These days you hear so much music from such a wide variety of sources that it’s difficult to follow the names of bands and the names of the songs, even if you recognize the songs themselves. Such was the case with the song Fear & Delight by The Correspondents. I'm sure I've heard it a thousand times before this, but I never knew the name of the song or the band. Certainly not this music video.



It's next level. Love Ian Bruce’s whole aesthetic, here especially. When I looked him up on Wikipedia, the least surprising sentence was that he was “educated at Eton.” I mean, if you have that dress sense, those glasses, that haircut, that face, of course you went to Eton. Is anyone else allowed that aesthetic? I guess I might allow an Oxbridge student, but what do I know. “Eton” just has that old school British institution sound…

The making of Fear & Delight video is fascinating, too. So damn creative.



I love going down musical rabbit holes. I used to do it on Pandora, and Spotify, heck even on Napster I found stuff I wouldn't have otherwise. And various online venues between the time of Napster and Pandora. These days I use YouTube, primarily. The Correspondents is a good jumping off point to just click on whatever strikes your fancy that's suggested in the sidebar. So much good music out there, it's nuts.

Mr Bruce’s style in this video reminded me of going to a university student’s art show around the turn of the millennium when I was in England for a few months. I was an exchange student. The show was held at some small gallery near the southeastern coast somewhere, I can’t remember exactly where.

They had a singer-songwriter playing tunes with a little keyboard. One of those songs stuck in my head and then I spent the next ten years wondering what the guy’s name was before finally finding him on YouTube and ordering a CD direct from the man himself, which was nice. This is the particular song that stuck with me:

…and the embed function is not working for this video, so you can find it here: It's My Art by Luke Smith, from the album Life Will Work Itself Out. With the immortal line: It's my art, and I like it. Gotta love it.

Luke Smith, at the time, was very much a Nigel Planer-as-Neil-in-The Young Ones-type (the tall one with long hair). But that’s not actually why I was reminded of this art event. The art was alright; pretty much what you’d expect from a pretentious British art student. I remember clowns in the art. Surreal clowns.

I remember one young man considering some piece of art, dressed much in the same vein as Mr Bruce is in the video, but more colorful, more pretentious, with the glasses, and a fashionable bit of scarf thrown carelessly around his shoulders. I think I asked him what he thought of the art or something. We didn't chat much. I seem to remember his accent matched his sartorial choices, if such makes sense. Maybe it wasn't actually put on, but god, I kinda hope it was. Was it upper class, a bit lispy? I don't remember clearly. Maybe, also, I'm just embroidering my memories of this person. I wasn't much comfortable with this character from an Evelyn Waugh novel come to life, gotta say. It was this dude who was the tenuous connection between Fear & Delight and this lengthy anecdote. Did this kid go to Eton, I want to know.

But actually, though, he wasn’t nearly the most interesting person there. No. Not by a country mile.

Not at all. There was a small group of older ladies—I think they were all ladies—in absolute classic late 1970s, maybe early 1980s, punk regalia. Bright neon spiky hair and all. I was young enough that my judgment of their age may have been skewed, but definitely by silly societal standards, they were much too old for that style. But they must’ve been the perfect age for the OG British punk scene. Knowing more of the history of the whole movement now, I would love to know more of their story. What kind of holy hell they must have raised in their day.

I got some munchies (and a small glass of wine since I was old enough to drink in England) as an introvert does at these soirées to avoid awkward chatter, and one of these ladies approached me, because I looked so dang awkward. She was, actually, totally unpretentious towards me and easy to talk to, if a little rough around the edges. She was overjoyed when she discovered I was an AMERICAN, as if I were some exotic personage… which to her I might’ve been (in those days I was particularly soft-spoken so it took her a minute or two before she realized my accent wasn't British). I learned later from the father of the place I was staying that there are a lot of British people who spend their entire lives in or near the towns they grew up in. Even the idea of visiting London is too exotic and cosmopolitan for these country folk, despite it only being an hour or two away by train. Sounds hobbitish, doesn’t it just.

Eventually she tottered off, and one of the guys I was living with came over, very concerned, and asked if the woman had been bothering me. To which I calmly assured him that no, they were no bother at all. He didn’t seem so sure. To be fair, they were pretty out of place and probably had no connection to any of the artists exhibiting. But I really can’t fault anyone for crashing an art open house and sampling some hors d'oeuvres; I mean why not.

From the few months I was in England, that’s one of my clearest memories, talking to that older punk lady. I really do wonder what her story was, and what she and her crew got up to back in the day. Heck, what they were up to at the time. Frankly they were a lot more interesting than the people I was staying with and all the artsy fartsy people at the show. They were authentic, and unapologetic (gasp! an unapologetic Brit?), in a way no one else seemed to be. Possibly even of all the people I met during my entire stay in England. Funny the things one remembers.