Gothic Theatre

Family Force 5

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The three leading members of the band, Soul Glow Activatur, Phatty and Crouton, are sons of Jerome Olds, a Christian artist from the late 1980s. Prior to the formation of Family Force 5, the brothers were members of a “boy band” known as The Brothers, releasing Fact and Reality (1994) and RPM (1995). Both albums were released on Star Song Records, and produced by their father.³⁴

Between the Brothers and Family Force 5 the brothers had a band called Ground Noise, which they classified as “a really bad version of Third Day.”⁵ Before the band chose the name Family Force 5, they had taken on the name “The Phamily”. They had to change it later due to copyright issues with Prince’s band, The Family.

A decade later, the band signed with Maverick Records for distribution to the mainstream market before signing to Gotee Records for the Christian market. The band sought out a dual recording deal in order to better distribute their music to both the mainstream market and the Christian market.⁴ According to Soul Glow Activatur, “To me, and pretty much anybody that’s under my age, most Christian music is a turnoff. I don’t want to be affiliated with that. I want to be affiliated with something that is great music. I feel that Maverick and Gotee together can pull that off.”³

Their debut album has been both disparaged and praised by Christian and non-Christian critics respectively for not containing overtly Christian content in any of its tracks (with the exception of “Peachy”, which was apparently written to convert a friend to Christianity and calls God by name). However, the band often does talk about singing for Jesus during their shows and occasionally one of the members (usually Phatty) leads a prayer at the end of the set.

Family Force 5 contributed the song “Mind’s Eye” for the compilation album Freaked! A Gotee Tribute to dc Talk’s “Jesus Freak”. For Christmas, Family Force 5 released a few Christmas-themed audio blogs. They’ve also recorded “Grandma”, a cover of Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer. In March 2007, their debut album was re-released as Business Up Front, Party In The Back: Diamond Edition, which contains three previously unreleased songs.⁶ A new unreleased song entitled “Whatcha Gonna Do With It” has been made available for download exclusively at the Wal-Mart music download store as an EP titled Business Up Front/Party In The Back (Diamond Edition) (Exclusive EP).⁷ This song has also been made available on a new compilation produced by Gotee Records labeled Hip Hope 2008 and is available on iTunes for download.⁸