Fifteen Minutes: Behind the Curtain with the Kroks

In the fourth decade of this century, on an evening just after the end of war, a Harvard legend was born. At their smoky club on Holyoke Street, the young men at the Hasty Pudding's Upstairs Bar amused themselves with rye, scotch and four-part chords. At some point on one such evening, a few of the club's men decided their ditties didn't sound bad at all. Maybe they should band together in a group. It was a fantasy of the bored and excessive, trying to entertain themselves. The boys decided their title should probably be something fun, something appropriate for women and children. Finally, the Pudding's singers rested their eyes on three trophy crocodiles, shot by Teddy Roosevelt '80 and mounted over the bar's fireplace. In inebriated Greek, they dubbed themselves the Krokodiloes.

Tonight, the boys mingle with the cocktail crowd in the Upstairs Bar, in preparation for singing. The gathering consists of bankers, tired after a long day of watching golf, and the Harvard Krokodiloes are to be their fix. It's showtime and two tuxedoed young men step forward and address the crowd. They introduce themselvesoPerry and Chessoand explain that they are the Harvard Krokodiloes. It seems kind of a disappointment that there are only two singers in the group, but the crowd is liquored up enough not to care. Because of artistic differences, the boys explain, they got rid of the rest of the group, and now perform high classical works. The crowd chuckles tentativley, someone blows a pitch and suddenly the two boys are crooning a gassed-up country song about "dee-troit barbeque ribs." From out of the audience, two more tuxedoed guys spin around and race to the stage, doo-wopping and snapping to the tune. Others follow, tripping down the fire escape in the back of the room or popping up from behind the piano. The act has started and won't be over until the Kroks have knocked off a few 1950s tunes, a handful of ballads and scads of Jazz standards. The crowd gradually quiets down, probably somewhere in the middle of the old Scottish air "Loch Lomond," and by the dom-dom-dom-dom-dom of "Come Go With Me," they're singing along. After 25 minutes, the boys take a collective bow and blow out of the room, leaving the bankers to their drinks. The songs sound pretty good, the showmanship is high, and the polish is extraordinary. It should be. By 1999, the group has had 53 years to get it right.

The gig ends and the Ryder Cup spectators make their way to the dining room charmed by the young men of Harvard, a buzz that might last another 18 holes. After the semi-formal crowd has gone, the Kroks return to the Upstairs Bar to kill some time before their next show. With the mutual fund managers gone, the room has returned to its rightful owners. An abandoned martini sits on the fireplace mantle, the olive within more closely resembling a preserved biology specimen than a cocktail. A fire blazes beneath the mantle; the air conditioner whirs in the corner. The charmed excess that once defined much of life at Harvard still finds a home in the Upstairs Bar, and the Kroksonow Asian, Jewish, middle-classosop up a little of the nectar that once fed them. They still cultivate a suave, Holyoke Street image: one part Andover Shop (where they frequently buy their neckwear), one part Gino's (formerly their official hairstylist) and two parts Hasty Pudding Club (of which they are all automatically members.) The Kroks in concert are remarkable for their uniformity; they spend hours practicing their snapping, for example, so that each Krok holds his hand the same way, curling the index finger, locking his elbow to his side and snapping in a quick J-shape. Their tuxedoes are identical, all with shawl collar, suspenders and white cozy and Krokodiloe cufflinks.

Backstage, though, the uniformity falls apart. One sophomore, who contemplated majoring in music, loosens his tie and massages Beethoven's Sonata Pathetique out of the piano in the corner. He is one of the group's obvious musicians. Another, musical director David Liang, whose rapid-fire scats are probably the most impressive talent in the group, thinks through an arrangement for the next show. Sophomore Henry Rich, meanwhile, a special concentrator in aesthetics, secludes himself in the corner and reads T.S. Eliot poems into his dictaphone for later listening during his workout at the gym. Others pull up to the bar where, incongruously, they drink water. But it's good to be a Krok, it seems. They joke and laugh, despite their evident differences, because these guys are tightoor as Kirk Bangstad, a senior baritone with a million-dollar smile, puts it half laughingly, half wistfully, "Once you get in the group, that is your social life."

There is also, however, a certain distance the members put between one another that is palpable. The Kroks spend their entire summer together every year, crisscrossing the globe and by the end of tour, tensions run high. "I was ready to kill everyone in the group," one member explains. The Kroks spend a dozen hours or so together during the average school week and then band together as, perhaps, the only (mostly) fair-skinned, English speaking people in some of the exotic places they visit. To avoid conflict, they realize certain compromises must be made. The first is that they avoid getting too close to one another, although they are very often the best of friends to the point where, if you see one Krok, you can count on seeing two. The second is that they must all be friends with every other member, no exceptions. And so self-described "diva" Jason McNeely still spends time with would-be ladies man Kirk Bangstad, though outside the group, it's pretty safe to say they would never know each other. Scots-Texan Chess Stetson remarks that "everyone in the group is such a good dresser," and while he says he doesn't quite understand the style, he chivalrously carries McNeely's suitcases of Hong Kong suits bought in the Orient. Liang sees the same phenomenon on the singing side of things: "You learn to tailor your ego," he says.

