Poll: Which do you like more-Great Big Sea or Moxy Fruvous?

Is it appropriate to compare the two bands? I just bought my first great big sea cd and it is a live recording. Both bands seem to be better live, actively encouraging audience participation. Which one do you like better? I have to say I am leaning towards Great Big Sea because they are more folkish sounding.

I haven't been to many shows (of either artist), but I'd also lean toward Great Big Sea. Both bands encourage audience participation, but GBS feeds off the crowd. At Fruvous shows, there was an audience vibe and a stage vibe, and every once in a while the two interacted.�To put it differently, Fruvous shows were more social: You go there with your friends and interact with your friends. GBS shows are about going to see the band. You socialize with your friends during the opener and before and after the set, but your friends are in the background during the set.

It doesn't hurt that GBS is still touring either.

I'd argue with you that GBS has more of a folk sound. GBS shows are loud as sin. :-)

Wow, see for me I have to totally disagree with the notion that Fruvous shows were about socializing. I *always* went for the show, and if there were people there I wanted to see that was just a bonus. And I got really irritated at people "socializing" during their set, I found it incredibly rude, especially for the people who might have been seeing them for the first time who weren't seeing them for the twentieth or thirtieth time.

Great Big Sea shows are fun and I have a blast at them, but I saw them for three shows in a row and the sets barely changed, the jokes were mostly the same, and while I still had a wonderful time at each show, the Fruvous shows were so much more unique.

I only saw three Frushows, so I'm hardly an expert. I got really irritated when I saw it, but that was my first show.

Some of the Fruvous banter was stale, too. The 'Intra-Pennsylvania Rivalry' bit came up at two of the shows I attended, and the lead-in for Disco Bargainville got complaints on most of the show reviews I've read. I'll give you that two recycled bits during a show that long is pretty impressive, especially compared to GBS, whose shows (again, the few that I've seen) are shorter and feature almost every bit of banter from Road Rage.

Hypothetically, if Fruvous hadn't gone on hiatus, and if Fruvous and GBS were both playing Chicago on the same night in different venues, I'd find myself at the GBS show. It would be a pretty agonizing decision... I'm glad I don't have to face it in real life. :-)

My dad really hated, "Energizer!"

You dad used to really hate me too :

he didn't hate you. he was just very cautious because you were an adult male who enjoyed spending time with his teenage daughter.

I like loud concerts-I've seen The Ramones. So maybe I will to go to a Great Big Sea Concert. It looks like the closest they'll get to me is The Calvin Theatre in Northampton on April 21.

Lucky. I'm still kicking myself for not seeing the Ramones at Lollapalooza.

After the Ramones I couldn't hear for three days. They had what sounded like an arena size sound system for Toads Place in New Haven. Even with the mosh pit it was a concert I would not have missed.

C'mon. You know you were thinking it.

Of course I was but you beat me to posting it.

absofragginlutely!

hehehe! i was thinking that too!

Great Big Sea is a ton of fun, and have a lot of good songs, but aren't in the same league as Fruvous for me. More the early stuff. If you took the best songs from "Up" and "Play", made a single CD out of it, and kept up that quality level for years, then I'd reconsider. But their very early stuff was too trad-y, and their new stuff is too mindlessly poppy for me.

You almost make me wish I could change my answer. :-)

Looking at the albums, I'd say that Fruvous is much better. Looking at live shows, I'd give a very marginal nod to GBS. Wood makes all the difference: I loved the album, but I hated hearing the songs live (except for "Nuits de Reve").

Fruvous means more to me, and I think there is more variety and depth to their music. great big sea is really fun celtic rock stuff, and possibly they are better live (? i don't know. i'll find out in a few weeks!).
I'm gonna go with Fruvous though because of WOOD and the lowest highest point and the gulf war song.

I like gbs, but they lack variety. they're good at what they do, but they just don't do a whole lot. and their live show is only fun when they're playing songs. the nearly non-existent banter is usually not remotely entertaining.

fruvous, on the other hand... well, with albums or live shows, you never really knew quite what you were going to get.

Triangle wins.

Best post on this thread!!!

it's not even really a comparison....

I mean, I'm probably biased because gbs does absolutely nothing for me...... but.... even so.... fruvous was all about the live show... and the band/audience interaction.... and... I've never known another band to do that as well as they did.

I noticed the "Greta" immediatly but I didn't notice the "Movy" till just now.

That makes it simple, I like Movy Fruvous better than I like Greta Big Sea.

No I just need to hire a proofreader. Maybe it was the concert I went to. We saw Pendragon. They seemed to be having an off night. The bass player knocked a guitar over twice and broke a string. They played several songs without tuning up first. They played some tribute tunes to the late Johnny Cunningham which might have killed him if he wasn't dead already. They also did a version of "Whiter Shade of Pale" that was way too slow. But they had some great between song banter.

And I still like Greta Big C over Movy Fruvous.

Sometimes things don't always get noticed immediatly but rather immediately

i dont like gbs. i think they do wonderfully when they arrange traditional songs (mari-mac, and the great new cd (what's it called?)) but i'm not a fan of the vast majority of their own stuff. therefor: fruvous

Thats what I went by the new live cd/dvd. I guess its not like their studio recordings?

After looking at the poll results I now know what it feels like to be a liberal democrat in Washington DC