Representative Albums: "Live Noise," "You Will Go to the Moon," "Wood"
Representative Songs: "King of Spain," "The Greatest Man in America," "Johnny Saucep'n"
Biography
First spotted by a CBC radio executive while busking in Toronto, the four members of Moxy Fruvous used their theatrical experience to set them apart. Their street-side set included rap, folk, impromptu theatrics, comedy, and political satire. Mike Ford, Murray Foster, David Matheson sing and play guitar and bass, while Jian Ghomeshi sings and plays drums. After a cassette reached number one on Canadian indie charts, the band was signed by Atlantic and released the wildly eclectic Bargainville in early 1994. Wood appeared a year later after a lengthy break from touring, but the highly personal album was not released in the United States and caused the band to doubt the efforts from their label. The next year's B Album (a compilation of B-sides) was also not released in the US, so Moxy Fruvous stepped back into the studio to put together You Will Go to the Moon in 1997. In 1998, the American label Velvel Records picked up the band and released the previous two unreleased records as well as 1998's Live Noise, followed a year later by the mature and gentle Thornhill. Live Noise was a massive success due to the strength of Moxy Fruvous' powerful live shows, and the band gained a rabid following a la Phish as their tours became extremely successful. Carrying this into the next century, 2000's quirky The C Album was a return to their more bizarre early '90s material. ~ John Bush, All Music Guide
Moxy Früvous was a socially conscious and politically satiricalfolk-pop band from Thornhill, Ontario, Canada. The band was founded in 1989, and was active throughout the 1990s. Common themes in Früvous songs include Canada and the "human experience".
The band formed in 1989 when Jian Ghomeshi, Murray Foster and Mike Ford, former classmates at the local Thornlea Secondary School and playing in a pub band called The Chia Pets at the time, joined with David Matheson to busk in Toronto. They drew unusually large crowds, and, eventually, the attention of Toronto-based CBC Radio, which commissioned songs about political and local issues for the radio show Later the Same Day. Some songs written for the show later appeared on their albums; these songs include "The Gulf War Song" and "My Baby Loves a Bunch of Authors", which was written for a Toronto authors' festival.
They cut a six-song demo tape in 1992, and their first major-label album, Bargainville, was released the next year. Its single, "King of Spain", was only the second Canadian independent #1 hit in the country's history. (Torontonians Barenaked Ladies were first by a few months, with 1991's "Be My Yoko Ono".) Shortly after, they embarked on a touring schedule that continued, practically without stopping except to record new material, until the end of 2000.
The band sometimes sang with little or no accompaniment in a style similar to contemporary a cappella. A number of their songs also express the band's progressive political leanings ("The Greatest Man in America", for instance, harps on Rush Limbaugh, and "Big Fish" lambastes former Premier of OntarioMike Harris). Früvous was also known for their close relationship with their fans and their live shows, which were full of political commentary, humorous banter, and musical improvisation.
The band gave its last concert in 2000 (excepting performances at annual fan conventions in 2001 and 2002). On September 5, 2005, Ford, Foster and Ghomeshi performed on CIUT, the U of T's campus radio station, as part of the morning program Toronto Unlocked (an ad hoc program produced and hosted by locked-out CBC Radio One staff).
The last update to the band's website occurred July 8, 2008.
Current projects
Jian Ghomeshi works for CBC Radio One, primarily as the host of the arts and cultural program Q, and writes.
Murray Foster is the bass player for Great Big Sea and is part of the band Great Atomic Power, with Dave Matheson, Tory Cassis, Mark Mariash and Jason LaPrade. He also performs in a vocal jazz standard group called The Lesters. Most recently, Foster has been touring as part of Great Big Sea, replacing bass player and singer Darrell Power.
Dave Matheson performs solo and with Murray Foster in Great Atomic Power.
Mike Ford often performs in schools, singing his songs about the history of Canada.
Band name
The name "Moxy Früvous" is a null phrase, although the liner notes of their first CD Bargainville contained a faux-dictionary listing of definitions for früvous. The band was known to never provide a straight answer (and for that matter, almost never the same answer twice) when defining the band's name. However, in an interview with WBER radio in Rochester, New York, on November 23, 1999, Jian explained the band's name origin by saying that they were "trying to think of a name that wasn't easy to remember and doesn't mean anything," going against the two conventions most bands might use in determining a band name. The name includes a heavy metal umlaut.
