"You don't know what this is? Well, in opera in a permanent company of the kind we keep up in Europe you must have a prima donna--always a soprano, always the heroine, often a fool; and a tenor who always plays the lover to her; and then you must have a contralto, who is a rival to the soprano, or a sorceress or something; and a basso, who is the villain or the rival or whatever threatens the tenor.
So far, so good. But you cannot make a plot work without another man, and he is usually a baritone, and he is called in the profession Fifth Business, because he is the odd man out, the person who has no opposite of the other sex. And you must have Fifth Business because he is the one who knows the secret of the hero's birth, or comes to the assistance of the heroine when she thinks all is lost, or keeps the hermitess in her cell, or may even be the cause of somebody?s death if that is part of the plot."
From Fifth Business by Robertson Davies.
When we say geeks, that's what we mean. Two of us are chemists, two of us are university lecturers and two of us like modelling. Our brand of songs has been called 'geek rock' since we frequently sing about our lives and work. The tune 'Quanta' is about the sub-atomic world and if you listen very closely at the end you will hear the quanta talking their language. We have a car song in 'Green Rocket' about an old Chev Caprice. 'Benchdog Blues' is about a workshop in the back yard shed. 'Sitting on Trinity' is about the scientist who baby-sat the first atomic bomb the night before it's detonation. Even the name 'Fifth Business' after the Canadian literary classic is a bit geeky. All in fun.