When I went to my first Moxy Früvous concert in San Francisco in 1998, the sum total of my knowledge about them was: (a) they’re Canadian; (b) they had written an interesting song about the (first) Gulf War; and (c) a couple of my friends liked them. This was not much to go on, and consequently I approached the concert without any expectations at all.

The band consisted of four guys in their late 20s or early 30s, who mingled with the audience in the club before the show as though they were close personal friends with all 400 or so of us. Then, as the music started, I noticed something that hardly ever happens at concerts: I could actually understand all the words. This shouldn’t be remarkable, but you know how it is at concerts. The fashionable idea of a good live mix is to have every channel turned up all the way, which guarantees that the instruments will drown out the vocals. Not so here: the music was loud, sure, but nicely balanced. This was my first clue that these guys took their art seriously.

The next thing I noticed was that the lyrics I was hearing so clearly were both thoughtful and hilarious. Songs about renting videos, love lost and found, politics, and the profligacy of pop culture…every topic treated incisively and with finesse. The songs were not all funny, but they were uniformly well written—clever and edgy, yet folksy, without any hint of commercial pretense. The band members displayed the kind of cutting humor that can only come from being intelligent and well-read; I daresay their knowledge of history, politics, and current events put nearly everyone in the audience to shame.

After the first song or two, the four musicians rearranged themselves on stage and switched instruments. The bass player took over on drums, the drummer picked up a guitar, the banjo player (yes, I said banjo) strapped on an accordion (yes, I said accordion), and the guitar player stepped up to a keyboard. They acted like this was the most normal thing in the world. All four took turns on lead vocals as well, and yet every song managed to have the same distinctive Früvous sound. I thought to myself: these are real musicians. Cool.

The Lowest Highest Point
Perhaps the most entertaining part of the concert was the banter between songs. It was like a highly intellectual improv comedy show thrown in for free. This clearly met with the approval of the audience. I was surrounded by a bunch of rabid Früvous fans—who, I was later to learn, call themselves Früheads. The audience seemed every bit as involved in the show as the musicians, and once or twice the band threw together an impromptu song on the spot in response to some comment from the audience.

The band’s rapport with their audience was legendary. For about a year and a half, Moxy Früvous used a clever marketing tactic to draw people to their concerts. Attendees received “Frühead Cards,” which were stamped once at each concert. Fans received prizes for accumulating various numbers of stamps. Collect six stamps, get an autographed T-shirt; 18, and the band will write and record a song just for you; 24, an all-expense-paid bowling trip with the band, and so on.

But the decision to nurture groupies in this way was a mixed blessing. By the time they finished fulfilling their commitments to cardholders, the band had recorded 41 fan songs for Früheads who had earned 18 or more stamps. The fans were, of course, thrilled, but the additional work of fan maintenance was clearly taking its toll on the already overworked band.

Stuck in the ’90s
In late 2000, Moxy Früvous announced that they were taking a “hiatus” from touring. Fair enough: life on the road can be brutal. They never claimed to be disbanding, but the members have all become involved in other projects and don’t show any signs of reconstituting the band. After all this time, Früvous fans generally assume this hiatus was intended to be permanent but the band didn’t want to come right out and say it. That would hurt too many feelings: Früheads have an enormously proprietorial attitude toward their beloved band.

It seems I have a knack for discovering great bands just as they fade into retirement or, shall we say, an extended state of nonproduction. And yet, the fact that you can no longer see Moxy Früvous in concert in no way diminishes the appeal of their music. The full canon of Früvous recordings—seven CDs produced between 1993 and 2000, plus a rare 1992 cassette-only release—can still be found and enjoyed, and many of the one-off fan reward songs can be heard on the band’s Web site. With or without the band, the Früvous legacy lives on. —Joe Kissell

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More Information about Moxy Früvous...

The best starting point for information about Moxy Früvous is tha band’s official Web site, fruvous.com, which remains alive and well, if quite outdated. Meanwhile, the semi-official fan site, Fruhead.com, remains surprisingly active.

Amazon.com has six of the seven Moxy Früvous CDs. You may also be able to find used copies of the albums or cassette on eBay.

The Früvous Discography

Moxy Früvous (cassette only), 1992 (eBay) This album, also known as the “Indie Tape,” contains earlier versions of five songs that later appeared on Bargainville, plus the only commercial recording of “Green Eggs and Ham,” a wonderful take-off on the Dr. Seuss book that could not appear on any other recording due to legal issues.

Bargainville, 1993 (Amazon.com | eBay). Their first full-length album, Bargainville will always be my favorite. It features such classics as “Video Bargainville,” “The King of Spain,” “My Baby Loves a Bunch of Authors,” and “The Drinking Song” (as well as the aforementioned “Gulf War Song”).

Wood, 1995 (Amazon.com | ) In Canada at least, Wood was the band’s least successful album. It’s much less funny, and has less of the trademark Früvous spunk, than Bargainville. Highlights: “Horseshoes,” “Fly,” “The Present Tense Tureen.”

