OXES

OXES
Origin	Baltimore, Maryland, United States
Genres	Math rock, heavy metal, instrumental rock
Years active	1999–present
Labels	Friends Records
Website	[1]
Members	Marc Miller Natalio Fowler Christopher Freeland

OXES is an instrumental rock band from Baltimore, Maryland. Its music has been called math rock or post-punk.

'OXES' is a part of what is known as "The Baltimore Rowdy Collective" which stages practical jokes, usually involving a confrontational and outlandish racket in public places. These happenings are comparable to the Lettrist scandals and Luther Blissett.

In all of the band's early performances, guitarists Marc Miller and Natalio Fowler both stood on large black boxes (or pedestals) towering over the audiences, a nod to the superiority complexes of rock bands. They would occasionally step down from the boxes to walk into the audience and stand in front of individuals in the crowd (while still playing) in an attempt to make them feel uncomfortable. This was later aided by the much self-publicized acquisition of wireless guitars. Drummer Christopher Freeland would intermittently get up from his set and barge around the stage, mumbling incoherent babble, only to sit back down and lunge into another song. Miller and Fowler are noted for having the birth and death dates of Jimi Hendrix respectively.

While the band retained its use of the large black boxes and wireless guitars, its later shows were marked by lesser accepted ideas of showmanship. However, they still maintain a certain level of audacious and silly stage presence. After their 2002 South by Southwest performance, Entertainment Weekly named them the "Blue Man Group of rock."

In late 2004, the group began doing an encore that consisted only of a reenactment of the opening scene for 2001: A Space Odyssey, introduced by the drummer as a one-act play and a new direction for the band. The two black boxes where stacked longways to resemble the monolith in the film, and Miller and Freeland began a free jazz rendition of Also sprach Zarathustra. Fowler would slowly reemerge from an inconspicuous place in the venue, completely naked, bearing an object resembling or meant to symbolize a large bone. As the musical climax arrived, he would become increasingly enraged, much like the ape in the film, and eventually tear down the monolith and run off on all fours.

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Wikipedia