The Fugs First Album

Performer: The Fugs
Artist: Peter Stampfel
Producer: Harry Smith; Ed Sanders; Harry Smith
Distributor: Ryko Distribution

Notes: FIRST ALBUM includes the material from The Fugs' 1965 debut and 11 previously unissued tracks. The Fugs: Ed Sanders, Ken Weaver, Tuli Kupferberg. Additional personnel: Steve Weber, Vinny Leary, John Anderson. Includes liner notes by Ed Sanders. Personnel: Steve Weber, Vinny Leary (vocals, guitar); Peter Stampfel (vocals, fiddle, harmonica); Ken Weaver (vocals, drums, congas); Tuli Kupferberg (vocals, percussion); Ed Sanders, John Anderson (vocals). Audio Remasterer: Phil DeLancie. Liner Note Author: Ed Sanders. Recording information: Bridge Theater (1965); Cue Recording Studio (1965); Peace Eye Bookstore (1965). Photographers: Ed Sanders; David Gahr. Unknown Contributor Roles: John Anderson ; Tuli Lupferberg. Poets Tuli Kupferberg and Ed Sanders couldn't play any instruments, but they sure knew all about the spirit of rock & roll. Sanders edited and published a profanely titled arts magazine in post-Beat, early-'60s Greenwich Village, and local friends, including Peter Stampfel and Steve Weber of the Holy Modal Rounders, and guitarist Ken Weaver, provide most of the music on this underground classic. Alternately angry, beautiful, rude, and gut-bustingly hilarious, these songs, recorded in 1965, are both folk classics and among the first and best punk anthems ever recorded. Weaver's "I Couldn't Get High" is a garage-rocking stomper that wouldn't sound out of place in the NUGGETS series, and Weber's ironic masterpiece "Boobs A Lot" says more about locker-room culture in two minutes than volumes of social studies. This essential reissue adds an album's worth of high-quality outtakes.

Rolling Stone (11/25/93, p.112) - 4.5 Stars - Excellent Plus - "...FIRST ALBUM finds [The Fugs'] obsessions in full flower: Sanders warbles Blake and Allen Ginsberg; Kupferberg provides awesome existentialism....For all their wallowing in earthly pleasures, transcendence is what the Fugs' are all about..."

Tuli Kupfergerg and Ed Sanders were iconclastic, Beat-influenced poets who were in on the start of the '60s counterculture in New York City's East Village. Influenced by folk, rock, and avant garde art, they decided to start their own group, inadvertently planting one of the first seeds of punk rock. Their willfully gritty, amateurish sound was girded by the contributions of freak-folk group the Holy Modal Rounders, and they frankly addressed sex, war, drugs, and more, all with a winning sense of humor. The broke up at the beginning of the '70s, but began sporadic reunion activity in the '80s.

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