Hunkpapa Red Tailcoat
? 15th February, 2019
Clothing photos

Oxford has many buskers. One of them used to play the saxophone. He was also a bodybuilder, and — so I'm told — would hire himself out to hen parties, where he would play the saxophone naked for a hundred quid or two. This post, however, is about busker costume, not the lack thereof. Coming back from the dry cleaners mentioned in my last post, I saw a band new to me performing in Cornmarket. Note the red coat:

Hunkpapa playing in Cornmarket Street, Oxford Hunkpapa playing in Cornmarket Street, Oxford Hunkpapa playing in Cornmarket Street, Oxford Hunkpapa playing in Cornmarket Street, Oxford Hunkpapa playing in Cornmarket Street, Oxford

They're called Hunkpapa, and a quick check of their Twitter account and gallery proves that they are indeed the people shown in my photos.

So, in fact, does the BBC Music NI site, which tells me they're a four-piece band from Armagh, here performing their short EP "Enemy". I didn't have time to listen to more than a few bars, but here's a review by Chantelle Frampton (16 March 2018) for giggingni.com of a gig in Limelight 2, BelfastWayback. They are, she writes, one of those bands that seemed to just pop up in the Northern Irish music scene and then they quickly took it by storm. Not only are their sets incredibly fun and energetic, but they also ensure their live shows are all varied and keep the crowd coming back for more.

The squalid building behind the band, by the way, is in Oxford. Yet another boarded-up shop. One would not, any more, describe Oxford as "whispering from her towers the last enchantments of the Middle Age". Home of lost causes, certainly, especially — when one is the council, or a college — that of pride in one's city.