The Fugs—

The Fugs’ First Album

(with Sizzling Additional Tracks From The Early Fugs)

(Fugs/ Ace [UK import] CDWIKD 119;

since issued domestically on Fantasy)

Sometimes it’s hard for me to believe that The Fugs ever actually existed— and I was lucky enough to grow up listening to them.

Not to this particular album mind you— I didn’t get my hands on The Fugs’ First Album ‘til I was in college— but if I hadn’t happened to stumble upon Tenderness Junction and It Crawled Into My Hand, Honest as an impressionable eighth grader (I found them at the public library! and the librarian actually allowed me to check them out!) I’d probably be a modestly wealthy actuarial accountant now instead of an itinerant musician. Besides their own extraordinary work, The Fugs directly introduced me to the poetry of William Blake, Charles Olson, A.C. Swinburne, Matthew Arnold and Ezra Pound, and to the music of The Holy Modal Rounders; by extension, to the writings of William Burroughs (among others) and the music of Michael Hurley.

The Fugs shaped my intellectual and spiritual development more profoundly than puberty and MAD Magazine put together.

But let’s not get sentimental. None of that makes The Fugs important in terms of Rock History, let alone in terms of Rock Now. Nor does it explain why you ought to be filled with awe and gratitude, that such wondrous creatures as The Fugs ever roam’d this erstwhile vale of tears.

So some facts: The Fugs were the very first underground rock band, back when "rock" was still known as "rock and roll." They formed in late-1964 and made their first studio recordings the following spring— this was before The Velvet Underground, before The Mothers Of Invention, before The Byrds even, when the most avant-garde thing The Beatles had done was the feedback at the beginning of "I Feel Fine." Ed Sanders (proprietor of the Peace Eye bookstore in Greenwich Village, anti-war activist, and publisher of the poetry journal Fuck You: A Magazine Of The Arts) and Tuli Kupferberg (compulsive poet and bard— as well as the Brooklyn Bridge jumper immortalized in Ginsberg’s "HOWL"), with partners-in-crime Ken Weaver (a Texan drummer who was hanging around at the Peace Eye), Steve Weber and Peter Stampfel (who had already released a couple of amazing records as The Holy Modal Rounders), showed up on the scene and promptly started pushing every envelope within reach as far as it would stretch, and farther if they could get away with it.

There was their appearance: The Beatles had caused a stir with their "long" hair, but The Fugs’ hair extended way past their shoulders, and even sprouted copiously from their upper lips and chins. There was their very name, which was of course derived from Norman Mailer’s sly euphemism for a certain other "F" word. There was, initially, the very crudity of their musical performances; that is, their lack of rock "chops" (those would come by the following year)— even without the other strikes against them, there was no way these records would’ve gotten airplay (and remember, in 1965 it was unthinkable that anyone would form a rock & roll band and make records and not strive for mass acceptance; it simply hadn’t been done before). Not to mention the crudity of their live performances, with their vulgar gestures and novel use of sound effects and props— on one occasion including tubs of spaghetti, with sauce, flung at the audience to simulate a napalm attack. (This disc includes the soundtrack to that particular event.)

But most importantly, there were the songs. Besides setting the works of their favorite poets to (often beautiful) music, the individual Fugs themselves contributed a dizzying slew of First Amendment classics to the canon of American unpopular song: "Defeated," "Boobs A Lot" (later a "hit" of sorts for The Holy Modal Rounders), "Slum Goddess," "Coca Cola Douche," "I Couldn’t Get High," "Nothing," "Supergirl," "New Amphetamine Shriek," and "C.I.A. Man"— not to mention the gleefully demented field holler / yodel "My Baby Done Left Me" ("...and I feel like homemade shit"). A full year before The Velvets, The Fugs were exploring, in the most explicit terms imaginable, such taboo topics as drugs (they didn’t come up with anything as definitive as "Heroin," but nobody else ever did either) and sex (boy did they explore THAT topic) as well as the military-industrial complex, and they did so with poetic grace and precision, with passion and compassion, with sense and sensuality, and often with the sort of anarchic humor that can make grown men wet their pants. The tunes were mighty catchy, too.

This unbelievable compact disc documents The Fugs ‘65, including their entire debut LP (first released under the auspices of Folkways Records and Broadside magazine, subsequently re-issued by the legendary ESP-Disk’ label); other material from those same sessions which eventually turned up on the ESP-Disk’ releases Virgin Fugs and Fugs 4, Rounders Score; a spontaneous, deadpan-goofy "Salute To Andy Warhol" recorded at the Peace Eye; the aforementioned spaghetti eastern, recorded at The Bridge Theater in Greenwich Village; and a fascinating mini-compilation of excerpts from Tuli Kupferberg’s ‘64-’65 home demos, lovingly narrated by Ed Sanders ("The Rhapsody Of Tuli"). Another previously-unreleased track is entitled "In The Middle Of Their First Recording Session The Fugs Sign The Worst Contract Since Leadbelly’s"— I don’t wanna spoil it for you but gosh is it scary, kids!

You may not be in eighth grade anymore, but that doesn’t mean it’s too late— in fact the time may be just right. If you care a whit about rock (& roll), about poetry, about modern extensions of the bardic tradition, about the Bill Of Rights, about American social and cultural history— or if you just want a good, impolitic bellylaugh— The Fugs First Album (etc.) is calling to you. By all means— heed the call!

— Rev. Olver / Catharsis #33 -August 1993