A Love Letter to Five Iron Frenzy

It was the first day of Bible College. I was in the cafeteria emptying my tray of what was mostly brown food; Fried Chicken strips, french fries, macaroni and cheese and Fried peaches for dessert. Most of the kids knew each other from bible camps and conventions but I was the new kid from a different kind of church that had no built -in bible college friends. As the brown food slid off my tray into the trash can I spotted a kindred spirit, a girl with a Five Iron Frenzy shirt on.

Band shirts were special to me back then, they said so much about who you were. Her wearing that Five Iron shirt let me know that not only did we like the same kind of music but we probably had the same sense of humor. It was like we were in a secret club together. That girl is now my wife of 8 years and if it wasn't for our mutual love of Five Iron Frenzy (or FIF) and Christian Ska in general then we wouldn't have had those all-to-important first conversations that broke the ice of the most important relationship of our lives.

Their are a couple of different kinds of FIF songs; the sincere awe-inspiring worshipful songs, the Native American advocate ones, the love songs and the silly ones. I've always had an off-the-wall sense of humor and I always felt like if I could have hung out with FIF that we would have had a ton of fun together. They felt like brothers (and one sister!). They're people I thought I could relate to and have fun with.

The silly songs are great. The most well known of their silly songs is probably Phantom Mullet. My favorite is "You Probably Shouldn't Move Here". But the best one is probably Oh, Canada.


One thing about the silly songs is that they're not great to listen to all the time luckily FIF has a depth of music that gets better on repeated listen. It seems like there was about one song on each album dedicated to educating people on the plight of the Native Americans. Banner Year is one of my favorites as it's a touching song with a great chorus and it's also set in my home state of Oklahoma. The Memorial to Black Kettle is located in Cheyenne, OK.


Another recurring theme I identified with in FIF's music was Reese Roper's (the lead singer) struggle with romance. Songs like Ugly Day and Pre-Ex Girlfriend always hit close to home with me. Pre-Ex Girlfriend is up there with No Action by Elvis Costello as best album openers of all time.


Then there are the awe-inspiring worshipful songs. On Distant Shores is a very good example of this type of FIF song. The song that any self-respecting FIF fan would say here would have to be Every New Day. PLAY THIS SONG AT MY FUNERAL. It's in my top 5 of all time.


I could go on and on about one of the best bands of all time but I think that's a good stopping point. There are probably 50 more songs of theirs that are just as good as the ones listed here. You don't come across a band that special that often, I'm glad I got to live through it. Sadly, like all good things, the band broke up in the early part of this decade. I saw them many times live and got to lay hands on Reese and pray for him with my then fiance but I'll always regret not going to their final show in Denver, luckily they recorded that set and released it as a live album. You know a band is good when even the live albums are good.

Tomorrow we'll cover the best of The Orange County Supertones.