The Holy Modal Rounders - Indian War Whoop

"...there is an unmistakable ingredient to the Holy Modal Rounder's music that seems appealing to folk lovers and trippers alike" - Andrew Kotick, Sputnick Reviews

The year 1967 proved to be a strong point of the 60’s generation culture and the ever growing New York underground music scene with the likes of David Peel & the Lower East Side, The Velvet Underground, The Godz, The Fugs, and the Holy Modal Rounders. The music is reflective of the time, and would prove to be the setting of a musical foundation for the group.

Peter Stampfel and Steve Weber obviously loved American folk music as much as any of the kids who had their head turned around by Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music in the 1950s, but unlike the many musicians who paid tribute to America's musical past by trying to re-create it as closely as possible, as The Holy Modal Rounders Stampfel and Weber opted to drag the music into the present, shrieking and giggling all the way.

Even by the standards of The Holy Modal Rounders' first two albums, 1967's "Indian War Whoop" is a thoroughly bizarre listening experience; loosely structured around the between-song adventures of two seedy vagabonds named Jimmy and Crash, side one veers back and forth between neo-psychedelic fiddle-and-guitar freakouts and free-form (and often radically altered) interpretations of traditional folk tunes such as "Soldier's Joy" and "Sweet Apple Cider," while side two is devoted to like minded originals (including a couple songs from their friend Michael Hurley, who would later join the group). Most certainly a product of its time, "Indian War Whoop" sounds rather dated today, but its buoyant good humor and chemically-altered enthusiasm remains effective, even when the Rounders' reckless pursuit of inner space sounds like it was more fun to create than to observe on record.

The Holy Modal Rounders - Indan War Whoop (1967)
(256 kbps, cover art included)