by: Kyle Harris
In a moment of electrifying terror toward the end of the biggest Flobots song, “Handlebars," the protagonist — who grew up making comic books, square dancing and proudly riding his bike with "no handlebars" — threatens to rise to power and take command of the world with a microphone. Boldly, he declares he can end the planet in a holocaust.
“A holocaust?” shouts rapper Jamie Laurie, aka Jonny 5. “A holocaust.”
The kid who once embraced a do-it-yourself sensibility and took pride in his expansive knowledge of Leif Erikson has grown up and become a global monster — or he’s suffering from delusions of grandeur that he could be one. Laurie repeats “a holocaust” over and over again as the instruments rise in a manic frenzy, angry, destructive and fueled by ego.
Throughout the song, the band charts the course from childhood innocence to corruption, imaginative whimsy to plots of totalitarian control. The tantrum that the character throws at the climax is at once cathartic and cautionary: It’s not that hard to become an abusive, power-hungry dictator hell-bent on global death and everything you hate and fear in others.
The song’s denouement, a repeat of the seemingly naive line “I can ride my bike with no handlebars” uttered through a fuzzy microphone accompanied by the pluck of a fiddle, sounds menacing. Like a butterfly beating its wings and causing a tsunami, a kid’s pride in a bike trick might just foreshadow total obliteration.
The song, first recorded in 2005, blew up in 2008, toward the end of George W. Bush’s reign. It brought national acclaim to childhood friends Laurie and Stephen Brackett, aka Brer Rabbit, the frontmen of the indie hip-hop band. “Handlebars” became a Top 40 radio banger, a catchy anthem for millennials entering adulthood, ready to take on the world. With money from the act's major-label debut, Fight With Tools, the bandmates founded a nonprofit that eventually became Youth on Record and took on a successful life of its own, recently receiving a million-dollar grant from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott, ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, as part of a $2.75 billion charity campaign.
Over the years, Flobots went through various iterations, losing and regaining members. Laurie and Brackett invested their time in various nonprofits and social causes, from ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to stopping the emerald ash borer from ravaging trees in Denver. Along the way, the rappers championed everything from music education to refugee rights, and did it all with a philosophical introspection that has kept them from turning into the destructive brutes they feared becoming in “Handlebars.”
Despite all that activism and community work, Flobots retreated from the national eye. The group was briefly resurrected when notorious YouTuber Logan Paul parodied “Handlebars” with “Can’t Handle Bars.” Flobots sued Paul, and the case was settled out of court. The band received compensation, and the vlogger took his satirical video offline.
In recent years, even some diehard fans viewed Flobots as a one-hit wonder. Shrugging off the haters, Laurie and Brackett doubled down on community organizing, recording new music, collaborating with Denver cultural groups like the dance troupe Wonderbound, and modeling a different type of success — one rooted in the community activism that the group has long espoused.
At best, the band’s music since Fight With Tools has mirrored its members’ introspection and self-awareness, their unflinching regard for human flaws and inner violence, and also their desire to overthrow systems of oppression — both within themselves and in the world at large. Their vision of the world has been driven by a notion of grace and reconciliation, but it's also critical of the authoritarian tendencies overrunning so much current political organizing in all ideological arenas.
Now, after a year of negotiating what it means to be both part of a band and community activists during a pandemic, the members of Flobots are gearing up for two shows — a rescheduled July 2 date at Levitt Pavilion and a July 3 gig at Mishawaka Amphitheatre. In lieu of an album, in April the band began releasing a string of tracks that are making fans reconsider whether viewing Flobots as a nostalgic act might have been a mistake.
On June 5 — the band's original Levitt date before slashes of lightning tore open the sky — fans slumped back to the parking lot. Some played Flobots on their phone; others tailgated, blasting a Flobots playlist, hoping the show would resume. When the new song “Roshni,” the first of the three to drop, came through one set of car speakers, everyone paused. “Is this really Flobots?” wondered one guy. “I guess...yeah...it’s new.”