Disclaimer: This blog was written retrospectively on the January 2022
Now then, Scruffys! I’m sat here REEEELING, absolutely FUMING that I’ve been given the task of writing about WHY WE CHOSE FOXY LADY AS A COVER for our live EP.
Seriously, I hate it! We spent weeks deciding on and rehearsing a special little cover of Oh Well by Fleetwood Mac and putting together our own arrangement, but it came to a month before our Live EP performance in August and we were thinking “Oh Well? More like Oh No! What if it goes terribly wrong?”. I mean anything could happen in a live performance, right? Captured badly, performed… questionably, but our biggest fear with the Oh Well performance is that it wasn’t going to capture the energy and vibe that we really want to put across at a Scruffy Bear show.
So of course, we came up with a contingency plan! We should pick another cover that’s a much more popular song and easier for us to whack out! The gang all suggest Foxy Lady, since it’s actually been a part of our live set for 4 years so surely it makes sense to bang that one out ✨ as a backup ✨ Well I politely decline the opportunity to play this genuinely lovely but annoying to play song, because I’ve said some version of “can we pick a new cover, I don’t want to do that again” EVERY single time we slapped it out at a show - to the point it became a meme (h a h a, ryan lets play foxy lady 🤪)
But kindly enough they did finally listen, and instead we spent the next two weeks completely disagreeing on what song to play - Suddenly it’s an entirely new problem and the deadline to not only PICK ONE but REHEARSE IT is looming. The gig we’ve otherwise planned meticulously is in a week!
Enough is enough, I’ll say it 😭 “yo dudes, i’ve been thinking and it’s probs best we just go with Foxy Lady, the point of this EP is to show some love to everything we did before we move on to the new songs and studio EP and we HAVE been playing this as a staple - the only condition is you genuinely never ask me to play this again and we pick something with JUST as much V I B E and JUST as much G R O O V Y if we wanna pull out a cover at the next lot of shows.” If this was a masterstroke by the gang to get their own stupid little way then they’re evil geniuses, they won, I hope they’re happy in their sad little lives. But we have to move forward and I get to sit on my high horse as the reasonable one of the band.
So of course, the gig rolls round and we’re away - we definitely know it!
To cut a long story short, after the stems came back and everyone in the band felt compelled to use Foxy since Oh Well had a very visual element to the song, being Georgy playing the drums and there were a lot of gaps/atmosphere that may not have been felt through the audio only. I sulked away to my editing room at home (aka bedroom) and got stuck into putting together the live video.
Sitting for so long with the video and watching my guys do their thing was pretty unbelievable, I got to see and listen to them all individually in a way I’ve never actually experienced. I found myself replaying the track and certain details that I’ve missed and slowly but surely I started to love and appreciate this track that super annoyed me for years, and THAT super annoyed me.
I’d like to call this a coming of age experience, or a lesson in growth but just because I grew to like this and enjoy what playing it does for the band the fact remains that I kept getting strong armed into playing it - so I’m off for another sulk ✌️
