Copeland-isms! 2008
- 8/25 LG “Let’s have a little sex contest now.”
- 8/28 ST “Wimps! You are not men!”
- 9/4 SoT “Don’t crap on her face.”
- 9/5 SoT “I hear that turns some people on!”
- 9/6 LG “I felt no swell! …write that down.”
- 9/12 [to Brian Denton] “You gotta be funnier than that if you’re gonna interrupt me.”
- 9/13 RC “Men, you are Maggie!”
- 9/18 RC “I know how stupid I look just by looking at Katie [Fussell].”
- 9/21 Ticket “We need to tease them with our subtlety … that’s good for other things too.”
- 9/22 RC “I want this to be like, beer-swinging, beer-meister! Guys, you still sound like, I’m about to be SICK! This is before the hangover!”
- 9/25 “You may not know this about me, but I ride around in my car thinking about vowels and where my tongue is.”
- 10/1 RC “Hit it harder with your tongue!”
- 10/3 BH “Put a little P in your B… that sounds disgusting.”
- 10/4 RC “We’re just drinking beer and thinking about how lucky we are to be saved.”
- 10/9 LP “Men, you’re in syrup.”
- 10/15 “This is Nick…he found love both at Old Miss and at UAB…a more permanent love here at UAB.”
- 10/18 recording @ Bluff Park “Where’s Chris [Reid]? Oh, he’s putting the make on Sam.”
- 10/25 RC “That’s where I do my best conducting, in the shower. You don’t need that image.”
- 10/25 ND “This is a law of your mouth-space”
- 10/25 ND “You can’t laugh at this right now if it’s kickin’ your hiney.”
- 10/30 RC [with motions to indicate…] “No, on that one, I want BIG WOMAN!”
- 10/30 SC “I wish you guys weren’t so tough-looking, I might do a little slapping.”
- 10/31 SC “Whatever magic I can produce with my little hand.”
- 11/5 “I mean, I love doin’ it.”
- 11/28 ND “Drive that one home with a biting attack!”
- 12/4 ND “If the women are aggressive enough, it should excite the men to a sufficiently louder response.”
- 12/4 ND “Yes! That’s what I need….excitement!
- SC “It sounds like a heavenly function! That sounds retarded when I say it, like they’re in the bathroom.”
- 1/8 WW “You sound too white.”
- 1/9 WW “Basses! You will look impotent if you don’t hit that….no man wants to look that way.”
- 1/10 “Page four of the shits”
- 1/14 RC “Altos and Tenors, you sound like you know how fast your mouth should be going but you just don’t want to do it.”
- 1/15 RC “Everybody say, FABULOUS!”
- 1/15 RC “That’s beginning to get good.”
- 1/15 RC “In your most queenly voice…It has to have shake, and volume…I mean shake in your VOICE.”
- 1/15 RC “Basses, don’t sing like a bunch of queeny men, but, you know, like the women.”
- 1/15 ND “Don’t sing it if you sound bad. That works in marriage too, just don’t do the stuff you’re not good at. Wait…well, I was talking about cleaning, but then I realized there’s a lot of other stuff, too. Sorry, I just keep thinking about Mom over there.”
- 1/16 WW “I can see why people might smoke some endorphins from time to time.”
- 2/20 JA “We’ve just stuck the sopranos out there naked, on that high g; and I’m thinking about them….not naked, but..”
- 2/21 SF “Basses, join the dance. Don’t come in like the father. I don’t know what I mean by that.”
- 2/26 SF “Men, you’ve got to be gentle giants here – don’t impress me with your volume.”
- 2/28 SF “I believe everyone has problems.”
- 2/29 a SHPC “All right, close your eyes everybody [removes sweater] Okay, I just didn’t want the women to have that image of me.”
- 3/4 SC “Basses, I don’t want something to fall out of your mouth, I want a beautiful tone to emerge.”
- 3/17 WL “I love sinners!”
- 3/18 “Basses, you need to sound like real singers here. I can’t do it, but…think Dr. Mostellar.”
- 3/18 “We have an opportunity to excite people with our accents!”
- 3/18 [in monotone; on eternal life] “Good Lord, if that doesn’t excite you, what does?”
- 3/18 WL “Oh…god, that would be nice. Sorry, I didn’t mean it to sound that way.”
- 3/19 “Think up as you go down”
- 3/19 SF “Oh man, wow, that sounds HOT! …in a non-hot way.”
- 3/19 WL “I can’t press a button or move my butt a certain way to make this crescendo happen!”
- 3/20 SF “Put a little bounce in it like I like it.”
- 3/20 SF “Men, you sound virile today!”
- 3/20 WL “No, you’re way too loud, altos, you sound like something’s wrong with you… you’re just water, you’re not a hose!”
- 3/21 WL “What you did just then, it doesn’t have to be like that.”
- 3/21 WL “That’s just automatically ugly.”
- 3/24 ND “I’m going a little crazy, can you tell?”
- 3/24 WW “DIRTY! You gotta feel….YEAH!”
- 3/26 WL “Women and altos! I mean, altos and tenors.”
- 3/27 WL “I realize that you’ve got a lot of reasons for doing it wrong.”
