Fox and the Trots

 

Have I ever told you I used to be in a band? Yeah man, you were so rad… Well anyway, I’ve written a blog commemorating this fact and here it is. Now you know.

Remember that band you used to be in as a teenager? You know, back when life was as simple as packing in your last class of the day, necking as many £2 pints in the pub next to college as you could in the hour before rehearsal with your mates, all showing up to the unit absolutely plastered and then just basically smashing your instruments together in a sort of frenzied passion before your parents came to pick you up at 9pm on a Wednesday each week? No? Well, fortunately for me I do – and I can tell you, it was pretty epic.

Now I’m not some crazed rock god and will never claim to be – I just can’t seem to get the hair right – so rather than go down the usual rock band route we went down the… Disco, Funk and Soul one. After all, we had the instruments to make it work. How many college “battle of the bands” have you known to feature a full blown horn section anyway? On a serious note though, the origins of “Fox and the Trots” was actually a throwaway comment one of our guitarists made in our 6th form Music Tech class.

The birth of a legend (sort of…)

We were studying the art of disco production, its over-stylised synths, cheesy bass lines and simple drum beats excellent reproduction fodder for basic 21st century music production software, when one of the guitarists in the band joked that we could probably just make a band from the people in the room to do it better – or something to that effect. Anyway, it was an amusing thought, and only grew more amusing once we realised it was actually true. We had the perfect disco/funk band line up staring us in the face. What’s more, we were all actually fairly competent musicians.

It didn’t take long for us to decide to actually give it a go, citing the annual college battle of the bands as our raison d’etre, and booking out some local rehearsal spaces to begin perfecting our original material. We started out with some covers, James Brown, Stevie Wonder and the like, and quickly realised that yes, we were actually pretty good. It didn’t take more than a couple of tries to produce something that wouldn’t have been out of place at a local wedding. Our singer in particular, to our great astonishment, was really good.

Delivering the dream

Once we had mastered the art of the cover, we began to hone in on writing new content, since the name of the game was original material. Thankfully, we had something of a back catalogue spread among us, half-baked projects from here and there that we could use to act as loose structures and powerful catalysts from which to generate our own sound. In the end, the anticipation of the competition, the adrenaline and excitement of a new project and plenty of blood sweat and tears (mainly sweat if I remember correctly) meant that we knocked out 5 or so fully baked originals in no time at all.

When it came to the competition itself, the levels of adrenaline were so high that we blazed through the set in a bit of a drunken blur. My memories of the night are hazy to say the very least. Still, victory was never in doubt. We also had a great review in the local paper, where the reporter who had covered the competition for years was so taken aback by the quality of the performance that he insisted on coming round and shaking every single one of our hands after we came off stage. It may have only been a small college competition, but, as cliched as it is to say, we still felt like rock stars. We were hooked.

The glory days

What followed were a few glorious years of playing small festivals, beer tents, birthday parties and pubs – as well as the odd local/regional competition, all of which we won. We featured on a couple of local radio stations and on one of the local indie charts where we entered at #1 with the main track from our debut EP. The EP itself was recorded mostly in a mate’s shed, mattresses on the walls as sound dampeners, borrowed mixing desks trailing wires round a bargain bucket drum set and effects peddles that, it’s safe to say, had seen better days. Of course, that’s how every good first EP should be made. The music is only really as good as the writing.

Unfortunately, the dream was over far too soon, marked by our collective departure to university. That was except for the band’s singer, who struck gold when a record label snapped him up having heard the work he’d done with the band and on various other solo projects. Turns out, he was more than really good – shout out to Oli Fox, go and check him out on the socials. Still, the music lives on – feel free to also check that out on Youtube. One day, I’ll dust of the saxophone and try to relive those glory days. One day.

While you’re at it, go give VVilhelm a listen too, another band member still crushing it in the music industry! Got some audio editing needs? Hit up Ashley Tough for the highest quality of audio engineering services. More music? Some of the ex-band members are still grooving with amazing jazz collective Ebi Soda.