A Long Group Grope With The Fugs
By Wesley Joost and Jon Randall
Article written Summer 1995
All of the following records, originally recorded from '65-68 on LP have been recently re-leased and digitally re-mastered on CD (many new tracks have been added). If you cannot find them ask your local record dealer to special order them for you. Other albums by the Fugs: Tenderness Junction; the Belle of Avenue A. Also From their reunion: Refuse to be Burnt-out ('85), No More Slavery ('86) and Star Peace ('87). And look out for their next release: Final Anarcho Syndicalist Post-Futurity Social Democratic Folk Rock Civil Rights Salute.
This album came out of two jam sessions in Ed Sanders' Peace Eye bookstore. It's a raw and energetic folk rock record, but unfortunately the FUGS technical knowledge was limited. As Ed Sanders said, "We had absolutely no sense or belief that there would be any interest in this stuff 30 years later. It didn't occur to us at all, otherwise we might have paid more careful attention to the recording techniques - the placement of microphones, the quality of the tape recorder and so forth - especially with the live material. On one level, we just did all this for a joke. We decided to have some fun, party, and write some songs. We were poets, and we certainly knew how to write words, but none of us went to Juilliard, and when we made the first record we didn't even know how to face the microphones."
The lyrics on this album are first rate poetry (except when they're joking around) but the music is obviously stoned beatniks diddling out catchy folk-rock tunes. However, it is quaint and entertaining -- like a musical home movie.
I Couldn't Get High is the FUGS number one drug anthem: "I went to a party the other night/ I wanted to fill my brain with light/ I grabbed myself a bottle/ I thought in a while I'd be feeling fine but I couldn't get high/ I whipped out my pipe and filled it full of grass/ Gave myself a light/ I huffed, puffed, smoked and toked/ After a while my heart was nearly broke ..."
While Boobs A Lot is one of Sanders superb dirty jokes about football players gawking at and rejoicing in cheerleaders breasts.
"Down in the locker room, just the boys/ Do you wear your jock a lot?/ Gotta wear your jock a lot/ Do you like boobs a lot?/ Gotta like boobs a lot/ If you like boobs a lot tag-a-long/ If you have a long flagon on ..."
Kupferberg's Defeated is the most heart-felt song on the record: "When I was a little boy my mother defeated me/ She wouldn't let me play with my cock/ Or suck on her soft tittie/ Defeated, I know I am defeated/ When I was a little little man the government said to me/ I want three years and perhaps your life ..."
The live recording No Redemption is remarkable because Ed Sanders tossed a glop of Spaghetti on Andy Warhol (he used to frequent early FUGS shows) in the middle of the song -- the action symbolizing the bombing of Vietnam.
The Rhapsody Of Tuli is like a short story from Ed Sanders Tales Of Beatnik Glory. Sanders narrates the song writing process of Tuli; who, in his deep raspy voice composes many songs in front of the bath room mirror. His line "I'd give everything for Herzegovina," is prophetic of the Serb/Croat wars. Another piece of spontaneous prose by Tuli analyzes the macho element in brother sister relationships. "Mister, I wanna fuck your sister."
When the FUGS first got to a better studio they were moving away from folk and ready to rock. The songs are mostly cute, catchy two minutes ditties. Group-Grope is a simple free-love song complete with orgasms at the end; while I Want To Know, the albums ballad, has full-spectrum orchestration.
While everyone else in the 60's was talking about getting high the FUGS were talking about coming down. Like with many hippies, their involvement with cocaine and speed led to terrible burn-outs. In the song I'm a Comin' Down, they sing, "Hey grief bird, what's happening/ Ashes/ Pits of ashes/ Ashes and screams/ Eyes with a vision of torture/ Frightened with a vision of death ..."
Dirty Old Man sounds like Chuck Berry going to the lower East Side. "Hello kiddies, here I am at the school yard/ Looking up every dress I can/ Handing out drugs at the school/ Touching all the bosoms I can/ Communist literature in my hat/ Giving out pictures and pouring them pills." It was the FUGS most requested song.
Mother Earth is appreciated in Virgin Forest, a spiraling epic of primitive lust. Influenced by early Frank Zappa it sounds like a bunch of wacked out hippies with different instruments doing a psychedelic freak-out. It begins with an orgy in the forest, with a boy, chimps, and turkeys. "Gobble, gobble, gobble, gobble." It then degenerates into a homage to William Burroughs: "Wounded galaxies/ Good food in abandoned zoo/ Everyone, pants down/ Suck my message/ Take your face off my bayonet/ Towers open fire!"
Another ode to ugliness is Mutant Stomp, an anti-nuclear waste song featuring a man with a nine prong dick. "We groped and we shrieked but one dick wouldn't come."
