Holy Modal Rounders

New Version.

Old Version

	The Holy Modal Rounders: Stampfel and Weber (Fantasy, 1972)
	Alleged in their Own Time (Rounder, 1976)
	Stampfel & Weber (Fantasy; Rounder, 1981)
	Have Moicy (Rounder, 1981)

Perhaps you had to have been there -- lounging blissfully zonked at some outdoor festival with the sounds of this acidhead comedy folk music wafting through the incensed air. But, heavens, this stuff sounds dismal now. Playwright Sam Shepard played drums in an early incarnation of the Holy Modal Rounders, but the group's resident "brains" were guitarist-singer Steve Weber and Peter Stampfel on fiddle, banjo and vocals. Basing their shtick on jug music and country-ish blues, the duo provided inanely hardy-har-har off-key vocals and lyrics either ribald or sophomorically surreal. The Holy Modal Rounders compiles the early '60s LPs, Holy Modal Rounders, Volumes One and Two, a pair of albums that provided a blueprint for the hi-jinks from which the group seldom varied. Alleged in Their Own Time and Stampfel and Weber are more of the same, featuring such gigglesome fare as "Shoot That Turkey Buzzard" and "When the Iceworms Nest Again." People say that humor sometimes doesn't translate across space (as, for example, the stupid silliness of Benny Hill that the English find riotous). The Rounders prove that the same holds true for time -- this hippie hilarity is now nearly unlistenable. -- P.E.