- 3/27 WL “Raise your eyebrows! Like you’ve been kissed before!”
- 3/27 WL “I haven’t found the words to tell you to make ‘until the universe’ as magical as I want it to be.”
- 3/27 SD “Women, you’re not all that important.”
- 3/27 SCD “Altos, I love you. I feel things for you…I feel like I’ve hurt my children. I want to spend some special time with you after choir.”
- 3/28 ND “Whatever position that is, I admire it, but I can’t do it.”
- 3/30 RiverchaseMeth “Sadie has turned on the consonant faucet, everybody! Let it wet you!”
- 3/30 RiverchaseMeth “Y’all aren’t gooey enough”
- 3/30 RiverchaseMeth “Y’all are scratchin’ some weird things.”
- 3/30 RiverchaseMeth “And then the tenors will scratch themselves.”
- 3/31 SCD “I don’t want you breathing after the long notes. Those are the white ones.”
- 3/31 WW “Women are attracted to together-men. That’s why they have never been much on me before.”
- 4/1 “You sound alive and you smell like potatoes.”
- 4/1 WL “it’s like you know the future and it’s all good, okay?”
- 4/1 WL “Act like, ‘I’m so freaking glad I get to sing la’s again!’…I wish I could tell you everything I thought.”
- 4/2 SCD “Men, your bums are way too loud.”
- 4/3 “This is Dr. Jordan’s arrangement, and if anyone gets away with illegally copying his stuff, it’s me.”
- 4/3 “Boy, you guys really sound HOT!”
- 4/3 “Think about the position of your tongues.”
- 4/4 “Let’s see if you can keep it up for two pages.”
- 4/7 RC *** “Men, I’m gonna try and get off a little earlier here. …please don’t write that one down.”
- 4/7 WL “You’ll have to allow for the fact that I might be a little crazy. YEAH! BABY!”
- 4/8 “It’s like all the sudden you’ve got your hand in your arm or something.”
- 4/8 RC “It’s like party party party oh you’re at church.”
- 4/8 WL “Too many basses are going down early right there.”
- 4/9 ND “It’s the difference between a mature woman and a whiney brat. That’s just an example.”
- 4/10 “Caroline’s foot just fell out of Leigh’s….belly.”
- 4/10 ND “It’s messing up our rhythmic integrity.”
- 4/10 SF “Brian, I don’t need you any brighter. You’re bright enough.”
- 4/10 WL “I’m just gonna say it and pretend that’ll fix it...because I like to fantasize like that sometimes.”
- 4/14 WW “GOD I’M HAPPY! No, I don’t feel that way, but we’ve got to pretend that we’re excited about something in our lives!”
- 4/14 SoT “Women, give me more than what I’m asking for.”
- 4/15 RC “Gotta be bigger than that, guys!”
- 4/15 ND “Take advantage of anything smart I say the first time, because then I’ll forget it.”
- 4/16 SoT “Someone sounded like a drunk fool over there… Martin?”
- 4/17 RC “And you’re thinking … mood change.”
- 4/17 WL “Don’t make me ignore you.”
- 4/18 SpringConcert “And now the judges are no longer looking at the men, they’re thinking – my god! the American women!”
- 4/18 SpringConcert “Y’all are waking the little baby!”
- 4/18 SpringConcert “Who was that? You’ll be Aislynn from now on if you do that!”
- 4/21 “I wanted you to feel what it felt like.”
- 4/21 SF “I love the women. [pretends to smoke] I mean, in general…”
- 4/23 ND “I don’t really want to do men… You should imagine the women here… you can make your own private jokes later.”
- 4/23 ND “I’m going on every time. Unless I don’t, of course.”
- 4/23 ND “Get excited and feel good in each measure”
- 4/30 Ireland, Day 1 “Quite frankly, you look terrible.”
- 5/1 Ireland, Day 2 “Tenors, you’re just barely there. I’m playing with the sopranos and you’re just there.”
- 5/2 Ireland, Day 2 “That room Internet is blazing.”
- 5/2 Ireland, Day 2 “Yeah, and then I’m gonna give you the finger.”
- 5/2 Ireland, Day 2 “Girls, leave them alone. What? At least I didn’t say boys.”
Christmas
- 10/25 Rune “Put your brains on.”
- 11/6 Rune “Nancy, that touches me deeply. Sopranos, I want you to touch me that deeply.”
- 11/6 Rune “I’m going to tell you my hamster story one day.”
- 11/6 Rune “Go to the bathroom, get to know one another.”
- 11/27 Rune “Look at Jake, isn’t that a beautiful mouth right there?”
- 12/4 Rune to Brian Denton: “You got a pretty… pretty mouth.”
- 12/4 Xmas “I would proverbially shoot you if you breathe after ‘fire.’”
Women’s Christmas
- 10/16 Regretting “Accent SEX!”
- 10/19 Rose Ping it up there, just like a little boy.”
Brahms
- 1/31 “Don’t weenie yourself into that”
- 1/31 “Hit it and get off it”
- 2/4 “I’ve never said the f-word in public, but I thought it just then. Brian, don’t cause me to sin. …I can feel my face getting red.”
