Have Moicy!

Have Moicy!

Long before there was freak folk, there was folk made by freaks. Exhibit A: 1975’s Have Moicy, product of a bi-coastal bizarro-world supergroup comprising Peter Stampfel, founder of the Holy Modal Rounders, occasional Unholy Modal Rounder Jeffrey Frederick, renowned pork-chop eater Michael Hurley, and some like-minded fellow travelers. Together, they spent three days recording a weird little record that’s since become a minor American classic. The musicianship is loose but solid, the melodies whistle-able, the lyrics abidingly, endearingly silly: “I was cleaning my jackknife when you did appear, had to fight with you I cut off your ear,” go the four-part gospel harmonies of “Jackknife,” while the wheezy be-fiddled chorus of “Slurf Song” celebrates the joys and horrors of dining chez Hurley: “O the dishes over there, they fill me with despair.” The achingly lovely “Griselda” (since covered by Yo La Tengo), on the other hand, is untainted by lysergic whimsy, unless you count Stampfel’s grandfatherly yelp of a vocal, and the drunk and disorderly love story that is “Sweet Lucy” gets better with every listen. From Hurley’s comically lovelorn falsetto in “Fooey Fooey” to its mirror image, Frederick’s genuinely heartbroken “Weep Weep Weep,” Have Moicy is full of both emotion and eccentricity, strange jokes and stranger beauty. What, after all, made Frederick’s hamburger disappear? Like Moicy itself, it’s a koan for the ages.

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