The ICCA Finals Through the Eyes of a Competitor

Dave Grossman, a member of Ithaca College's Ithacappella thoroughly documented his experience performing in the ICCA Finals throug ha series of notes. Here is a compilation of Dave's unique observations from the Finals experience.

Please note that the writing below is in no way representative of the views of Ithaca College or Ithacappella.

-.. just woke up.. so tired. don't know why i did laundry last night. need sleep. must sleep on bus. won't sleep on bus.

-Oh my god. Where is the bus.

-Finally on the bus. Watching finding nemo will totally be the highlight of this trip.

-We just passed a farm of miniature ponies. What purpose do miniature horses have?

-We just played an hour long game of mafia. I was the cop and I was right about EVERYTHING and no one listened to me. Bah humbug

-Just got to alice tully hall. Sooo excited for sound by liquid 5th

-Dave Baumgartnet is SICK.

-We were just informed about the way the winners will be announced by MTV.. eh..

-The backstage of Alice Tully Hall is a MAZE. Just had a short/funny exchange with a guy from Almost Recess. Can't wait to hear them later, they sounded great in sound check. Their lead singer is from Ithacappella, too.

-Found our dressing room. We're sharing a big room with the group from Missouri. They seem like really cool guys. This room is burnin' up though. The door keeps locking behind people.

-So much time until sound check... entertaining ourselves by signing MTV release forms.

-Just had sound check, it went really well. The sound is great and this is such a cool place to sing in. They have plasma freaking monitors on the wings so you can see what's going on onstage. So cool.

-MTV just pulled us aside for 40 minutes to do a 'quick interview.' Questions and answers included:
-What are some musical challenges you guys face, like rhythm and tempo?
-So are you guys like, fraternal?
-Are you guys going to have a big rager when you get back to Ithaca for this? Well actually we're probably going to go back and have a chess and checkers tournament

It was cool to get interviewed/filmed though.

-The next time you're in New York City, get dinner at Gabriel's. Oh my god. I've had a stomach bug this week so I couldn't eat too much, but what I had was heavenly. It's also insanely nice out here in NYC.

-Back to the green room. We've got a looong while until we go on, since we're the 6th of 7 college groups, and 10 of 11 groups total. I also hear that they're running a bit behind. We talked to the Missouri guys a little bit, my guess was right, they are really cool. They also seem to know the same derrickcomedy quotes that we keep repeating.

-So much time until we go onstage.. sitting around telling stories. It's kind of amazing that we haven't played mafia in this green room yet.

-second round of warm-ups (first was before sound check), going over spots in the songs, starting them. this little room actually has a nice sound to it. we're pretty excited right now. from here until we go on stage there won't be any more posts, it's time to really start focusing.

-Well that was AWESOME. I don't care how we did rank-wise anymore. That was the biggest applause I've ever heard in my life. The guys from missouri heard the MTV intros and told us we had home-field-advantage based on the applause we were getting, but I never could have imagined that. I'm so glad we brought people to this. I think we put on one heck of a set, and the crowd seemed to love it, so we're pretty happy.

-Waiting in the stage right wing, watching Almost Recess on this plasma screen. They are so good. Check them out immediately if you haven't yet.

-Well we didn't win, but that's alright. We're all really happy with the set we did, and we think we definitely showed this crowd what Ithacappella is all about, and that's what matters. We also met some really cool people, and our fans still love us, so we're happy. This has been great! Here are the results (although by the time this gets published on ACB i'm sure you'll know):

1st place: Fermata Nowhere
2nd Place: Oxford Out Of The Blue
3rd Place: Missouri Beartones
4th Place: Duke's Men of Yale