about the quartet

Razzmatazz employs a performance style that showcases the unique abilities of its members. We enjoy nothing better than following the occasional straight barbershop song with an insane novelty bit that leaves our audience gasping for air.

Our goal is to infuse each performance with spontaneous energy, while including elements that are pleasing to the barbershop purist, as well as the comedy-loving portion of our audience. It's an approach that is as unique as the backgrounds of our members; a lawyer, a retired banker, a personnel administrator, an accountant, and a customer service manager. (Those of you that are relatively astute will note that this adds up to more than four.) One of our members is identified by two of these monikers, but we won't tell you which one of us it is. Adds just a bit of intrigue to the biography! (You can eliminate the big guy right away, since he is mercifully free of the ravages of intelligence!) Something out of the norm; that's what Razzmatazz is all about.

Razzmatazz got together in November of 1988, and has been trying to get organized ever since. At this point we’ve pretty much given up on the whole organization thing. The quartet's motto is quite appropriate, and very telling: "Where are we going, and why are we in this hand basket?"

And in case you aren't sufficiently under-whelmed by this time, just consider the following sub-mottoes of the quartet:

"Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do."

"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever."

"Don't play stupid with us, we're better at it."

"If I had a nickel for every one of your bright ideas I still wouldn’t have a quarter."

"Clean mind . . . clean body . . . take your pick!"

Our Fleeting Moment of Fame

On August 1997 the quartet was fortunate enough to win the Funny Bone Comedy Quartet Contest at the Buckeye Invitational. If this bunch of knuckleheads was ever going to win a competition, this had to be the one. It figures that by putting the big guy in a dress (two dresses to be completely accurate), and blasting the lead and the audience with a Super Soaker, the crowd would love it! (We’ll do anything for a laugh). This experience remains as one of the highlights of our career.

Steve Tremper’s Harmonet Report of our performance:

"These guys also came out in theme character costumes: the lead was dressed in black coat tails and sported a black top hat...he would serve as both the villain (ala Dudley Doright's nemesis, Snidely Whiplash for you cartoon fans) and the narrator, the bass was the tall, upstanding sheriff, "Sllloooowwww Tallllkiiiinnngggg Jooooooeeee", the bari was a generic cowpoke sidekick, dressed in a red checked shirt, jeans and a goofy cowboy hat...and the tenor, weighing in at 300 pounds plus... was the genteel and ever-graceful damsel in distress...her costume dress was hysterical, they had taken two very-different flower-print dresses and blatantly cut them and stitched them together to make one dress large enough to cover his massive frame. Of course, he had a beard too, and a flowery hat and tiny parasol. A visual feast...

"They had thought things through in advance, and in order to save themselves a time penalty, had brought out a large digital game clock timer, set at 12:00 minutes and started to count down as they began their set. They checked it often throughout the package to make sure they weren't going over the allotted time.

"They did a song about an old-time TV melodrama ("You must pay the rent!" "I can't pay the rent!" "OK, then I'll tie you to these railroad tracks"...etc) and it was a scream watching the huge tenor shriek his female lines in fending off the unsavory villain.

"They went into a rock and roll medley ("We were going to do a 60's medley, but seeing as how we're pressed for time, we'd better do a 50's medley"...) which was funny just watching them sing this in their costumes!

"They saw they were running out of time, and as the tenor began singing his/her version of Weird Al Yankovich's "Spend One More Minute With You", they urged him to sing faster and faster as the clock wound down to zero...finally, just as the clock ran out, they shot the clock dead! The song stopped abruptly, and they just shook their heads as they walked off stage to thunderous applause...Wow!!"