- 2/7 “So you’re singing about the hand of god while you’re in the hand of god so while you’re not singing, send up a little prayer that you’ll get the next part right… by the way, that was a lousy joke.”
- 2/21“Tenors and Altos start, okay sopranos go! gang, you have about one more chance left before I start to lose it.”
Women’s Chorale
- 10/2 SR “I always like it when they make the fruit of the womb mysterious.”
- 10/17 SR “Be in a very Catholic mood here”
- 10/17 SR “Okay, let’s just skip the step of ‘I don’t know this very well’ and interpret it the way you think I would…and I’ll tell you if you’re wrong.”
- 10/19 SR “I feel very Catholic conducting this. I mean that.”
Chamber Choir
- 8/29 DebI “I’m gonna shoot some altos”
- 9/10 SGifts “okay, now tenors and men”
- 9/12 DebIII “I promise, to Dr. Copeland (praise be upon him) to listen to the CD that he made us (praise be upon him).”
- 10/8 DebIII “It sounds like hicks when you say it, unless you poke your lips out.”
- 10/10 DebIII “Let’s pretend she has a point.” (for Cherith)
- 10/15 SGifts “I don’t usually forget to be a retard”
- 11/5 DebII “In the first measure, give me a little more tongue – you know what I mean by that.”
- 11/7 DebII “Whitney, you can control more than you think.”
- 1/14 M “I can always hear Brian [Denton], and that’s great, because he’s always right on pitch.”
- 1/14 M “You can’t be lulled into passiv—into badness by the tenors.”
- 1/30 CD “get busy… that’s a weekend slang thing.”
- 2/4 CD “Men, look at your part while I work the women.”
- 2/4 CD “Let me have the chink girls.”
- 2/6 CD “Guys, you’re used to crapping into a piece.”
- 2/18 CD “They’re right there, their mouths are on it.”
- 2/18 CD to Jenny: “STUPID!”
- 3/17 Haec “Don’t try to force it, just let it happen.”
- 3/19 Haec “This is a real note, not a fart.”
- 3/19 Haec “Let’s start at letter c… that’s cut-time in my language.”
- 3/24 Haec “Good Lord, we all finished at the same place!”
- 3/26 Haec “Sorry, I just want to be with the guys for a little bit.”
- 4/9 Haec “Y’all are going for thin and I want THICK!”
Conversations:
- 9/13 RC Dr. C: “Sopranos, you’re a big woman….you’re brave, you’re proud!” Chris: “Maggie.”
- 9/21 Mrs. Reynolds: “Can I be anal retentive for a moment?” Dr C: “Can you not be?”
- 2/5 Dr. C: “You can call that section a Nancy.” Nancy: “You callin me a bitch?” Dr. C: “Uh…ha, yeah, that’s what I meant. I’m getting red again aren’t I?”
- 3/4 Dr. C: “Oh man, Katie, you missed a great performance.” [Wynfrey, and I didn’t miss anything!]
- 3/18 Dr. C: “I’ll wear my tuxedo pants and my Starbucks turtleneck” Katie Mo: “Will you wear a beret and snap?” Dr C: “Maybe for you.”
- 3/21 Dr. C: “No breath after the word ‘inside.’” Nancy: “So we can’t breathe for the last two pages?” Dr. C: “That’s not what I said, Nancy. Everybody, let’s come up with a name for Nancy today.”
- 3/26 Haec Linc: “He just said he was doing it with men!” Dr C: “You can’t make fun of me unless you’re getting your part right.”
- 4/3 Dr. C: “Try to be cupid. Can you wiggle your head?...Don’t wiggle that, Linc!”
- 4/16 [to Jennifer Thorp] “You’re going to get knocked up at an early age. …What? It’s true, you’re from Hueytown.”
- 4/22 Madison: “Patris….sorry, that was my fault.” Dr. C: “okay, well, I’ll shoot you.”
Copelandisms from other people:
- 10/1 DebIII Cherith “That’s not puberty.”
- 10/8 Rose Erin: “If you’re gonna die, do it BIG.”
- 10/17 Rose Erin: “I’m doing it for you; you’re the ones that are gonna run out of air! I don’t have to breathe. Well, I mean, I have to breathe, but… OKAY.”
- DebII Whitney: “Okay, well as long as I still have the solo.”
- 1/23 Brahms Mrs. Reynolds “This is a place where you really have to strap it on.”
- 3/3 SoT Lindsey: “I just read on the paper where it says “ritard with conviction””
- 3/19 Martin: “SHOUT! Jeh-sus!”
- 3/19 Haec Brian Denton: “We came in but then we got off.”
- 3/25 Linc: “A little sectional healing.”
- 3/28 Kelli Parks: “I like going down.”
- 3/30 RiverchaseMeth Dr. Reynolds “They are spread out like tentacles across the community.”
- 3/30 RiverchaseMeth Dr. Reynolds “At the end of the Shutz, I’m gonna look at you and give you the finger.”
- 4/2 Haec Jon Hood: “I don’t know if you mean for it to sound ‘girl-heavy.’”
- 3/2 at SHPC, the Scottish preacher “the tragedy of 7/11”
