Universities have always been a hotbed for innovation. Students have been innovating long before Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook at Harvard and long before “coding” even existed, but the original college start-up is not a social media platform or even an app.
The original college start-up is the rock band. From the Doors at UCLA, to Pink Floyd at London Polytechnic, to the Strokes at NYU, and Vampire Weekend at Columbia, students have been starting disrupting bands long before they started coding.
Four Engineering students at California Polytechnic University at San Luis Obispo (SLO) have decided to eschew the traditional start-up route to follow their passion for music.
Box the Oxford is an Indie-Surf Rock Band started in 2013. The band was founded when lead vocalist/guitarist Andrew Krippner and guitarist/vocalist Colton Stapper agreed their university engineering program and the general university zeitgeist pressured them into only two possible career options – one at a fortune-500 tech companies and one at a tech start-up.
This institutional pressure served as inspiration for the name “Box the Oxford”. As guitarist/vocalist Colton Stapper put it to me, “the Oxford is the indie art, our vision, and the Box is some representation of the limitations of society.” Stapper and Krippner, joined by two fellow engineers, drummer Eric Osborn and bassist Davis Muxlow, decided to fight back by creating innovating music. Together the four have created a self-titled E.P and a full album of Indie Surf-Rock.
The group spent their first year cultivating local notoriety in the SLO music scene. Songs from their E.P. were aired on local radio stations and the band performed various gigs in SLO. After receiving validation from the community, the four decided to pursue the band further. Box the Oxford then spent two years writing a new album and re-recording their songs in Carlsbad, California. Since then, the band has burst into the industry with a force.
In June 2016, the band performed at a Central Coast Music Festival alongside big names like T-Pain and Jai Wolf. In Fall 2016, the band opened for LA indie artists Kid Cadaver and DWNTWN, paving way for the release of the band’s two singles, “Bones” and “Someone” from their debut album “Wild.” “Bones” has already hit over 100k listens on Spotify in under three months! Box the Oxford is currently planning a 2017 West Coast Tour to promote “Wild”.
Check out some of their music here!
https://soundcloud.com/box-the-oxford/bones?in=box-the-oxford%2Fsets%2Fwild-2016