Customer Reviews

First Album

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I had this album and The Fugs Second Album in the LP collection I inherited from my older brother who bought them when they were first issued. Sadly, the disappeared years ago from the collection (I suspect a step-brother, tho he denies it). So for years I've been wanting to buy them again and finally did so recently on CD.

Was not disappointed. What can you say about songs like "Ah, Sunflower Weary of Time," "Supergirl" (perhaps my favorite), "Swinburne Stomp," "I Couldnt' Get High," "Boobs A Lot" or "Nothing"? They're too hilarious for words. This album and The Fugs Second Album are really historical snapshots of the Beat Generation coming into the hippie age, brilliant, totally irreverant, intellectual (two poems of William Blake put to music) and juvinile (e.g., "Boobs A Lot") at the same time.

Don't expect musical genius. The quality of musicianship is crude, and studio conditions are garage, but the energy, wit and spontineity of these tracks couldn't be improved upon.

Listening to them again now, I totally hear the Fugs in the music of the Ramones, Ween, the Residents, the Jazz Butcher, Robyn Hitchcock and others. I'm surprised I haven't heard more (or for that matter any) contemporary covers of these songs. "Supergirl" or "Nothing," for example, would be very stylish for some neo-punk band to cover.

Better than the original LPs I had, these two CDs have great liner notes and lots of extra tracks.

This is definitely not to everyone's taste. My wife, for example, was appalled when I put this on. But if you appreciate humor in music and are interested in the sound of the irreverant '60s anti-establishment, by all means go for it.

I believe Lester Bangs once compared this album to a bunch of Neanderthals sitting around a fire beating on logs and baying at the moon. That's pretty accurate. Anyone looking for musical or production sophistication should look elsewhere. But if your looking for that primeval yalp that created music, and probably initiated procreation itself, you'll find it here.

As a teenager I owned all the Fugs' LPs on ESP. "The Fugs Second Album" is more polished. It should be since actual musicians were playing on it. Ed, Tuli, and Ken are writers, not musicians (unless you want to call Tuli's erectorine a musical instrument). "Virgin Fugs" was my all-time favorite ESP album by the Fugs. It's musically as crude as the "First Album", but the lyrics were more blantantly obscene and simply hilarious! I hope some bold recording company will re-release it someday.

I remember being amazed when Warner Brothers/Reprise signed the Fugs in the late sixties. I couldn't believe a major label had signed the band. Imagine something like this happening now- impossible! The Reprise Fugs albums were enjoyable, but they lacked the creative intensity and sheer chutzpah of the ESP albums. The Fugs tried like hell to sound as polished as your ordinary rock band back in those days. But it was like spraying gold paint on a pile of manure. The gold paint may look pretty, but it's what's underneath that's closer to the true essence. The Fugs were renegade satirists who did their best work on a small, independent label, ESP. They were never destined for "The Ed Sullivan Show".

Great to see this re-release. I still remember the first time I saw something by The Fugs. I was in the record shop and and I found myself with an album in my hand that somehow managed to get in there. Quite curious how it got there I looked at the title: "It Crawled Into My Hand, Honest" by The Fugs. So that explained why I was holding it and it turned out to be the best excuse when somebody asked you how the H... you could have bought that album. Since I love guys with a good sense of humor, I bought the album and I never ever regretted doing so. Anarchy and nihilism, laughter and anger, bombastic rockopera in a circus package, that's The Fugs. Listening to the cd's now you hear that they were a document of their time. One can hear they are 35 years old, but they still are great fun to the not too easily insulted or fainthearted. And now I want It Crawled.... on cd too!

I will be fifty two this April. This means that in 1966 I was prime Hippie material but, somehow, I missed all that at the time. Now, I am marrying someone my own age who didn't. She is introducing me to all sorts of things, including The Fugs. I think they are wonderful, including and especially their first, rough album. They are poets not only for a generation but, I expect, for all time.

