History

When Tuxedo Junction broke up in the fall of 1995, former members Julie Williams and Corley Hughes decided to form a new group in its place. Julie and Corley gathered a group of musically gifted friends to start Colby's first coed a cappella group. These friends included our original members: Josh Sharback, Nate "Rumpshaker" Jue, Emily Taxson, Emily Graham, Dylan Commeret, Jess Rice, Oliver Griswald, Kris Hamel, Jen Stephens and Colby-8's Johnathan Howe.

With their first concert scheduled for JanPlan 1996 the group had yet to chose a name. Kris "Hambone" Hamel, on a journey through his Oxford Desk Dictionary, happened upon a curious word, ... "megalomania, or the mental disorder marked by delusions of grandeur." Deciding that he and his friends were markedly deluded, Kris dubbed the group The Megalomaniacs.

On Friday, January 24, 1996, The Megalomaniacs opened for the E-phlats of Williams in their first public performance ever with two songs, In This Heart and Come and Go With Me. The Megs went on to perform later that year at Powder & Wigs benefit talent show, and for the first time with Colby's other a-cappella groups, the Colby-8, the Colbyettes, and the Blue Lights. Since then, we have also been joined by the lovely Sirens and the newest a cappella group, Eve.

The Megs held their first auditions in the fall of 1996 following their performance at the COOT a-cappella sampler. They have since grown and expanded in size from a whopping (but temporary) 19 members in the spring of 1998 to a meager (but strong) 9 members the fall of 1999. Each new group of Megs (the Megaloditos of 1997, the FNG's of 1998, the Mini-Megs of 1999, the New Megs on the Block 2000, the MegNuggets 2001, and the Megaritas 2002) has brought a new depth of megalomania to the fold, while maintaining the idea that we perform for the sheer fun of it. Each year the group has grown musically as well, expanding in pure megalomaniacal fashion into all available genres of music.

What started off as the goofy little hermaphrodite sibling of Colby a cappella in 1996 has evolved into the confident trans-gender member of the talented tradition of Colby a cappella. Today the Megs remain committed to the pure enjoyment of a cappella and continue to write the pages of Megalomaniac history.