He was wonderful and witty and so completely British it made my heart practically stop. Jack is the drummer of Foals, a band that just so happens to have been born in Oxford, England and a band that just so happened to play at the Showbox at the Market on a Monday night. I have been a Foals fan for quite a while but no level of previous devotedness could compare to the heart palpitations I was getting as I gazed into Jimmy’s eyes. Jimmy is the guitarist of Foals and was standing right above me with long hair and bleeding fingers. And then there was Walter on bass and Edwin on the keyboard and oh! Sweet, sweet Yannis as lead vocals! Although the music probably had something to do with it, I maintain that it was the band’s combined British-ness that made me swoon. Collectively the band is terrific and outrageous and smooth all at once, but what really jumped out at me was their silly hair, collared shirts, and tight slacks. You could tell they were so undeniably British before they even spoke, and it was like a wave of energy that washed over the entire audience. Their British-ness.
Besides being a total fool for Foals, the band members’ English origin was what intrigued me the most. How five boys around my age could be so much the same as the American boys I interact with everyday but so intrinsically different, a difference I could detect and feel before I ever really looked at them or heard them speak. The fact that a culture can have a presence like that, and can be transported by human beings into different cultures fascinates me endlessly; this why I am going to Oxford and it’s why I am so excited to go in the first place. The pure British-ness that we will be exposed to is what I want to learn about and observe and be a part of.
No comments:
Post a Comment