So you might have noticed that I got taken off the blog schedule a while back. This was because I didn’t like what I was writing under pressure, and so I got taken off. I relish this freedom by writing nothing.

But due to the thousands (Read “Zero”) emails I have received begging me to write something, and because I’m bored, I will write something overly dramatic and stereotypical for a teenager to write. Namely, a rock opera.

Now what is a rock opera, you might ask. A rock opera is a fusion of fine art and musical Frankenstein.

Our story starts in 1936, when someone decided to put electronic pickups on a guitar, because it was too quiet for jazz music. This changed the sound because the vibrating string would make electrical signals and blah blah blah go do research yourself. The point is that people had made something that was a guitar, but unlike any guitar ever made. It sounded amazing. People started making a new kind of music. You know it, you love it, it’s rock ‘n’ roll.

Rock originally was a mild, peaceful, almost relaxing music. However, people began experimenting with the new electric guitar, and they found a huge range of sounds, from thick and barely recognizable (Smells Like Teen Spirit) to bouncy and what I can only describe as “wangy” (Johnny B. Goode) to sounding like power saws and motorcycles (Iron Man and Kickstart My Heart). I could devote a whole post to the best rock songs ever made, but for now, we have the rock part. Let’s go to opera.

So at first, there were stories. Accounts of the travels and adventures of real or fictional people, usually made for entertainment, to explain natural phenomena, or to drive home a moral point. Then, there came books. Like so many great things, books can be traced back to the Greeks, when Herodotus made a book on the human body or something, I don’t know. The Greeks then made plays, so that instead of having your brain do all the hard work of imagining what was happening in a story, some people could pretend to be the people in the story and you could just watch. Greek plays had pretty cool ahead-of-their-time special effects. But then one day, a small group of Italian artists, writers, and musicians decided to retell one of these plays. But instead of standing around and talking, they were going to sing and dance, because people just randomly start singing when they are emotional. Enter someone called Jacopo Peri, who thought that random singing was awesome. He wrote a play specifically made for people to sing instead of talk, and we have the first opera.

Now opera was all well and good, and very sophisticated. Operas would be the equivalent of modern-day operas. But what opera needed was spice. Pizzazz. Stories more dramatic than anime voice actors were fun, but it was all the same. Orchestra and diva singing in a high voice. Enter Queen.

Queen, for the one person who dosen’t know, is a British rock band, considered by many to be one of the greatest bands of all time. If you’ve ever heard “We Will Rock You,” “We are the Champions,” “Under Pressure,” “Another One Bites the Dust,” “Bicycle Race,” or “Don’t Stop Me Now,” you have heard Queen. However, I am talking about their most famous song: “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

Bohemian Rhapsody is quite possibly the first example of a rock opera. It clearly shows how to write a rock opera and inspired other rock operas, my favorites being The Wall (Pink Floyd), American Idiot (Green Day), and The Black Parade (My Chemical Romance). But for now, let’s just look at Bohemian Rhapsody.

Bohemian Rhapsody tells the story of a young man who kills another person. The story probably
takes place in Bohemia, given the name. The narrator wonders whether reality is an illusion, but then concludes he is trapped in reality. He talks about how he threw his life away, and tells his mother (possibly in a letter) that if he doesn’t return the following day, to forget about him. The next few parts of the song are his trial for the murder. He is sentenced to death, and, in the words of the band themselves, “sells his soul to the Devil, and with the help of angels, steals it back.”

So, that pretty much laid the foundation for every rock opera ever. Rock, mixed with an intricate story and edgy meanings. These show up in every rock opera ever made, like The Wall. Rock, an intricate story of a rock star becoming walled off from society through isolation, and edgy lyrics about boarding schools. American Idiot: Rock, an intricate story about someone not finding meaning in his life of bad habits, and edgy lyrics about the Iraq War and George Bush. The Black Parade: Rock, an intricate story about someone dying of cancer remembering his life before seeing death come for him in the form of a marching band, and edgy lyrics about death.

So, now that I have the masters to help me, I will begin posting these things, whenever I finish one. I have the first song and the major storyline plotted already, and as I post, you guys can try and guess what the story is and what it will be about (I mean, if you want to, I don’t know). A full explanation will be provided once I finish. If you don’t feel like an edgy rock opera, then don’t click on the songs and go read Cinderella. Make sure someone holds your hand for when she runs away (that’s the scary part). But otherwise, stick with me. It’s going to be a fun ride. And be careful, you could cut yourself on the edge.

And no, I’m not making the music. Go do it yourself, I’m busy.