B, 1996 (Amazon.com | ) This is the album I listen to when I need to cheer myself up. All ten songs are lighthearted and funny, if occasionally sarcastic—though several of them center around Canadian personalities who will be unfamiliar to most Americans. My favorites are “I Love My Boss,” “The Greatest Man in America,” “Entropy,” and “The Kids’ Song.”

You Will Go to the Moon, 1997 (Amazon.com | ) YWGTTM has a perfect mix of goofiness and depth. Stand-outs on this album include “Michigan Militia,” “Your New Boyfriend,” “Kick in the Ass,” and “You Will Go to the Moon.”

Live Noise, 1998 (Amazon.com | ) Given an “Explicit” label because of a few words of banter exchanged between songs, this album is a fantastic taste of a live concert—the best way to experience the Früvous vibe. My favorite tracks are “Michigan Militia,” “The Lowest Highest Point,” “Johnny Saucep’n,” and “My Baby Loves a Bunch of Authors.”

Thornhill, 1999 (Amazon.com | Maple Music | ) Their last “regular” studio album, Thornhill was the most radio-friendly Früvous CD. Sadly, like Wood, it was lacking in funny songs (with the sole exception of “Splatter Splatter”), but I’m still quite fond of it, especially “You Can’t Be Too Careful” and “When She Talks” (a song much maligned among Früheads).

C, 2000 (Maple Music) Their final album, C was mostly a compilation of Frühead fan songs. As a result, they probably won’t make much sense to anyone not in the in crowd. However, you don’t have to understand them to enjoy them. I particularly like “Pisco Bandito” and “The Mitosis Waltz.”

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℗ & © 2004, alt concepts. All rights reserved.

by Morgen Jahnke

The 20th-century American composer John Cage was well known for his experimental approach to making music. His most famous composition, titled 4’33” (four minutes and 33 seconds), playfully widens the boundaries of what is considered music. The piece consists of four minutes and thirty-three seconds of structured silence (although it was written to be performed for any length of time), during which time listeners are drawn to discover the ambient sounds going on all around them.

This idea that music can be found in unlikely circumstances has resonated in the works of other composers who followed Cage. In a similar, but unique vein, a group known as the Vienna Vegetable Orchestra, or more simply the Vegetable Orchestra, creates music from an unlikely source: fresh vegetables.

Playing with Food
The orchestra, consisting of 11 musicians, a sound engineer, and a video artist, was first formed in 1998. Since then, the group has released two CDs and given concerts all over Europe as well as in Asia. Their work is influenced by many different styles of music, including classical, jazz, and electronic/techno music. In fact, their most recent CD, Automate, contains their versions of songs by the influential German electronic music group Kraftwerk. In a creative melding of the organic and the digital, the group recorded samples of their vegetable instrument sounds, and then assembled them to create digital compositions.

And what do vegetables sound like? Like any orchestra, the instruments of the Vegetable Orchestra produce different categories of sound based on their shape and the method of playing them. There are percussion instruments: celeriac bongos, a clapper made from an eggplant, pumpkins to be pounded upon, and dry beans that are shaken to provide rhythmic effects. There are strings (a leek violin), woodwinds (a carrot recorder), and versions of brass instruments (a trumpet made from a red pepper). Of course, the orchestra is also continually coming up with new instrumental creations, determined by their need for a specific sound or a new discovery at the market.

From the Raw To the Cooked
Unlike other orchestras, the members of the Vegetable Orchestra must remake their instruments every time they perform. In preparing for a show, the group begins at a local market, where finding the perfect specimens is crucial. Once they have procured the produce they need, they set to work crafting their instruments, improvising as needed. Because the group’s members are drawn from a variety of artistic backgrounds, including the visual arts and architecture, the making of instruments is also part of their creative work. Some instruments take very little time to prepare; others, such as the carrot recorder, can take as long as half an hour to make.

Later, during the performance, the interaction between the musicians and the vegetables continues. As some instruments tend to dry out as time goes on, they must be moistened, and some instruments may disintegrate completely. This aspect of chance adds to the improvisational quality of the orchestra’s performances, although most of their pieces are composed, not improvised. In their concerts, the orchestra aims to engage the audience’s senses fully—from the sounds they create, to the video images projected behind them on the stage, to the smell of the vegetables in the air. And finally, as an encore, the audience is invited to taste the instruments, in the form of vegetable soup available to all.

I’m Decay, You’re Decay
This full cycle from fresh produce to soup also addresses another theme important to the orchestra, that of decay. In this sense, it reminds me of the work of Andy Goldsworthy, who creates art out of objects found in nature. Once he has created a work, Goldsworthy photographs it, but then lets it degrade as it will. Working with an ephemeral medium, be it vegetables or icicles, is itself an artistic statement, in that it favors the process of creation over the finished product. What is left is the memory of a moment in time that can be savored like a warm bowl of vegetable soup. —Morgen Jahnke

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