They all more or less know how to work a room, and a few members relay stories of their escapades abroad. Several of the guys, their friends confide, are players. Whether on campus or off campus, "Chicks dig the duds." The Kroks still display a framed photograph of a concert they sang at an all-girls Catholic school in South America, in which a few tuxedoed bodies stick out from a sea of hundreds of gushing and plaid young Catholic ladies. After each gig, the Kroks invariably make their way to the audience and lap up a few compliments, smiling broadly to middle-aged ladies who praise "the all-male sound." Interestingly, the fact that the Kroks is a boys' club isn't the only obstacle between them and political correctness; the one gay member of the group has recently decided to quit for reasons unclear. But on the whole, the polished aesthetic and masculine panache is pretty harmless, a way of amusing and reassuring themselves that their talent is appreciated.

One thing is for certain, however, according to Stetson: "You get tired of waiting around in fancy places." Overworked and ever-stressed Krok General Manager George Hicks, who has lined up two gigs for this Friday night and three for the next eveningoeach paying over a grandohad to whip out his over-used cell phone to call Stetson in his room and remind him to rejoin the group for their next concert. That was an hour ago and now Chess and the rest of the Kroks are sitting around in the parlor at the Faculty Club, waiting to sing for more corporate types fresh off a day at the Ryder Cup. Increasingly drunk, the PricewaterhouseCoopers crowd, who have rented the club for the night, give speeches about one another, their wives, their golf and the English as the Kroks, prepare their fail-safe routine. A few grab pitchers of water and drape napkins over their arms to disguise themselves as waiters, a gag which draws big laughs when the Kroks again start singing about those ribs.

The Kroks launch into the same songs, the same choreography, and they elicit the same smiles from the crowd, who again sing along with "Come Go With Me." Hours of obsessive rehearsing have yielded a pretty impressive product, and these kids, who could be playing pranks or socializing on one of the first Friday nights of the school year, are giving a professional show. Afterwards they'll go out and have a good time, to be sure, but for now they're intent on pressing those same tried-and-true buttons to earn, at the end of the night, a standing ovation.

For better or worse, the Kroks stand apart from their colleagues at Harvard. They are the oldest of the small, closed-harmony singing groups on campus, known (increasingly derisively) as the a capella groups. The Kroks' polish and tour itinerary are both unmatched, and their repertoire of songs from the 1920s through the 1950s has the kind of universal appeal that the contemporary pop tunes of other groups can't quite muster. They are reputed to have the highest budget per capita of any student organization at Harvard. Still, the Kroks are, in the end, a singing group. Cufflinks and secret titles for various members with anti-climactic explanations, make for a certain mystique, but in the end, the love of singing and performing is each what bands together the dozen young Harvard men who croon as Harvard's resident lounge lizards. Something there is in human beings that loves to sing. Insofar as it's a way to cut loose, to release the energies of the imagination, it's a force for good. To the extent, however, that it's a question of showing off, of loving the sound of one's own voice in the truest sense, of demanding applause and cheers from the rest of the human race, it's definitely annoying to the point of destructive. The Kroks are a little bit of both. Those who are not real musical buffs or expert managers in the group are showmen: McNeely wants to be "a pop star" while Perry Wilson, star of his freshman musical, loves to ham it up on his air guitar solo during the group's 1950s medley. Both the audience and the performers get their kicks at a Kroks show. "Sometimes you feel like a celebrity," one member of the group tells me. "And sometimes you feel like just some kid."

Frankly, the Kroks are in over their heads. People like the music, they know that, and people like the show, with its both witty and wacky humor. ("Sadomasochism means never having to say you're sorry.") But looking out over the crowd of undoubtedly cynical management consultants and investment bankers, all of whom have raked in piles of money and accumulated trophy cars, do these boys see why the crowds are smiling? It is because they are young and fresh, as yet unexposed to the daily grind that being a tough sonofabitch requires. The faces of the audience are wrinkled and droopy, hardened by years of not being the last-finishing nice guy, and these charming young men are naive, even as they sing of "sadomasochism," to the real tensions that will someday entangle their own lives. It is refreshing for these corporate clients, seeking to cut loose and shed a little of their hostility over wine or vodka, to see that life can still be fun without an asterisk at the end. The Kroks know that they are charming, but they are, for the most part, just looking for applause and the invitation to sing one more, not to use their charm to ooze their way up a corporate ladder. It is charm for the sake of charm, not for use as a weapon. This is what endears them, at least to their Ryder Cup audience.

