Perhaps the best Fugs disc
oberon | eugene, or | 01/19/2007
(5 out of 5 stars)
"This might be the best work the Fugs ever did.
While most of the fake commerical hippie music was about peppermint, pretty colors, girlfriends, and platitudes about peace, the Fugs were revealing the concerns of REAL hippies: getting laid, finding the best dope, avoiding the cops, and expressing outrage at, and fear of, the war machine. There's a real joy and intelligence at the root of the satire, gross-out humor, and raw performance.
Unfortunately, the rights to this set of songs were ripped off from the Fugs by a greedy manager, and therefore Sanders, Kupferberg, et al. have never seen any money from the sale of this material. Maybe you should steal it instead of buying it."
Bad Taste
Carl Slim | the factory | 05/28/2006
(5 out of 5 stars)
"This is intentionally offensive. It works. "New Amphetamine Shriek" and "Coca-Cola Dousche" are out of this world. This is acoustic rythm guitar (mostly), with lots of vocals and extreme percussion; "dirty words" & inappropriate ideas; a certain rudimentary musical ability in some members, just noise & enthusiasm in others; NOT poetry in the artsy way Patty Smith's music was poetry, but more satire on common rock, pop, & folk forms; "Hey, look at us, we're FREE, and we like annoying YOU, it's FUN"; drugs, sex, humor; the last underground sensation before heavy metal became the sound of the underground; one of the greatest albums by one of the greatest bands of the rock era, period."
First punk folk poetic revolutionary Band
W. T. Hoffman | Pennsylvania, United States | 11/01/2005
(5 out of 5 stars)
"This is the second FUGS album, right after THE FUGS FIRST ALBUM, which is pretty raw, even for my tastes. On Virgin Fugs, much of the folk guitar/percussion/beat poetry thing has been expanded, along with the humorous outrage, with the guys from HOLY MODAL ROUNDERS adding texture. So, where VIRGIN FUGS might be seen as an amatuer attempt at BRINGING IT ALL BACK HOME, this is definately the Fugs at their HIGHWAY 61 REVISITED point. I love the songs here, like Coca Cola Douce, Group Grope, Hallucination Horrors, etc. For 1965, you have to give them credit for announcing in no uncertain terms, the chemical inspiration for some of their sounds. This sound was further explored on "THE FUGS", the 1966 third LP. After that, you get into IT CRAWLED INTO MY HANDS, HONEST, with its more expanded tonalities, and absurdist poetry and humor, as an end to itself, a la MOTHERS OF INVENTION from the same time. (Since Zappa was in the village, before ICIMYH came out, I think that the Fugs may well have been influenced by Zappa musicially, just as they were heavily influenced by Allen Ginsburg, and the Beat poets, of whom Ed Sanders and Tuli were definately younger members.) One doesnt buy this CD to hear incredible music, but to hear part of the Hippie D.I.Y. esthetic, the PUNK foundations of PATTI SMITH's early work with guitar, piano and free form poetry being a direct descendant. Only a handful of people ever maybe get heavily influenced by people like THE FUGS, or HOLY MODAL ROUNDERS, but for those people, this music is absolutely nessacary, like air, like earth, like fire, like water. OM SHANTI SALLY SUE- ALL IS FALSE THAT ISNT TRUE......."