“It’d be fine by me if you’d never leave,” wasn’t only being sung by the Carolina Gentlemen in their impromptu performance Thursday night in Grand Marketplace.
Swooning girls throughout the crowd muttered the same words back to the dashing young men who took the Russell House by surprise with their rendition of Andy Grammer’s “Fine By Me.”
The surprise concert drew a large crowd to the first floor of the Russell House and continued afterward on the patio, where the boys performed their own renditions of Muse and Justin Timberlake a capella. Pedestrians nearby pulled out cellphones to post proof that they had seen the spontaneous singers.
Carolina Gentlemen Vice President George Bischoff said that the concert was planned in just a week, and since they didn’t know what to expect, it went better than any of them had hoped.
“We felt like performing,” the third-year biomedical engineering student said. “We like performing for our school.”
Bischoff said that the a capella group wanted to let the student body know who they were and remind the crowd of their upcoming concert at 7:30 p.m. on Dec. 5 in the Health Sciences Building.
Bischoff also mentioned that the group did not seek permission to hold the offhand performance; instead, they just started singing and hoped for the best.
“We figured that people would just think we were a ground of students hanging around and singing,” he said.