Customer Reviews

Second Album

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The second album by the Fugs is a marked improvement over their first album. The playing is tighter and the executions are a bit more polished (God forbid!!) "Dirty Old Man", "Kill For Peace" and "Doin' All Right" are hilarious songs. Here is an example: "I'm not ever gonna go to Vietnam. I prefer to stay right here and screw your mom." The Fugs also prove that they can rock out with abandon such as "Frenzy" and "Group Grope". This CD gets no points for sound quality though. Be prepared for relatively low fidelity. The lyrical content contains the same sexual innuendos and profanity as the first album.

This one is much like the first. Fun to listen to and very creative and inovative. Pure Folk coffee house Poetry with Rock & Roll thrown in. Killer CD. As with the first CD, this is not for all ears but I do like it and do recommend it. Just crank it up and experience that coffee house folk/rock poetry feel.

I bought this album in my youth based on "Kill for Peace." Ironically. Or sadly. Nothing has changed in 40+ years. The lyrics are just as topical now as they were during Vietnam. I discovered the Fugs retroactively from the Mothers of Invention and the Velvets. They were throwbacks to the Beats, whose influence I was too young for, and too radical for most post-Beatlemaniacs. They never had the pretty folk-rock harmonies or mainstream potential of the Byrds, Love, Jefferson Airplane. However, the first and second Fugs albums have stuck with me because they were singing about big issues, silly juvenilia schtick, and poetry. The music is minimal. The singers, well, can't. There's poetry. Mayhem. It's punk before anyone ever thought of the term. Get this and the first. Good stuff for those who like their garage rock cerebral. RIP Tuli.

I get really bothered when I hear hear comments from music critics that choose to look only at musical technique in artists or how fast someone plays etc. If that were the case to rate bands or singers with, than three quarters of all musicians would be arrested. Great bands get their greatness from their heart not from their fingers or mind. In fact I'd go as far as to say that 99% is of the heart, heart and soul! Add chemistry too. Take the Fugs. Now apply my theory. Virgin Forest, Crystal Liason, Morning, Morning, Johnny Pissoff, you name it - some of the greatest songs I've ever heard, and I ain't kiddin bro! Now compare singer/songwriters: Tuli Kupferberg vs. Bob Dylan. I'd choose both. Or Ed Sanders vs. Igor Stravinsky I'd choose Both!! Or film directors: David Lynch vs. Woody Allen. Cannot live without either!
Buy this album and every other Fugs album as well. I have my favorites of course but 2nd and It Crawled are my faves. Maybe Tenderness Junction too and Final CD Pt.1.
ps. check out The Fugs website as well. It is awesome!!

listen up, The Fugs combined political satire, garage rock trash, and enough sexual innuendo to keep the right wing up at night. At one point, the group had an FBI file! I call 'em pre-punk due to the execution of their ideas; they played with wreckless abandoment. Sure, they don't have the sonic power of The Stooges, The Sonics, or MC5. But they blazed a path and left satire, innuendo, and some anger in their wake.
Check out their first LP, the song Nothing left me in a trance for days.

Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg are the first whose lyrics are openly sexual. And their music ranges from hard driving to sweet. The original liner notes were by Allen Dinsberg!

I remember when.... who cares! The album is well done and a lot of fun to listen to. Little of the 'in your face Establishment' attitude is lost over the years. If anything it's more fitting today than it was in the sixties. Buy it, crank your stereo, and have some fun!

This album sounds like the Fugs actually tried to pretend they were a real band, instead of a spontaneous gathering of hilarious nutjobs, like they sound on the first album. This album sounds a lot more studio than the first, but as a result, the songs sound like real songs instead of like unscripted mehem, like the first. And as "real bands" go, the Fugs aren't really the greatest.

That said, the album is still fun and there are some good songs, particularly "Kill for Peace," which sounds as topical today as when it was recorded. "Virgin Forest" and "Mutant Stop" are also quite good.