This is the FUGS best album. They had finally graduated from cheap recording techniques and hired first-rate session men. It gives their form of rock a huge anthem sound without sacrificing catchy tunes and interesting lyrics. With a classical producer they arrange Country and Western with classical waltzes in a pleasing and quirky way. The album displays the McCartney-eque tune writing ability of Tuli Kupferberg and the sweet and sour Lenon-ish lyrics of Ed Sanders.
Ramses II Is Dead My Love, is a country and western song about Ramses II's funeral procession down the Nile. The song is timely because his sons' tombs were recently found. "Ramses the II is dead my love/ He's left from Memphis to Heaven/ Ptah has taken him on his solar barge/ And walked him to Nat's celestial shores/ Heaven is waiting for Ramses II/ He's gone to Ptah's great side."
Wide, Wide, River is shit-kickers gospel music -- a true anthem of the times. It begins with a parable description of life: "I've been floating in this river of shit/ Over twenty years and I'm gettin' tired of it/ But I've got to keep swimming in this river of shit, 'cause I don't want to die," and goes on to an anti-Vietnam rant. "Who was it that set up this system/ This supposedly democratic system/ Where we're always voting for the lesser of two evils/ Was George Washington the lesser of two evils?/ Sometimes I wonder. Some politicians say we've got to stop violence in this country/ While he's spending 15,000 dollars a second snuffing gooks." It concludes, "River of shit, bringing health, wealth, and prosperity to every man, women, and child."
Tuli Kupferberg paraphrases Gothe Faust in "Life is strange and death is easy/ I was young/ But now I'm ugly." It has a jazzy piano background and a women's chorus that gives it a strange almost Hollywood like quality.
The song Johnny Pissoff is about gun toting cowboys, with very modern lyrics prophetic of the Oklahoma bombing. "Hey Mister, tell all the commies and draft card burners my name is Johnny pissoff / Ain't no pink fag legislator gonna tell me I can't have guns! / I'd never kill the president but I kill him in my dreams." The FUGS mourn the sad and narrow lives of Johnny Pissoff's around the world. "When the Red Angel comes / And the TV is cold / And you prey in the dawn/ For what's left of your soul."
Marijuana is a Gregorian chant listing all the names of pot, symbolizing its right to be smoked as part of a religious experience. It is 30 years ahead of its time considering the Gregorian monks now sell millions of records.
When The Mode of the Music changes (the walls of the city shake) foretells the coming of hard-core Rap and punk rock. "You can have the men who make the laws/ Give me the music makers." The song progresses into a Broadway show tune straight out of Hair. "Music harth alarums to wild the civil breasts." And concludes as a paen of lust. "I get horny, horny, horny, horny, horny, etc."
Then Tuli goes into a down beat solo for fifteen second, "Life's so funny, I could cry, life's so funny, I could die," before Sanders ecstatically jumps into the horn-dog anthem Grope Need, "Slipping my horny candy cane into your existential hole."
In a Haiku (a condensed style of Japanese poetry that focuses on observations of nature) Kupferberg reads "Do not tell me, I am source of your knock up/ The mud elephant wading through the sea leaves no tracks." Then the album concludes with a reprise of "I Get Horny."
"It Crawled Into My Hand" is the Sgt. Peppers of the truly underground. It is one of the most important records of the 60's and it has been sadly neglected. It is fearlessly inventive and there is not one hint of commercialism on this album. This is poets following their vision. If this isn't alternative nothing is.
This album captures the in-between song ramblings, jokes, and poems of a live FUGS show in '68, when the FUGS were at their musical peak. "Her dildo is made out of petrified tapir whale snout, goddess of late night circle slurps and jello orgies, wears a necklace of onyx colored tit wax." Sanders spurts out with gaining momentum as he introduces Slum Goddess From the Lower East Side. -- "I floated lonely down the street one day/ Who did I see slithering down my way?"
The song "Coca-Cola Douche" is a look at the myth in the fifties that women could you-know-what with a coke bottle as a form of contraceptive. Sanders uses the image to describe his personal sexual fetish. "Her pelvis got the caffeine shakes/ Come on down for an ice cream soda/ I just got a Coca-Cola douche." The song is spiced up by a hyperactive lead guitarist.
Sanders tells the audience at the Fillmore about his friends the Lesbian Trolls. "They have a sense of tradition, they do, they cut off one of their breasts as an ode to the Iliad and use it as a tote bag." Then he describes their famous Tomato orgies, "After a while you feel like your squishing around in menstruating whale snatch."
Nothing is Kupferberg's supreme ode to negativity. "Monday, nothing, Tuesday, nothing, Wednesday, nothing, Thursday nothing, Friday for a change a whole lot of nothing. Allen Ginsberg, nothing. Flesh and sex, nothing." The song is joined by a joyful rock accompaniment. The Smiths and the Cure combined were never so negative.
The album concludes with Supergirl: what the perfect women should be. "She has the mouth power of an industrial vacuum cleaner/ Dreams like a poet/ Kiss like a cherry/ Hug like a berry flow / like a mountain stream ..."
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