The Amory Wars

So after class on Friday I came home and talked with Jason about it (he’s a big Dream Theater fan…so the fact that they would come up in a class discussion just made his day). I told him that we were talking about Green Day’s American Idiot and how it was a concept album that was being put on as a Broadway show. He had no idea that Green Day had made it to the “Great White Way” and was pretty surprised about the whole situation.

Then we got into discussions on what albums we thought would make really great staged shows. He actually mentioned that Dream Theater had put on their Scenes from a Memory as a staged version. However, they did not go as far as Green Day by making it a complete show with multiple singers and such. What they did was took their music and played while actors were on the stage acting out the story for the audience. Still a pretty nifty idea, I think. I think it would be amazing to have them actually turn it into some kind of show, though. We already know the plot works as a movie, it can stand on its own. Now it’s just a matter of taking the music and making it work for a cast of singers rather than just their lead singer, James LaBrie (who happens to have aspirations as a Broadway singer!).

The other one we came up with that we didn’t mention in class was Coheed and Cambria’s The Amory Wars. Here is a huge multiple album spanning science fiction story that was actually written by the frontman Claudio Sanchez. They had a comic book published in 2004 that actually went through the first third of their album The Second Stage Turbine Blade. I can only imagine what they must think of Green Day having their album brought to life on stage. I would think if I had written something like that from scratch, that was already conceived as being this crazy saga, I’d love to see it on stage or in film!