After spending my 20s as an incorrigible music snob focused on punk/noise/industrial/experimental artists, I eventually got a clue and started branching out. Finally purchasing a mixer and beginning to do live DJ sets was one influence, briefly dating a super cool woman with wide-ranging tastes who worked at a record store was another, making some new friends with more diverse record collections was yet another. There could be twenty albums just as a sub-entry here – Otis Redding’s Love Man, the amazing New Orleans funk/soul compilation Saturday Night Fish Fry, the Anthology Of American Folk Music reissue, Rounder Records’ Ska Bonanza, thrift store P-funk albums, etc. etc. etc. As I started to DJ more events and get gigs at bars, I kept expanding my collection in every direction. It hasn’t stopped yet, and my life and DJ sets are the better for it.
Back in the Icky’s days (an anarchist teahouse in Eugene, 1994-95) my friend Sunshine would tell me about this hobo musician Michael Hurley (“he releases all his stuff on tape” – which was kind of true at the time). It took me a few years, but eventually in late 1999 I was at a Seattle record show and picked up the Weatherhole CD for a couple of bucks. Pretty soon after that I got the Rounder reissues of Snockgrass and Long Journey, but a lot of the other stuff was out of print and quite hard to find at the time. Even with this incomplete picture of his work, I was enthralled. I even saw Hurley live at least once (2002, Sam Bond’s) before hearing the older records. When I belatedly got into filesharing in 2003, I finally got to hear records like Armchair Boogie, Hi Fi Snock Uptown, and Have Moicy - the album pictured here.
I’m not sure how much has been written long-form about this record, but it deserves its own 33 1/3 book. Robert Christgau called it “the greatest folk album of the rock era” and I think it’s worth printing his unpublished review here:
"You wear my beret and I'll use your bidet, cherie/I'll be clean you'll be free," goes Peter Stampfel's frenetic bluegrass gloss on Con Conrad's and Herb Magidson's 1935 "Midnight in Paris," setting theme and mood for this cute, fatalistic musical head comik about the pleasures, sorrows, and mundane irritations of bohemian life, country hippie division. Cut in two days in 1975 for around $1500, the album assembled a loose confederation of folkie misfits who were having trouble trusting each other as they passed 30. Breaking it down, you could call Greenwich Village stalwart Stampfel dionysian, Oregon pickup songwriter Jeffrey Frederick sardonic, and Vermont-based lazybones Michael Hurley downhome. Only that's dionysian as in throwing a party, sardonic as in plumb mean, and downhome as in blowing bubbles underwater, as in where's the salt, as in who'll do the dishes, as in "We fill up our guts/Then they turn it into shit/Then we get rid of it." And it doesn't come close to suggesting the mesh this bunch of Sixties casualties fall into. The emotion and execution are so consistent that you enjoy the acoustic arrangements--a relaxed development of the Holy Modal Rounders' irreverent traditionalism plus crucial (although not loud) input from Hurley's pet drummer, Frog--without registering their easy variety. Except when Stampfel exercises his tonsils, you never think about who's singing, either--don't even notice when cocomposer Paul Presti takes the lead on "Jealous Daddy's Death Song": "And if any of you punks try to misbehave/I'll haunt your asses to an early grave/I'm telling you telling you telling you boys/Don't you monkey with my widow when I'm gone." I bet none of them does.”
As mentioned above, this album was a serendipitous collision between three different musical forces. The Holy (in this case Unholy, missing co-founder Steve Weber who had stayed in NYC) Modal Rounders and Hurley himself have roots as far back as the Greenwich Village/Folkways Records scene of 1964-65. I don’t think Frederick was active in the 60s but his songs here are some of my favorites (given that every song on this is a stone cold classic). It is a perfectly out-of-focus snapshot of a bygone time, as per this fan review:
“The greatest front porch sittin', dog barkin', screen door squeakin', hammock swingin', mason jar swiggin', skillet lickin' album of all time.”
Here’s Hurley’s own take on it, from an extensive interview on the Perfect Sound Forever website (https://www.furious.com/perfect/michaelhurley.html):
“You probably just don't have the software to know how good I feel about the Have Moicy release. So many people have told me that they love it, it changed their life, it turned them on to old-time asskickin' hillbilly, it lead them to a superior love life, it brought them much wealth and still remains a favorite after 20 years or 10. Everytime I listen to it, it sounds more together; it sounds like a bunch of loonies too.”
As someone who spent years as a kid in and around the 70’s commune scene (and who has lived in hippie-throwback Eugene Oregon for almost 30 years), so many things about this record ring true and warm my cold punk heart. The “outlaw hippie” culture celebrated here does still live on in nooks and crannies of this troubled country, god bless those crusty old folks. Hurley lives near Astoria, Oregon, so we are lucky enough to catch him live on occasion – he even played at our house in 2009 for our wedding/housewarming. If you ever get a chance to see him live, you should go.
While his entire discography is worthy of your attention, the alchemical combination of hippie lunatics on Have Moicy is unique, and once the record works its way into your brain you too will catch yourself singing “big sack of oysters, their molecules will soon become mine”, or “when I see the dishes over there, they fill me with despair” or “I know you can’t wait until I’m dead/to drag her off to your waterbed” or any of the other great lines that abound.
individual track notes added here by yours truly.
“Midnight In Paris” - the culmination of every deadbeat beatnik boyfriend’s dream, to live for free in yr girlfriends city apartment.
“Robbin’ Banks” - self-explanatory ode to "being illegal”.
“Slurf Song” - a timeless song about the joys of food (and also the dishes).
“Jackknife/The Red Newt” - “Jackknife" is a song about wanting to kill a motherfucker, “The Red Newt” is a song about not giving a fuck whether some motherfucker kills you or not.
“Griselda” is a love song about teenage trysts in the woods.
“What Made My Hamburger Disappear” is typical sly Jeffrey Frederick songwriting, it seems amusing at first but is actually written from the POV of a guy having a heart attack.
“Sweet Lucy” is a song about being busted and going to jail with yr girlfriend.
“Country Bump” is the failed dance craze hit of the record, designed to be played at the Hoodoo Bash that we get to later in the album.
“Fooey Fooey” is a song of heartbreak and dissolution.
“Jealous Daddy’s Death Song” is a self-explanatory song about haunting people’s asses to an early grave.
“Driving Wheel” - Michael Hurley loves his cars, as this classic explains in detail.
“Weep Weep Weep” - a song about self-pity and artistic drama.
“Hoodoo Bash” - A literal and detailed description of a serious fucking party, back in the 70s when they were not fucking around. The kids still hear the stories.
Poll Results
| Option | Votes |
| “Slurf Song” | 11 |
| “Griselda” | 5 |
| “Robbin’ Banks” | 3 |
| “Driving Wheel” | 2 |
| “Hoodoo Bash” | 1 |
| “Jealous Daddy’s Death Song” | 1 |
| “Sweet Lucy” | 1 |
| “Jackknife/The Red Newt” | 1 |
| “Country Bump” | 0 |
| “Fooey Fooey” | 0 |
| “What Made My Hamburger Disappear” | 0 |
| “Weep Weep Weep” | 0 |
| “Midnight In Paris” | 0 |
― sleeve, Sunday, 23 February 2025 02:52 (nine months ago)