Texas Revue Review

So tonight was the last showing of the Texas Revue, which was the annual UT campus-wide talent show. It owned.

The pitch: 70 acts auditioned and 14 were taken to do two shows: one on the Main Mall (which is a big courtyard right underneath the tower) and one in the Bass Hall. I'm in Men's Chorus, which got picked. Here are some of the highlights, in order of their performance:

Hum Acappella: It's about time another acappella group showed up on campus. Up until now, it had only been one, Ransom Notes. These guys go by the mantra "South Asian Acappella," which equates to Brown People Acappella. Our one resident Brown Man in Men's Chorus doubled for Hum, and they had a pretty solid showing, but their sound is nowhere near as tight as the two other groups I've heard on campus this year. But! This is their first semester in existence, and they had a heck of a show for being so young. Bring on more acappella, I say.

UT Dance Team: They had a pretty sexy gig going on, until the music stopped. "Divas, to the dance floor please" asked the recorded DJ four times as the babes struck poses. And then? Toxic came on. And the girls danced, girl on girl, and it was a moment any man would be proud of telling another man he was there for.

UT Men's Chorus: We were so, so cheesy. We knew it. We had a decent enough response just because we had some friends in the crowd.

Ram Vela: This one-man act was sick. Positively sick. It's promising when a beatbox is good enough to land his own gig in a show like this - and he sure as hell earned it. From Block Rockin' Beats to Super Mario Bros to Hey Ya, this guy was good and he amused the hell out of everyone. Then he stopped the beat and busted out with Rahzel's If Your Mother Only Knew. The place went nuts. Both nights. He ended up winning the Best of Show award and $2,000, and he deserved every bit of the love he got.

Steel Dance: The more tasteful version of UT Dance. If UT Dance were crazy hot Girls Gone Wild chicks, then Steel was the cute girl with the sweater and glasses in the back of the coffeehouse.

Chris Burnett: A songwriter who rocked out on piano. Wrote a song to the senior class called "It Sucks to be You." Very funny, great crowd response.

Cherie and Pamela: A pair of singer chicks that you'd expect to see on American Idol. A tiny little cute white girl (Cherie) and a big happy black girl (Pamela). Song was cheesy, so cheesy, but it had couples kinda melting together as the song went on. I met these two after the first show and they were probably the nicest people I came across.

Bhangra Dance: Whoa. These guys were cool as hell. All undergrad UT students or thereabouts, but they were dressed in traditional-looking Indian (Brown People) costumes. They did a dance routine to a mix of some pretty hard-hitting tunes with Eastern loops/instruments in them, and every song sounded cool as hell while they did these pretty complicated dance moves and executed all of them really well. These guys did a great job closing the show.

And the crowd. Probably over a thousand people each night. They laughed, they shouted at the people on stage, they got all of the UT in-jokes, and everyone involved had a great time. I was in the audience for probably three fourths of each show and I loved being there. I was amused as a member of Men's Chorus because even we had these huge shouts coming at us on the stage of Bass Hall even as we were starting our song. I heard four or five names of our members pretty distinctly out of the crowd - we have fans! Both nights, on-stage and off, were great experiences and I really hope this wasn't my last time to be in the show.

The post-encore party on 6th Street, sadly, fizzled out. Nobody showed up, probably because the club kind of refused to reserve the place for us like we had all been told, so chances are everyone had been turned away like we were. I was really looking forward to hanging out with all these people (Come on! two dance troupes full of gorgeous women, in a dance club?! Sign me up, please.) but alas. When all's said and done, I had a great time just going through the whole process. If you didn't come to either show, you definitely missed out. But hey, there's always next year - unless It Sucks to be You.