Moxy Früvous doing great in the 90's

by Douglas Pirko, The Brock Press

Oct 7, 1993--Last Monday and Tuesday nights the Playhouse was host to Moxy Früvous and their guests, the Scared Weird Little Guys.

The Scared Weird Little Guys are an Australian duo: Rusty plays the smaller, redder, funny guys; and John plays the taller, blondish funny guy. The pair satirize the world around us, borrrowing themes from the realms of entertainment, politics, and popular culture. They've been touring around Canada for a while. Many of you may have seen them during Orientation.

S.W.L.G. opened the show, quickly winning over the audience with their material and witty banter. Highlights of their set were the Reggae/Rap/Country/Polka version of Prince's "Kiss", Rusty's spot-on Michael Jackson imitation, John's arm-wheeling Pete Townsend guitar finales, and the massively politically incorrect "Trash the Planet". they left us rolling in the aisels, well and truly warmed up for Moxy Früvous.

The shows last week were the opening acts on Moxy Früvous' (fruvi?) fall tour, taking them ocean to ocean across this country, and as far south as... Buffalo. After the release of Bargainville the band spent the latter part of the summer relaxing and preparing for the tour.

Ticket sales have been promisng; the Winnipeg shows sold out in a day. Everything is looking up for a band which started as an experiment.

The band has set the tour up around a series of scenes. Dressed in bowlers (that's a hat) and black jackets they play a bunch of ultra- conservative business types named Bill.

The Bills need to increase sales, so they create Bargainville. The scenes reinforce the overal liberal (not the political party) theme of most Früvous songs. I mean that in a good way.

As always, the band was very entertaining, humour filling both the songs and the spaces in between.

One of the most amazing things was the length of their set. They played for over two hours before their two encores. Moxy Früvous played everything: all their old material, all their new material and a pile of covers, including a strange but wonderful Lou Reed/ABBA thing. (It had music and lyrics.. it must've been a song.)

There was a slight caffufal (?) when the crowd filled the Playhouse floor to dance, but it was all very peaceful, and only the ushers seemed to mind.

The crowd even managed to be completely quiet for the "unplugged" Gulf War Song.

The last encore of both evenings included a surprise. Decked out in their Bill suits, the band launced into a grunge version of "King of Spain". Like a cherry on a sundae it topped an excellent show.

Both bands did an excellent job entertaining us, do yourself a favour and go out of your way to see them.

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