a cappella

Could a cappella music be going mainstream?

NBC's probably hoping so -- the second season of its surprise reality hit 'The Sing Off' premieres tonight, featuring ten a cappella groups from across the country vying for a $100,000 prize and a recording contract.

Puerto Rican group Nota walked away with the title last year, but second-place finishers the Tufts Beelzebubs are the ones still making headlines: the group arranged and recorded the 'Glee' hits 'Teenage Dream' and 'Hey Soul Sister.'

A primetime NBC show about a cappella, a form of music usually reserved for street corners and Ivy League schools, seems as unlikely to succeed as Homer's barbershop quartet.

Nevertheless, if the only thing that comes from 'The Sing-Off' is America's increased familiarity with judge Ben Folds, then the show will still be an important cultural building block. Based solely on Monday night's premiere episode, the 43-year-old singer-songwriter is TV's best new celebrity judge. Shawn Stockman of Boyz II Men and former Pussycat Doll Nicole Scherzinger do their best impressions of Randy Jackson and Paula Abdul, but Folds is Cowell's polar opposite. His criticism is insightful, not harsh, and delivered with wit and Southern charm.

In the hall of TV show bands, The Blanks are The Rolling Stones. Definitely The Who, tops.

The a cappella quartet made their small screen debut on Scrubs as Ted's band The Worthless Peons, played by Sam Lloyd, Philip McNiven, George Miserlis and Paul F. Perry (not to be confused with Ted's air band The Cool Cats that was just a brief side project when they probably failed to win those water park tickets) and have since become a hard-working touring band that has gone back and forth between both sides of the U.S. coasts. But they were a band long before Scrubs was even an afterthought in Bill Lawrence's skull, assuming that Lawrence didn't come up with the idea for Scrubs when they all met at Syracuse University.

Lloyd and McNiven (the completely bald one that looks like Professor Wonder Bread) were nice enough to dish out all the backstage dirt that comes from the hard and edgy road life of an all-male vocal band.

In the closing credits of The Simpsons last night, this video was played instead of the usual closing theme song. It's not new (it was actually recorded in 2000), but it's the first time it was played on the show. It's the singing group Canvas, doing a rather clever a cappella version of the theme. For some reason, I thought the one shown last night was slightly different than this (more of the closing theme than the opening theme), but their web site says this is the one played last night.