I was 18 in 1966, a cowboy stuck at Princeton, and I remember going into NYC one friday night to the Filmore East, and catching the Fugs along with the Jefferson Airplane. I'll never forget the impact the Fugs had on me - they were totally radical for then and for now, truly going for it.

When my own son came along (born in San Francisco in 1968 in the midst of it) and grew up into punk, of course, when I heard the Dead Kennedy's, I thought of the Fugs - and of course, that's where they got a lot of their inspiration.

There's such power and humor in the Fugs music. They were The Fucks of course, and changed their name at the record company level, not theirs - they were utterly uncensored, singing about all the stuff that was on everyone's mind - but no one could say - well, they did - and let's honor them for being truly early greats. Give them a listen!

Coming down, I'm a coming down, I'm a coming down ...

A scrappy happy antidote to the streamlined blare of ultraslick melody makers. What The Fugs First Album lacked in polish though it more than supplied the want in anarcho-comical fark you attitude. A period piece now to be sure, a relic, but one that remains for me oddly comforting and frankly indispensable--there's still nothing like Tuli and the boys singing Slum Goddess or My Baby Done Left Me or Nothing to thoroughly recombobulate the banjaxed brainbox. Subversive imperfection never sounded so redoubtable. Like the dude sez here, cacophony forever.

And wasn't that amped-up and spliffy live version of CIA Man over the closing credits of the Coen brothers' Burn After Reading just an inspired fugging choice? The answer is like totally yup and yessum if you ask me.

The Fugs were the first rock group to boldly and frankly express themselves in many manner similar to the Grove press books. The covered a wide range of tabu subjects in a Dylan like style that has been described as folk-rock by some, crothc rock by others. Whatever the Fugs were truly original and what's more, they used explicit lyrics in the same manner as lenny Bruce or Hubert selby jr. Not to shock or offend but to frankly get their point across. Thier sincerity stands out and makes them haad and shoulders above frauds such as marilyn manson who are little more than a vulgar circus act and are not anywhere near as effective as the Fugs were and still are.

Is there some kind of a copyrite thing going on here? The original cuts on my CD are not the same versions as the original cuts on the first FUGS LP. I'm right on this, aren't I?

Lots said before in all the other reviews so I'll try to keep it brief:

If you want to know from where the "counterculture" sprung - this is one of the true original sources.

Terrible musicianship and recording quality - technique is the last thing this is all about. It's primitive, true and tribal Fugs at their very best.

At the very least, "Nothing" - "I Couldn't Get High" - "My Baby Done Left Me" ( " I feel like homemade s#t" ) in themselves alone are worth the price of this cd, but with 21 tracks of real '65 East Village / Lower East Side energy it's a bargain.

I was lucky enough to hear this when it first came out and then see Tuli Kupferberg & the boys at the Family Dog in '67 (backed by a later band that could actually play). When I listen to it now all that same primitive anti-Lyndon Johnson / George Westmorland / [...]-Vietnam" energy is still there.

[...]
but he rides again in full revolutionary splendor on this cd. Makes me want to go downtown to the "New Customs House" and burn down my draft board (or at the very least, soil the front porch).

I'll just get right to describing the disc. Shorter songs than normal, on average. Songwriting style (lyrically) that could be considered very artisitic or just guys screing around trying to be vulgar in a pop-music format, dependign on your perspective.

Singing: Too many people singing at once, with no attempt at perfection, or slick-ness.

instruments: Standard pop-rock instruments, but a little heavy on the odd percussion (but so was Bo Diddley). Some guys know how to play. Some do not. Bassist John Anderson is fascinating in his "I know a little" approach, and would have been a famous musician in backwoods string bands in the early 20th century. I love his stuff. His style tends to "country folk" here, just a wall of noise there.

production: They must have done this all in one take. This is raw. Heavy, in a primituive "pre-metal" way. It was the 60's. Could not be done today.