These days there are more nerd rock bands than you can shake an Atari joystick at. From nerdcore to geek rock, it’s clear that the geek vibe has infiltrated the music scene as well as the movie and literary scenes.
But it wasn’t always that way. When I was in high school in the mid-90s, still rather unaware that I was a geek exactly, there were precious bands to choose from. I would argue that the roots of geek rock, though, start with many of the groups I initially listened to: after all, the Beatles wrote about weird, secondary worlds and yellow submarines, and Zeppelin sang about Middle Earth before it was chic (and I’d certainly argue that Styx has extremely geeky tendencies… Mr. Roboto, anyone?).
My first geek rock experience was, perhaps predictably, They Might Be Giants. Before I’d heard any of their music, I saw them in concert. And I was never the same after that. Sure, TMBG is probably the crown jewel of geek rock, pioneering the subgenre and making it okay to sing about worms with PhDs, floating horrific scarecrows, and the chemistry of the sun, but you’d be missing out on a lot if you stopped there.
There was one group that — short-lived as they were — you really should look up if you haven’t before. Moxy Früvous was a group from Toronto Canada, whose geeky topics and insane talent eclipse many of the groups so popular today. Unfortunately, they are often shadowed by that other geeky rock band that came from Canada around the same time.
If you haven’t listened to Früvous before, you’re seriously missing out. I find that Früvous fans are particularly fervent, and when we find each other, we have a language of music like no others.
The band started off busking in Toronto, singing a capella. And their music incorporates gorgeous harmonies, clever lyrics, and often charged political statements. (Note: if you’re conservative-leaning, you might get a little itchy with some of their stuff.) To this day, I’ve not heard a band of such talent incorporate geekiness so effortlessly, always leaving room for social critique, fun, and haunting lyrics and harmonies. Their members were Jian Ghomeshi, Murray Foster, Dave Matheson, and Mike Ford. And I’m of the opinion that their voices combined created an otherwordly alchemy for pure magic.
So, for those of you on the lookout for some geek music, retro style, here’s a few choice songs to set you in the right direction.
Bosses through the ages prove
They’re the ones who make it move
Bewitched would have an empty plate
If it weren’t for Larry Tate
Clark Kent reached the highest height
With the help of Perry White
And if we may be retrograde
Speak the name Reuben Kincaid
All her ideas were like smoke rings, I had to know things
She was a tangle of questions
How many eggs make up a pound?
How many ears of corn in a niblet?
I was a person who would censor Pee Wee’s Adventure
She was exceedingly liberal
And that’s just a random sampling. The beauty of Moxy Früvous is that they are word nerds, music nerds, and culture nerds. I highly recommend their live album, Live Noise, to get an idea of the kind of electricity their live performances had. Alas, they have gone the way of the Dodo. But what’s so remarkable is that, even over a decade later, their music still speaks to geeks and, indeed, the world at large. With themes as broad as broken hearts, consumerism, saving the environment, Kings of Spain, and more, it’s a music catalog that holds up remarkably well (though, Jian’s hairstyle certainly didn’t… hah!).
Are you a Früvous fan? Did any songs of theirs set you on a geeky path? Or are there any other bands from your past you think deserve mention in the geek rock history books?
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