Despite the fact that I write here, I find that I don’t make a strong personal connection with most indie rock bands. Don’t get me wrong, I love a great deal of the music, but I’m not one who finds every new band out there in any timely manner and develops numerous musical crushes. I have a somewhat limited musical sphere – I hear a lot of music but obsess about very little. I tend to develop strong affections for supposedly larger than life musicians who have strange temperaments as well as cult-like fans. People who I will only meet or talk to after great effort has been exhausted. You’re talking to someone whose top two songwriters for most of her life have been Billy Corgan and Tori Amos. Come on.

I have friends in my local music scene whose shows I attend on a regular basis, but only a few. I like a lot of local bands, but I don’t feel the overwhelming urge to zealously spread their proverbial words. I’m not on anyone’s street team, and I don’t even post here that often to talk about something I’ve just discovered and love. I don’t do that on my personal blogs. If I talk about music, it’s usually something that’s years old, that I’ve just found out about, and someone who I will only meet after I’ve paid a shit ton of money for to see in concert and waited for hours after the show to get my ticket stub signed. And I’m okay with this type of relationship as long as I can rock out to this music in the comforts of my own home and not think about who is making it in too much depth.

However, recently I fostered such a great musical relationship, oddly enough, through my local theatre scene. But first off, let me explain a little about the arena in which this relationship was fostered. One incredible thing about Orlando (there’s at least one) is that the City Beautiful is home to the longest running Fringe Festival in North America. For a city generally associated with Disney and conservative thought, I guess we do have some cultural significance. The Fringe itself started over 50 years ago in Edinburgh, Scotland, and put most simply, is a non-juried festival of art, theatre, music, and mayhem, open to anyone who would like to put on a show. Essentially you could almost say the first Fringe was the very first ever indie rock festival. There are festivals all over the world, and Orlando’s is somewhat notable. Every May, the Fringe rolls through, bringing with it public nudity, copious amounts of alcohol and joints, hysteria-driven writer/actors, strange pets, dance troupes, zombies, hippies, and more drag queens than you probably should shake a stick at. It’s a sight to see, but as I found out by exposing some of my certifiable nerd friends to the chaos, it can be almost too much to take in.

Enter Matheatre, a two-person operation from Minneapolis. At this year’s Orlando Fringe, their show Calculus: the Musical! sold the highest number of tickets in their particular venue, giving them the honor of being one of nine Patron’s Picks out of 80 shows in the festival.. Not bad for first time Fringe participants singing about limits and derivatives. Comprised of the soft-spoken former high school math teacher Marc Gutman and the dynamic accompanist Sadie Bowman, this troupe is out to teach us all a lesson – math isn’t as bad you think, especially if you put it to song!

The inspiration for Calculus came from Marc’s teaching experience, and his desire to give his students confidence by putting formulas into easy-to-digest bits of familiar songs. Think of Weird Al teaching an upper level math course, and that’s the basis of the songs found in Calculus.

Part of what’s great about the Fringe is that if you hang around long enough, you can go right up to the person whose show you just saw and tell them you loved it. I did that frequently with Marc and Sadie throughout the ten day festival, and they were incredibly grateful. Not only was the show incredibly charming, but its two actors are in competition for the title of nicest people I’ve ever met. However, as I learned through conversation, unless you live in Cincinnati or Boulder, Colorado, you won’t be seeing Calculus anytime soon.

But lo and behold! Ye geeks are not out of luck! You know these two are smart, because they brought their very own CD with them to spread their magical nerdom! The album features all nine songs from the show, which include literally formulaic (singing about f of x and what not) versions of songs by The Beatles, the Who, Eminem, Gilbert and Sullivan, and Jacques Offenbach, just to name a few. Only two tracks clock in at over two minutes, so that you never feel as if you’re being lectured to in song. And if you’re anything like me and you lose track of actual lyrics in favor of soaking up the musical sounds of the words, with Calculus, you’ll simply think you’re listening to a super cute and poppy cover album.

Marc and Sadie’s personalities come out on the record just as much as they do in the live show. Marc is still soft-spoken, the math-checker of the duo, and I still wish he would project his voice a little bit more. But considering his former profession, he sounds exactly like you’d expect him to. He sings a heck of a lot better than most of the math teachers I’ve ever met to boot. Sadie’s voice is sweet and smooth, singing about the power rule as though she were confessing puppy love to the tune of “Downtown”. It’s really wonderful.

One complaint I heard about the show was that its concepts went over the head of some patrons. Bollocks. Sure, some of the engineers in the crowd laughed harder at the jokes than the hardcore theatre nerds, but the material is presented with extreme clarity and without talking down to a single audience member. Not to mention that the nerds who take calculus and theatre dorks overlap sometimes – don’t you remember high school at all!? The songs are simply so cute it’s unimaginable that they would go over anyone’s head.

This recording and everything related to it are all-around good times. Learning something new is always good. While Calculus: the Musical! may not change your life (unless you’re really struggling in the high math), it will make you smile a whole lot. And the videos on CD-ROM extras? They will make you laugh a whole lot, too. Isn’t that the point in the end, at least most of the time? I love this show and the recording the way I do possibly because it’s the Little Show That Could. Outsiders came into this very locally based Fringe and rocked their house when no one thought that they would have a chance. But beyond my love for the underdog espousing the qualities of numbers, there’s just a sweetness and earnestness present in this recording that solidifies its place as more than just a novelty item. Maybe knowing that “the limit’s alright” and that some people can truly “have calculus in the heart” will make me less apprehensive toward the subject. And even better yet, by discovering this show I made a couple of new friends. That may be the best record deal you can find anywhere.

The official Calculus website!

Pick up a copy of the album here!

Read more about this years Orlando Fringe shows at Blogging Fringe!