Catching Fireflies in Cowley

31st Oct, 2012 was my first Halloween in a country which actually celebrates it, and in typical Oxford fashion, I was faced with the option of being at two equally enticing places at once. My college was holding its termly graduate dinner that night and I had pre-booked tickets to an Owl City concert for the same time slot. Decisions, decisions. At lunch time, a visiting student from Germany was talking about how she was going to miss out on the graduate dinner, because she had been unable to sign up for it in time and viola, my conundrum was solved for me, I quickly offered her my seat for the graduate dinner and firmly set my mind upon attending the Owl City concert. Despite my enthusiasm, I had only heard two Owl City songs till that date, Fireflies and Vanilla Twilight, and so went into the concert with a heart to hear completely new melodies. Four fellow Brasenostrils (yes, that's what you call a student of Brasenose College) and I set off towards Cowley and the 40 min walk seemed to pass in 4 mins. When we reached O2 Academy, we were faced with the biggest queue I had ever seen, but luckily due to our pre-booked tickets, we found that we could queue-jump and didn't have to wait long at all, to get in. None of us were sure if there was another act before Owl City, and so when three guys came on stage and played a great song, that all of us loved, without knowing whether this was Owl City or not, I found later that it was Mathew Makoma and I was faced with the tempting question, "How well am I able to distinguish quality and value from hype and brand?", concrete answers still pending.
The night was bucket loads of fun, and the whole Owl City band turned up in costume, with the lead singer in Batman garb! Certainly, a Halloween night that I loved. When post-concert, I came back to college, we found out that the Graduate dinner speaker had been a controversial banker, who had made money thorough some not cleanly ethical mean during the crash, and everyone was abuzz about his evil nature. I was glad that I went with the Fireflies.