Fool’s Gold band to perform tropical pop in Bruin Plaza
Campus Events Commission will host L.A.-based band Fool’s Gold today from noon to 1 p.m. in Bruin Plaza. The band describes its music as “tropical pop.”
Courtesy of Pierre Auroux
CEC FREE Concert: Fool's Gold
Today, noon
Bruin Plaza, FREE
By Courtney Whitlock
Feb. 9, 2011 12:44 a.m.
Sitting in the corner of a coffee shop, Luke Top doesn’t give the impression of a band front man. His scruffy beard and tousled dark brown hair, plaid collar and his half-full iced tea give the appearance of an everyday Angeleno. However, he’ll be playing bass and singing lead vocals with Fool’s Gold in Bruin Plaza today from noon to 1 p.m.
Fourth-year economics student and senior member of Campus Events Comission’s concert staff Harry Tannenbaum said that CEC chose the band to share an off-beat kind of music with students.
“Fool’s Gold is a band that a lot of people on staff have been listening to and admiring for a while,” Tannenbaum said. “We felt that their music is something great to get people exposed to on campus and it is perfect (for a) warm winter day.”
Top and his band call their style of music “tropical pop,” or “trop pop,” for short. While the band is local to Los Angeles, they incorporate many of the sounds of Africa, including Ethiopia, Mali and Nigeria.
“When we started, the idea was (to) allow any influence to come out and not laugh at it and not judge it or think “˜We are crazy,'” Top said.
According to Top, he and guitarist Lewis Pesacov began developing their style through experimentation.
“I wanted a context in which we could both allow our freakish outsider influences to come into play,” Top said.
Top’s choice to sing the lyrics in Hebrew ““ a language he learned before he moved away from Tel Aviv, Israel, at age 3 ““ further incorporates multiculturalism into the band’s music.
“When you sing in a language no one understands, it allows you to have a certain freedom, which I didn’t feel entitled to while singing in English,” Top said.
While Fool’s Gold attempts to blur the lines between different cultures of music, Top said that the band also tries to break the separation between audience and performer, creating a dialogue between the two.
“The main thing we strive to do … is strip away all the fat and come to a communal point between the band and the audience,” Top said. “We get to these moments that are really ecstatic and you kind of transcend time and place and sometimes the crowd is totally there with you.”
Brennan McNally, a third-year English student who saw the band live in October of 2009, further testified to Fool’s Gold’s stage presence.
“Their live show was just like watching a big happy family jam. … The whole dynamic was just really fun,” McNally said.
Top said that the formation of the band in 2006 was casual and authentic.
“It wasn’t like we were at a board meeting and decided we wanted to make a band,” Top said. “In some ways, it is one of the most organic things that has ever happened to me in my life, this thing just coming out of the ooze of necessity and urges.”
The same went for Fool’s Gold’s self-titled 2009 album debut, which Top said developed out of what was initially intended to be a single recording and became a full-length album.
“We had studio time so we decided to track all the songs we knew, so it wasn’t even like “˜Let’s make an album.’ … It was kind of like a snapshot of where we were at the time,” Top said. “(Making the album) was like pure unadulterated joy. … There are always so many rules in life, it is just nice to have something that doesn’t have so many rules.”
