Fruvous on YouTube

Oh man, I do wish they hadn’t gone on permanent hiatus. Moxy Früvous is one of my favorite bands. They’re fun, they’re talented, they put on one hell of a live show.

Früvous started out busking on the streets of Toronto, and quickly gained fame in Canada with their “Independent Cassette” (a demo tape, sorta – you haven’t heard Green Eggs and Ham until you’ve heard them sing it) and their first album “Bargainville.” They got huuuge! And then they released “Wood,” which was very different from “Bargainville,” and many of their fans say, wtf? And Früvous said, bitch, we’re multifaceted!, and went touring in the States. Their fans, of whom I’m one, call themselves Fruheads and have driven ridiculous distances to see them. Yeah, I’m not kidding. This band, and the Fruhead phenomenon, were responsible for my meeting Colleen, who moved up to Boston from Florida in 1997 and never left, and who is one of my dearest friends.

And you can see a bunch of their videos on YouTube! Check out especially “King of Spain” (recorded, as far as I know, at their first busking spot, and easily their most famous song), “Fell in Love” and “Fly” – oh, and “My Baby Loves a Bunch of Authors”! – but there’s a lot of good stuff there. The video quality isn’t that hot, but I suspect the person who posted their actual videos (as opposed to fan videos) digitized them from the VHS tape of videos that they had at one point. I should have a copy of that somewhere… I think…

Nowadays they’re all doing their own thing. Jian Ghomeshi is into TV and producing and politics. The slightly outdated website for Dave Matheson, wizard man who can play ANYTHING including my heart strings, has a link for buying his self-titled solo album, which I highly recommend. Murray Foster has played bass with Great Big Sea, and appears to be playing with Tory Cassis (another Canadian musician I love) in a band called The Lesters. Mike Ford sings about Canada to school kids: here’s a CD of his on Amazon.ca. Oh, and just by the way, he is (his website says) “a contributing editor to McGraw-Hill’s new Secondary School textbook, Defining Canada.”

Ahh, Früvous.

(Edited to add:) Hey, if nothing else, see/hear the Gulf War Song.