I was there the day funny died.

In 1990, as a member of Moxy Früvous, I was busking for chump change on Bloor Street in Toronto in paisley vest and pink tie, and funny music was alive and well. A year later Fruvous had a gold record in Canada — at the exact moment Nirvana went to number one with “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”

If ever there was a band under whose feet the ground shifted, it was us. There we were, wearing funny hats and singing about the King of Spain — purely a product of the ’80s anything-goes aesthetic — when suddenly we found ourselves surrounded by po-faced heroin addicts whose mission seemed to be not only to never smile again but maybe, with any luck, to kill laughter altogether. We were the last vaudevillians, watching people file into a moving picture show. We spent the rest of the decade driving around the continent searching for fans who still had a taste for goofy, feeling all the while like an outlawed secret society.

Jian Ghomeshi, as a member of Moxy Früvous, in the days before he got his CBC Radio clothing allowance.

Früvous, like Barenaked Ladies, chased the grunge aesthetic for a while in the ’90s.  When our second album came out, the first question we were asked by a reporter in Winnipeg was, “It sounds like you guys aged 50 years since your first album — what happened?” But we pretty quickly tired of playing songs of despairing introspection, and returned shortly thereafter to our familiar role as musical pariah.

Moxy Früvous (Jian Ghomeshi, Mike Ford, Murray Foster and Dave Matheson), singing with an unidentified viceroy back in the day.

I find it interesting how the ’80s are thought of today — publicly derided as ridiculous, but secretly (I believe) admired and even envied for the era’s creative freedom. I miss that in music today: bands who are willing to unflinchingly follow their muse, and to look like arses doing it.

But that spirit will come back — it always does. Until then, I’ll keep a torch burning for goofiness, and keep my paisley vest pressed and folded on the dresser, waiting.

All images from Früvous Dot Com.
1: Murray Foster performing with Moxy Früvous in Newport, RI, August 11, 1996 (photo by either Chris Traugott or Zard Snodgrass)
2: Jian Gomeshi in hat, taken in Lafayette Square, Buffalo, NY, August 12, 1993
3: The band with the (not yet) Right Honourable Adrienne Clarkson, promotional image from a 1993 episode of Adrienne Clarkson Presents