Tag Archives: rock opera

Cool Things: Five Iron Frenzy

Posted by natechen on

Ah, the music of my youth. The very first album I owned was Quantity is Job One by Five Iron Frenzy – a fantastic and fantastically short collection of pure nonsense that represented the last of the great third wave ska bands at their finest.

Never heard of ska? If you don’t want to take the time to read the Wikipedia article I just linked, the short version is, ska is punk rock meets swing. Ska bands tend to be large, and Five Iron Frenzy was no exception, sporting eight members, and typically include drums, electric guitar, bass, trumpet and one other brass instrument at a minimum. More guitar, brass and possibly a lead vocalist can be added for flavor. I think the sheer number of people needed to make a ska band work is one of the things that’s kept them from ever catching on in a meaningful way…

So, other than representing a kind of sound that you don’t hear every day, what makes Five Iron cool? Now that I’m a seasoned man of almost thirty, do they still hold up to my initial love from middle school? Why should you even care about a band that retired in 2003?

To handle each question one at a time. Five Iron Frenzy didn’t just write ska – they wrote ska with a purpose. Now if you’ve read this blog for any amount of time you know I love things done with a purpose, and Five Iron was always 110% devoted to whatever purpose they were pursuing, even when that purpose was just silliness.

To illustrate what I’m talking about, here’s a few of their songs from that great resource of the modern age, YouTube! First, a ditty of pure silliness extolling the greatness of our near neighbors:

Now a song with a bit of a more serious bent to it:

The contrast between these two songs does an excellent job of encapsulating what made Five Iron Frenzy a band worth listening to. They didn’t just write music or do a great job turning a phrase. They did an excellent job of making you care about what you were hearing about.

Sure, when I first encountered Five Iron I was mostly enamored of their silliness. What other band offers you greatness like “These Are Not My Pants, The Rock Opera”? None! But their sense of fun was accompanied by a sense of place and purpose, even when you’re not sure exactly what those places and purposes are. As I’ve gotten older I’ve come to realize just how meaningful their songs about those ideas are. Certainly they’ve aged well. I suspect I’ll continue to find their music meaningful as I get older.

So why should you care? Simple! While Five Iron may have retired in 2003 they reunited in 2011 and kickstarted a new album which is slated for release on November 26th! I can’t even begin to say how excited I am for Engine of a Million Plots. After a ten year absence, I can’t wait to hear what they sound like. And if you’ve never heard of them, it’s a great place to start. Check it out and let me know what you think!

Cool Things: The Protomen

Posted by natechen on

Time for something a little different! The Protomen are an indie band that produces rock operas (and occasional covers of Queen). Now even if you don’t like opera and Queen isn’t your thing, the Protomen have a lot to offer you.

You see, the primary focus of The Protomen is Mega Man. Yeah, the video game character. Okay, that’s not entirely true. The primary inspiration for The Protomen is Mega Man.

For those not familiar with the general gist of the Mega Man storylines (yes there are more than one) they’re about a plucky blue robot and his epic battles with the mad scientist Dr. Wiley. A number of characters, including Dr. Light, Mega Man’s creator, and Proto Man, an earlier model of Mega Man and the source of the band’s name, are featured.

Most Mega Man stories revolve around Dr. Wiley, a former associate of Dr. Light, building a number of powerful and intelligent robots, providing them with armies of much less intelligent but still dangerous robots, and tasking them with taking over the earth. Mega Man foils these plots by defeating Dr. Wiley’s robot masters and exploiting the similarities in their construction to turn their own weapon systems on their creator.

This kind of stuff is now fairly standard video game fare, but fortunately the Protomen don’t dwell on that part of the Mega Man franchise.

The Protomen are two albums into a three album story cycle. The first album, titled “The Protomen” but perhaps more accurately thought of as Hope Rides Alone, introduces us to a dark, dystopian world ruled by Dr. Wiley and his armies of evil robots. Here, The Protomen introduce us to many of their major themes.

And it’s in their choice of themes that they really set themselves apart. They mull over what heroism really means, to what extent we must take responsibility for the evils we see and act. And it reminds, in Mega Man’s own words, “hope rides alone” and often, doing the right thing means standing alone.

In “Act Two: The Father of Death”, The Protomen take us back in time to meet the young Drs. Light and Wiley, and introduce themes like discerning use of technology and the value of work in a mechanized society. They also give one the feeling that one of the two doctors at the center of their story isn’t entirely sane. Here’s a hint: It’s not Wiley.

It’s true that on occasion The Protomen can border on the melodramatic. But that’s not often, and hey, it’s opera, right? They’re entitled to be a little melodramatic.

If you want to hear what they sound like, here’s a link to their preview track from The Father of Death.