"Baby, you close with something they knows!" That was the methodology for choosing encores of the legendary saloon singer Bobby Short. The Kroks could learn something from Bobby. Tonight, they have sung under the shadow of the Boston Statehouse on Beacon Street, in a residence owned by the mayor, and made their way on to one of the glitzier hotels in the area for another concert. After a pretty high-energy show, they have chosen an encore that's a bit dreary, a bit quiet and not at all appropriate for their drunken audience, with whom they've had to compete for attention all night. The Kroks' sense of showmanship doesn't always pan out, and afterwards, Wilson explains to the group that they should always run on stage for encores as a way to keep the audience enthusiastic. It is surprising that this logic is new to the group. McNeely privately complains that some of the guys are committing the ultimate faux pas, talking to each other, across the stage, during their numbers. They make mistakes: Voices crack, chords go out of tune and Liang has to signal one of his earnest-looking friends to make more of an effort to cut off with the rest off the group, since he's breaking later than everyone else and sticking out. On a shuttle bus provided by their clients, the boys are already preparing for calypso night at the Fly Club, despite the fact that there's another gig before they can go home. After the last performance, their third tonight, the Kroks are visibly drained.

Waiting to go on at the hotel, in an oak-paneled room equipped with bar and pool table, the Kroks relax and practice some of their music. Without soloist, they revealed the bare and mindless ba-ba ba-ba's that are the backbone ("block" is the official term) of college a capella. One wonders how even the thrill of the bar (it was nice, to be sure), the gratis filet mignon and the reliable applause could keep them singing this stuff for a dozen hours every week. Although the stirring ballad "Loch Lomond" is referred to simply as "Loch"--so often does the group sing it--several members of the group do know what the song is about, having visited the actual Loch on their summer tour. In the green of the Scottish Highlands, they sang the tune in what was, for one Krok, "the most sacred moment in my time in the group." But their arrangement of William Blake's "Jerusalem" is shabby, and it seems doubtful that they are really considering the meaning of Blake's verses and vision of a new Jerusalem in England rather than just looking to throw a serious one in.

For the golden throats of Harvard, male at least, none of these concerns holds any water. Fall auditions draw more than 60 would-be Kroks, and over a five-day span, the group eventually whittles the pool down to five whom they will actually take, showing up at dawn to induct the new boys. The allure of the slick tuxedoes, carefully placed hair and jazzy chords brings them out in droves. The Kroks rise to the occasion, arriving in suits to each round of auditions, setting up a veritable shrine to themselves in a side room in which the audtioners wait their turn. As they sit, or pace, they can watch tapes of the Kroks at Carnegie Hall or peruse black and white photos of old members, including the Munsters' own Fred Gwynne '51. The Kroks have identical clipboards and inspect each potential member as a mechanic would an engine, walking up as he sings, bending over and listening with furrowed brow to the nervous auditioner's stab at the Krok standards. "Hmmm," they say and scribble on the clipboards.

Not that they mean to be intimidatingothey're quite friendly and a number of them won't look their interlocutors in the eye for more than three seconds. But strength lies in numbers, and the Kroks end up like punchmasters more than anything else, except that, as one Porcellian member points out to me, the Krokodiloes make their judgements based on some kind of objective merit. Krok showmanship comes through even in auditions; between numbers in any concert, the Kroks always clasp their hands together in front of them. As Hicks makes an announcement to the auditioners, the arc of singers behind him, by instinct, all clasp their hands in the familiar pose. Each night of auditions, the numbers get smaller and smaller and eventually a few of these nervous strangers will be deemed worthy to be whisked into the 53-year association of singers.

So what will the new boys learn? Krok history, to be sure, and the proper way to snap, to dress and to travel. They will learn how to sing ballads in Krok style and learn how to dance some of the finest moves of the 1920s with fellow "big galloofs." They will learn new heights of preppiness, hopping taxis to get to whatever downtown big-shot wants them, and how to tie a bow-tie without a mirror. Surely they will learn how to guzzle the Dark and Stormy, the drink of choice for the Kroks when they visit Bermuda, which they do every spring break. They will learn how to make audiences laugh and how to raise hairs on spines. But in all likelihood, they won't really learn what it is they have done, what they have become, until years later, when they are no longer young, charming, and naive. The mantle will long have been passed to new generations of Harvard men. It is the Harvard story, for though undergraduates in Cambridge work hard singing, writing, schmoozing or whatever else they do, the end game is almost never known, despite all that productivity. But if you've gotta go, go with an encore.