Tuesday, May 09, 2006

The Fugs!

Thanks to The Fugs rock music became for the first time the voice of counter-culture, they have been the first "underground", "alternative", "political" band.
Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg, two anarchical pacifist beat poets from New York, formed The Fugs on late '64 to exploit the expressive and communicative possibilities of rock music. They announced themselves as "a total assault on culture" and, despite their rough musical technique, they became history thanks to their sarcastic and provocative attitude; each concert was a theatrical happening to attack and to tease the hypocrisies and taboos of the estabilishment.
They became so popular to even sign a contract for the Reprise label in 1968. A couple of brilliant albums like Tenderness Junction and It Crawled Into My Hand Honest proved they also became fine musicians, they losed maybe a bit of their early weirdness to play an eclectic acid folk-rock.
At the end of that year they toured Europe, and the powerful and funny perfomance shown in these clips had been broadcasted by Swedish TV.
During their trip with a van through the old continent they even tried to reach Czechoslovakia, occupied by the Soviet army, but they were stopped on the border!
By the way, The Fugs are still alive!

Fugs - Crystal Liaison (1968)
Fugs - The Garden Is Open (1968)

Password: http://musicforyoureyes.blogspot.com/

See you soon

Mirco

16 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Now this is GREAT! As long as I have been enjoying the fugs music (20 years),
I had never seen any video performances of them. Never.
Thanks so much for these gems!!
Your blog is one of my favorites and I hope you can maintain this for a long long time.
walter

5/10/2006 2:50 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

AHHHHHHHH! I just noticed this post. I wish I weren't in the middle of an 8 part RS download. Tomorrow I'll schedule time just for this. Truly amazing- THANKS!

5/10/2006 6:39 AM  
Blogger Mirco said...

Thank you, indeed I think this lost clips deserve to be saved and shared. Anyway, I saw on their official site that the Fugs are working on a documentary about their musical carrer....

5/10/2006 2:14 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

grandissimi FUGS (bei ricordi di un epoca meravigliosa) e grande MIRCO.... the dream goes on !

5/10/2006 3:05 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

These are great clips. I have the their whole performance on VHS somewhere. Their performance of "Supergirl" is interesting as they make the lyrics much raunchier than on the recorded version.

I've always pitied the poor Swede whose job it was to translate those fucked-up lyrics into Swedish.

5/10/2006 6:21 PM  
Blogger The Baz said...

Bloody Hell!

I love these guys too but never seen ANY footage of them before so this is a real cool treat Mirco!

The Fugs official video has been a long time coming. Ed Sanders was interviewed by Record Collector back in the early 90s and said back then he was working on such a video. I'd always wondered what happened to the Ace Records reissue series since they never got to release the Reprise era albums.

Many thanks yet again!
BAZ

5/10/2006 8:02 PM  
Blogger Mirco said...

Kurt, it's always nice to meet you here. Actually I have some problems in understanding their lyrics too :-)

Baz, great to see you're still around. Let's really hope to see that Fugs' movie one day...

All the best!

Mirco

5/10/2006 8:50 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hey Kurt,
It would be great if you could find that VHS and somehow post that show!!

5/11/2006 1:53 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

LOL
Yeah, I wonder how hard it was to translate "freak-puke" into Swedish??

walt

5/11/2006 1:58 AM  
Blogger Mirco said...

I have about 20 minutes of that program...don't know if it's the whole show...unfortunately it stops before the end of Supergirl, otherwise I would have posted that song.
It includes an interwiev with Sanders too. It's a very huge file, but if you are really interested...
I'm wondering how "freak-puke" could be translated into Italian...

5/11/2006 3:01 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

No, you must open FREE account, I think it's more easy.

Mirco, la storia del tentativo dei Fugs di entrare in Cecoslovacchia m'ha ricordato la stessa identica cosa che mio (povero, morto due anni fa :( ) zio e un amico cercarono di fare sempre nel '68. Circolavano per l'Europa, come festeggiamento per il conseguimento del diploma, su una 500. Come si seppe dell'invasione della CS, tappezzarono l'auto con le prime pagine dei giornali francesi e tedeschi che parlavano dell'avvenimento e si recarono al confine ceco. Inutile dire che furono 'gentilmente' invitati a fare dietro-front...

5/19/2006 8:05 PM  
Blogger Mirco said...

Marco, bellissima questa storia, continua pure a farti vivo da queste parti, grazie! :-)

5/19/2006 8:19 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Ci puoi contare, amigo.

5/19/2006 8:38 PM  
Blogger Mirco said...

As it is written in every post the password is: http://musicforyoureyes.blogspot.com/

5/29/2006 10:47 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Go, Tuli, Go!

6/21/2006 10:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The Soft machine files are missing & so are many others. Will you be uploading them again? I hope so....I only just fond this place....it's great...shame The Lou Reed stuff was removed.

7/23/2006 9:00 PM  

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