Opening a short run at the New Conservatory Thretre next week, the group will perform songs from its debut album, Sweet Enuf 2 Eat (Mercury Records), t6hat includes such standards as 'Somewhere' from West Side Story, Van Morrison's 'Moondance,' and the Beatles' 'Yesterday.' Here and there, a "she" is turned to a "he" in the lyrics. "It's fairly subtle,' Steinberg said from Los Angeles. 'We didn't want to crash somebody over the head with it.'
In addition to songs from the album, the performance includes 'a little bit of everything, from dance music to reggae to Broadway,' Steinberg said. 'Last year, we did a 17-city gay pride tour to promote our album, and we also tell stories about the tour. We have a lot of choreography as well. So it's sights, sounds, and story.'
Some of that story is the bumpy road the group has traveled to this point. In the beginning, the quartet was named Vicki Lester, a campy reference to Judy Garland's character in A Star Is Born, and it's members were a cappella hobbyists. They were discovered at an event in Los Angeles called the Harmony Sweepstakes by a record producer looking for an a cappella group willing to be molded toward a more commercial sound. Soon they had a new name and a deal at Warner Bros. But a change in personnel at the label landed their disc on the shelf. Meanwhile, three members of the group decided they weren't ready to make a full-time commitment to a musical career, leaving Steinberg to search for three new harmonizers. Finally, Mercury agreed to buy out their contract and release the album.
'But the album had been recorded with the old guys,' Steinberg said, 'and I didn't want to do a Milli Vanilli thing. I knew we had to get back into the studio, but I didn't want to tell the record company that. We just told them we were putting some finishing touches on it, but we re-recorded the entire album in 10 days.'
Although he still calls Men Out Loud an a cappella group, most of the songs on the album have musical accompaniment, and in performance they use pre-recorded musical tracks as well. 'Our producer likes to call it "vocally driven music,"' Steinberg said. 'Some groups are really purists, and they said they wouldn't sign even for a major deal if it meant they had to sing with tracks. To us, as much as we love a cappella, we'd also love to hasve a hit.' "