We’re from Agoura Hills, California, in the Westlake Village. When you guys started, were there other bands ? We wanted to write about energy drinks, because that’s what we were doing and we thought that was funny to present our world through that process, as opposed to trying to make something that was good. We purposely wanted not to write about love because we didn’t want to be a “normal band.” We were 15 year-old kids. It was a lot of rapping and nonsensical stuff, like Beck lyrics. My friend Rado and I started the band when we were teenagers. We were really inspired by a lot of rock and roll, of course. When you started making music, was it more with that artistic thought in mind? Of trying to do something that was conceptual? That’s why he was able to print so many of these things and make so much money. Everybody interprets art differently, and Andy Warhol chose to use the most basic corporate images that most people would be able to understand. It was a cool idea having no boundaries, and stupid things that somehow have a mass appeal. I like the idea of pop art: that you could literally put something that already exists in a frame, and call that art. When the group resurfaced, it had reformed as a deceptively self-described “punk” band called Star Power with an expanded, nine-person line-up and a new album, … And Star Power.įor a recent Fireside Chat with RBMA Radio, band member Sam France sat down with Frosty to narrate Foxygen’s musical ride so far. The LP’s success led to a heavy slate of touring, but the band’s unhinged live show eventually required an extended break, prompting a retreat to the studio. That same year, Foxygen traveled to Swift’s National Freedom studio to record We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic, an album that exploded upon its release in 2013. To their delight, Swift loved it, and buoyed by his support, the band signed to Jagjaguwar, which reissued the record in 2012 and has since become the group’s steady label home. Several self-released EPs appeared during the group’s early days, but Foxygen wasn’t truly discovered until 2011, when Rado and France slipped a CD-R copy of Take the Kids Off Broadway to famed producer and outsider pop hero Richard Swift at a show in Brooklyn. Back then, the two were just a couple of 15 year-olds growing up in the periphery of Los Angeles, but their youth didn’t prevent them from pursuing a musical vision heavily steeped in ’60s psychedelia and avant-garde pop. Jonathan Rado and Sam France first formed Foxygen in 2005.