An Interview with Foxfire: Pregnant Magic. Or Red Wine Taco Massage Party.
By james at 12 February, 2009, 7:10 pm
Photo by Alex Tran
“Using their talent they are believed to lure young girls to the
forest and causing them to lose their way home. Conversely, in some
Latin cultures the Duendes are believed to be the helpers of people
who get lost in the forest so they could find their way home. [sic]”
- From the Wikipedia entry on Duendes
O Foxfire! How far you’ve come from your pop-psych roots (from the Forest) to blossoming into a full blown mutant-disco/ punk-funk rampage. If your music was a colour, it would be blue raspberry, and if you could touch it, it would feel like fishnet stockings. Something about their first incarnation didn’t fit. All the same elements were present: dueling boy/girl vocals bleeding sexual tension, a flare for costume and the joyous celebration of life. Yet something was being held back. Then, after a short hiatus, recouping following a lineup change they burst back like Bigfoot from the brush.
(Bigfoot researcher Neal Burgstahler tells of how the creatures can turn into floating orbs of light and alleges to have photographs of such, which, after seeing them, really just look like light flares. But still, that’s how I like to imagine the band’s metamorphosis.)
“To me disco is not about an exclusive thing,” says singer NeilRankin. “To me, disco is a party that everyone is invited to.” Neil talks a lot about disco and when he talks about disco, he speaks of it like a recovering addict speaks of sobriety.
“Do you know what I like? Duendes,” he abruptly states as he gets an olive oil rub down for a casual, free massage.
We’re in Doug The Masseuse’s small living room surround by people drinking boxed red wine and watching the pre-massage ritual casually as if watching two people play Uno. Neil lays on the massage table growing ever more glistening by the second. This is Foxfire’s modus operandi, to make everything they do a happening, to turn even the most banal and innocent of events, like a man on man taco massage party, into a regular shindig.
He’s finishing off another taco from the stack we’ve been snacking on in preparation for a massage.
“What’s a Duendes?”
He tells me of the Youtube videos of the scary, gnome/goblin creature native to spanish speaking countries. The videos often depict a group of friends casually standing around speaking in spanish when one of them spots the Duende and the camera captures a few seconds of a short, stocky shadow with a pointed hat doing a creepy sidestepping walk. There are screams and everyone runs away.
All of the sudden a latino guy in the back of the room perks up.
“Hey man, Duende is no Chupacabras.”
He speaks to us of the dead goats his brothers would find on the edge of town, drained of life. The Chupacabras: Mexican vampires, often feathered or plucked and said to drink the blood of goats.
He leaves us with a warning: repeat the beasts name one too many times and it shall appear.
A little scary, yes. But it would be easy to see this city swarmed with preverbal Chupacabras, feeding off Toronto’s music scene, lazily taking what they want and leaving you a vessel empty of essence.
Foxfire are givers in a town of takers, using their music to bring people together into a seething mass of glee, devoid of the usual pretentious (money, snobbery, bottle service) that we usually
associate with music played at clubs we can not afford to get into. In this way dance music, in its purest forms, is music for the people, played in venues stripped of pretension, and Foxfire is a band for the people.
I ask Neil why it seems so hard for Canadian bands making dance music to get noticed.
“It’’s not getting noticed, it’s to be taken seriously. People see it as a novelty in Canada.”
Which can also be seen as a pro since any band that makes music that isn’t taken seriously, can’t take themselves too seriously either.
“I try to be the most entertaining performer you can find. You can’t pander. You have to be aware of who you’re performing for. I always wanted to make music that connected with people, I . . . uh . . . Sorry. This is beginning to feel real good.”
Doug informs me he is working Neil’s thermal connective tissue and uses some fancy anatomy terms that I don’t understand. He stresses that if not thorough, if the massage is not done all over, then it becomes redundant and the body will return to its tight stress.
“Could a redundant massage possibly be fatal?”
“If it were super redundant I think it would. But that’s not a massage, that’s not relaxation.”
Neil looks slightly nervous with all the talk of deadly redundancies so I switch the subject to that of their recent sound and name change.
“It was a practical change after loosing two members who had been principle song writers. Then the name just seemed natural. From this huge, almost unpronouncible, unmemorable name to something simplified, like how the music was turning. By the way, which beast’s name were we
not suppose to repeat, Duendes, or Chupacabras?”
A blinding light fills the room and all becomes as silent as a lonely childhood. Only the sound of a single taco hitting the floor could be heard.
“Are we ok?” someone asks.
“What just happened?” asks another.
“Who’s massaging me now?” Doug’s voice bleats.
The room dims and we all rub the red from our eyes. I look up squinting to see a short, dark shape pointed at the top. Then something else, something tall and thin and hairless and not of this
hemisphere.
And they are both perched on top Neil.
And they are caressing each other.
I hope to live to be an old man with many grandchildren. I hope one day they will ask me what is the strangest thing I have ever seen in my many, many years. And without hesitation I will say the time I watched a Duendes and a Chupacabras impregnate Neil Rankin with magic.
I’m sure you know how this story ends. Neil took that magic and held it deep within his man womb and now gives birth to it night after night on stage for all to see. The band, now more of a traveling carnival than musicians, hauls the magic under lock and key by day and unleashes it on stage by night. They are the ones who point the wand.
***************************************************************************************
I asked Robert Wastmoore, Cryptozoologist, what his thoughts were on this mysterious case. After hearing the tape recordings I made of the interview he took a long pull off his pipe and leaned back; stroked his beard and pondered my question. He took a sip of his brandy.
“You know,” he said taking out his monocle to clean it. “Foxfire posses many of the same traits of these rare creatures. They are both full of strange spanish magic and are both readily available on Youtube. As a matter of fact, the only difference is that Foxfire are no goat suckers.”
Photo by Alex Tran
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