Kings of the Eccentric: Foxygen

True, authentic weirdness is actually quite difficult to come by these days. You’ve got a fairly high population of people that attempt to be weird in a kind of “I’m weird and it’s cute” way (which if you are conscious human being and have opinions about anything is usually insufferable). These people fail to see the true value of total and utter confusion. The beauty of something that quite literally makes no sense whatsoever. But in its meaningless absurdity comes a strange kind of beauty that can provoke hilarity, solemnity or a delicious combination of the two. Why this slightly pretentious rant about weirdness I hear you call? Well I have managed to stumble upon some of the most bizarre footage possibly ever recorded.

You may recall (if you are one of only a handful of people that read this blog more than once) (You don’t count mum) my mention of the avant garde band Foxygen in this little article here . There I spoke about their retro, psychedelic vibe and their tendency to say things like “And you can chew on gum/If it makes you have fun/And you can drink green soup on the way from the kitchen”. Personally, they float my metaphorical boat on every single level. The lead singer, Sam France, has the most erratic singing style that lends itself to total abandon at times and whispery creepiness at others. I’d like to think that a lot of their stuff is just improvised in a garage in California somewhere, with them just surrounded by a whole bunch of Sunny D and gummi bears.

Given my spiritual connection to the band, you can imagine my elation when I found out that they were in fact a high school start-up. France and his m8 Jonathan Rado set up the band when they were just 15 in Westlake Village, California. I know, you’re thinking lame covers of “Wonderwall” performed at the school dance? Nay, nay they missed that due to their apparent hipness (how you can be hip aged 14, I’d genuinely like to know), and instead opted for “wildly experimental music, which featured many influences from 60s psychedelia and avant-garde”. All I can say is their parents must have been the grooviest people on earth. Either that or there is something in the Californian air that just makes people creatively insane.

Anywho, there is VIDEOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE of this wildly eccentric phase in the band’s fledgling days. And praise atheist Jesus, it is probably the weirdest thing I’ve seen all year. Entitled “The Legend of Colonel Bedlum and The Salty Biscuits”, it comes in the form of a fourfold self-proclaimed “mock rockumentary”. I know I have a tendency to exaggerate sometimes but honestly, this is amongst the funniest pieces of home footage I have ever laid my eyes on. They were 15 and they were fuckin geniuses. Once I finished the film, I realised that my experience of life was fundamentally altered because I had been exposed to the raw power of a 15 year old freakish prodigy. I remembered with a grimace my attempt at coolness in my former years and it became apparent that I had missed out what was the essence of “cool” itself: total indifference towards anything remotely normal.

And so, if you haven’t already, first familiarise yourself with the idiosyncrasy of their 2013 album “We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic”.

Then, if you believe yourself to be fully prepared, feast your eyes on this utter nonsense…