The History of Off the Beat

In 1986, a determined freshman named Katie decided to form an a cappella group.

"I guess I started the group because no one was doing the music I liked and of course, it was incredibly exciting to start something of this magnitude...I always wanted OTB to be the group that sounded like a band, not an a cappella group."

"I was sitting with Mica and the musical director of Counterparts, Ed Schulteis, outside in the Annenberg circle and coming up with really stupid names... Basically I liked the idea of our group singing on the street -- the "beat" being the street, like for reporters and cops -- and I thought that it also made a lot of sense since rock has syncopation (hence the "off" the beat part)."

She was joined over the next year with mostly like-minded freshmen, rebels without a clue about a cappella. Unburdened by the constraints of experience, Off the Beat, as it was called, could be whatever its members wanted.

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