will not believe it until the kid is actually born. I have seen several instances where a prediction of the baby's gender which is supposed to be 95% accurate, turned out to be 100% wrong. But the announcement served as an appropriate intro for A Change in My Life.

The last song before intermission was Long Cool Woman. I love the intro for this song; it is simply priceless! As for Scott singing the song in double time (twice as fast), I like it that way, but I also like the original tempo. The only disadvantage to the double time version is that it's over too quickly. You barely get a chance to savour it.

I forgot to mention that the boys are trying out some new technology. Instead of the big, unwieldy speaker monitors lining the front of the stage, they are now using ear monitors which the Shure microphone people gave them to try out. Presumably if they like them, they'll buy them. Considering the way they kept fiddling with them and taking them out, it may not happen. But without the monitors we had easy access to the setlist that was taped to the stage and which we doctored. It all started when Vincent commented, "They don't have Zombie Jamboree on their setlist. Maybe we should write it in." This was discussed among the tables closest to the stage and finally a guy from the table next to us went up to the stage and slapped a napkin down between the two pages of the setlist saying, "There, it's done!" On the napkin he had scribbled, "Zombie, please!" By the time the guys came back on stage, several more notes had been added to the first one and we could see the boys surreptitiously trying to peek at them as they sang Love Potion #9. When the song was over Jeff examined our requests and called the others over as he read a couple of them aloud. The best ones were, "Zombie, please! P.S. Seinfeld can't sing." and "Remember the undead!" Well, despite our best efforts, they didn't sing Zombie because, as Scott said, they haven't practiced it in a while and it doesn't sound good. Someone in the audience yelled, "We don't care!" to which Barry replied, "We do!" And I have to say that I care too; much as I would love for them to do Zombie, I would want them to do it well.

The next song was Heard it Through the Grapevine and a lady in the audience was going wild over the lines Scott sings by himself at the beginning. He acknowledged her with his best superstar grin.

Then Elliott regaled us with a tale from their recent month-long stay in Hawaii. (I *thought* Scott looked a little sunburned.) He told us about his trip to the top of Hale Akala, a volcano on Maui. The view from the top is spectacular, he says, and while he was up there meditating, the Answer came to him. At this point in the narrative I was hearing people whisper "42" all around, and for all you non-Douglas Adams fans, let me digress for a moment to explain: Douglas Adams has written a book series called The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy. In the first book he told about a race that built a supercomputer to discover the Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything! After thinking about it for 7.5 million years, the computer came up with this answer: 42. The people then realized that they needed to find the Ultimate Question before they could understand the Ultimate Answer. (The question, of course, turned out to be "What do you get when you multiply 6 by 7?") Anyway, Elliott said that the Answer that came to him was Love, but he wasn't sure what the question was. Just then, much to my mother's mortification and my annoyance, Vincent called out, "What do you get when you multiply 6 by 7?"

Elliott stared at him for a minute, then answered, "42."

"Well, there's your answer, man," Vince told him. "Go conquer the universe!"

Elliott didn't seem to get it; I guess he isn't a Douglas Adams fan. Well, maybe he'll read this review. (Jeff's a sci-fi fan, isn't he? I wonder if he got it; he didn't say anything if he did.) And after all that nonsense, they sang a totally unrelated song, Kingdom of Shy.

Now Kevin asked, "Does anybody here remember the show Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?" and was answered by a resounding cheer. He continued, "We had so much fun on that show," but stopped when the audience laughed. Scott came over and said, "I know why you're doing this. You want everyone to think you were on that show because Sean got all the girls and you want a girl, don't you?"

"Yes!" Kevin squeaked plaintively.

"Well, go find yourself a girl."

Kevin blinked, then, "Oh. Okay. Nice segue into that." He jumped down off the stage right in front of Connie and me and said, "I gotta find a girl." He looked at us and we held our breath...then he walked away. He chose a young lady named Donna who was sitting at a table by herself. At first she seemed embarrassed by the Pretty Woman serenade, but gradually got into it. She certainly showed some smooth moves in her dance with Scott. As he said afterward, "I'll not soon forget our dance together. That's a fine dancer!"

The next song Scott described as "a sad song. Well, not really sad. We'll just see how you react." The song was I'll Hear Your Voice. I loved this song when I first heard it on Lucky Seven. I thought it was perfect the first time, and of all the revamped songs on the latest CD, it needed revamping the least. Oh well.

Next came my favourite schtick, Scott confessed that he was tired of being the pretty boy.

"Elaine!" Elliott shouted.

"Yes, Elaine," Scott sighed. "I'm the pretty boy with the pretty hair and I sing the pretty songs while I fluff around the stage..."

At this point somone in the audience interrupted. "Not that there's anything wrong with that!" (This was one of the inside jokes that Connie had to explain to me.)

Scott recovered beautifully. "And I have to put up with dumb jokes like that. While someone dominates the stage with his big testosteronial voice and his big......thingy." This elicited a sympathetic "awww!" from the audience (amid a few giggles) and Scott said, "Thank you. I wouldn't have said this if I hadn't thought you would respond that way." Normally, this is where Barry launched into his Fabio story, but tonight he skipped straight to the punchline because, as he said, "that commercial isn't even on anymore." True, but Fabio is still doing I Can't Believe It's Not Butter commercials, and in the latest one I noticed he was trying to pitch his voice low. Maybe he got wind of Barry's little joke at his expense. Of course, all this served as an intro for the song Sixty Minute Man, which is not one of my favourites, but I forgot that when Barry sang a whole verse directly to me. Whoo hoo!

Lastly they got back around to Carmen, which they had skipped, featuring Jeff's dynamite drum solo. And on to the encores! First, of course, was the off-mic Up on the Roof/What a Wonderful World medley, and Scott (gasp!) forgot the words! I believe the line he missed was "Don't know much about algebra, don't know what a slide rule is for." He just went mumbledy bumbledy until he got to the line "But I do know one and one is two." Hey, even the pros slip up sometimes. The other encores they sang for us were Why, Stand By Me, and Keep on Smiling. In honour of Seinfeld, Scott added the expression "yadda yadda yadda" to the lyrics of the latter.

Afterwards was the usual meet and greet and Mom had them all sign a book of Bach partitas and sonatas (which she plays on her viola). Barry looked at it and said, "Bach, he's my man!" (He plays them on his bass.) Elliott looked at an adagio that was chock full of 64th notes and said, "Gosh, that's a lot of notes!" I had my picture taken with each of the guys in turn and when I got to Scott he looked at me and said, "I remember you." I was utterly speechless, but that really made my night. Then my dad put us on the spot by telling Scott that we had been leaving birthday messages for them on the Rockapella Center phone line. "Really? When was that?" Scott asked. I told him that we had left messages for all of them at least once. (Essentially, the message was me, Mom, and Vince singing Happy Birthday in three-part harmony, a cappella of course) "No one ever told me about that!" Scott said. Then Vince said, "Well, who's got a D?" Mom hummed a D and before I could protest we were singing Happy Birthday with no preparation or warmup for Rockapella. How 'bout that, huh? And I didn't even crack on the high note.

A great concert, guys. My family really enjoyed it. We'll be looking for you to come to Virginia again soon.

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