It's about time someone woke up and reissued some Holy Modal Rounders - a misplaced band of New York hippies led by Peter Stampfel and Steve Weber. Like a lot of 60's-saturated Lower East Side bohemes, the Rounders were inspired by traditional folk and old-time music. Folkies, they were not, although among an admittedly sparse circle of fans, the Rounders are renowned as the seminal acid-folk band.
The acid business is less obvious on the band's first two self-titled albums, brief collections of skewered old-timey tunes, than on Indian War Whoop. The Rounders' 1967 album, their third (not including their 1965 LP with the Fugs, the Fugs' First Album), fiddles with psychedelia much in the same way the Shimmy Disc label does today. In fact, imagining IWW was a major influence on label head/producer Kramer isn't that far of a stretch: in more recent days, Stampfel has contributed to Shimmy Disc products, including the What Else Do You Do? compilation and a Bongwater album.
Indian War Whoop pushes the Rounders' take on string-band tradition Ñ already warped by pills, herbs and inner voices - even further out on astrological turf. The addition of piano and organ, one of many bad 60's ideas, is only part of the mood-altering wash. Stampfel's fine fiddleworks, here electrified, explore the magic of feedback and harmonic dissonance. Brilliant in parts and just plain goofy in others, Indian War Whoop may very well be the panacea for rockers hooked on self-conscious coolness. (Carrie McLaren)
At long last comes a reissue of the long out-of-print 1965 debut LP (plus 11 bonus tracks!) by the Fugs, legendary pioneers of psychedelic folk rock. Also hanging out in the East Village at this time were Steve Weber and Peter Stampfel of the aforementioned Holy Modal Rounders. Their fusion of rootsiness, bad jokes and esoterica jelled so nicely with that of Tuli Kupferberg and pals that they played together on this LP. Herein lies the aesthetic roots of not only the Shimmy Disc ghetto but those of many an indie rocker: lo-fi recordings, oddball harmonies and noise and an entirely unpretentious manner. Fug yeah! (Carrie McLaren)