HOLY MODAL ROUNDERS 1 & 2 CD (1963 & 1964) HUIPPUKUNTO

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d205 HOLY MODAL ROUNDERS 1 & 2 CD (1963 & 1964) HUIPPUKUNTO Fantasy Records Usa 1999

The guitarist strums a simple instrumental figure; he’s soon joined by the fiddler sawing an age-old melody. The duo then assay an uneasy vocal harmony, one voice pinched and reedy, the other (rendered “normal” only by comparison) lower, more controlled, but marked by distinctive rough edges. The performance is jagged and untamed, not amateurish but definitely unpolished — of the folk, if you will. At times, during the instrumental passages, the song threatens to collapse altogether. And then you notice the lyrics — “Rooster chews tobacco/And the hen uses snuff” — mining the passages of the commonplace for hints of the surreal. “Blues In The Bottle” it’s called, and it functions as an apposite lead track for The Holy Modal Rounders 1 & 2, comprising the band’s 1964 debut and its follow-up. Linked loosely with the early-’60s folk revival, the Rounders, Peter Stampfel and Steve Weber, were nevertheless more comfortable testing the movement’s fringes, defining a warped sensibility that functioned as a corrective and critique of the scene’s embalming sense of solemnity and reverence. The duo embraced folk as a living music — decidedly loose, often silly if not truly demented, providing a brief respite from the simply ordinary. As Robert Christgau aptly noted, “It’s truer to the Holy Modal ideal to risk near incompetence than to approximate mere folk music.” Not surprisingly, the Rounders’ self-titled first release was greeted as a left-field oddity, destined for cult status if not obscurity. Despite mining a familiar catalog of folk readymades — “The Cuckoo”, “Hesitation Blues”, “Better Things For You” — the Rounders’ commitment to the music’s woolly margins rendered them secretly subversive. “Mr. Spaceman” rewrites “Mr. Bass Man” as a goof on the space race, “Euphoria” sings the praises of the chemically-induced Edenic high (go figure), and “Bound To Lose” closes the debut with the existential musings of a riverboat gambler. The payoff — well, they got $3,000 from the Lovin’ Spoonful for their rewrite of “Blues In The Bottle”. Undaunted, the duo returned to the studio a mere six months later. Long complaining that Prestige botched the original sequencing of the resulting The Holy Modal Rounders/2 (songs arranged by key, fiddle tunes grouped together), Stampfel was given free reign over the reissue. Consequently, the running order on 2 has been completely revamped, including a somewhat perverse flip-flopping of the lead and closing tracks. But damned if Stampfel wasn’t right; in its new configuration, 2 is every bit the equal of its predecessor. What it lacks in conceptual verve and raison d’etre, it more than makes up for in melodic variety and vocal confidence.