Combine boho poetry, a certain level of musical gaucheness and a healthy dose of shock tactics and you have The Fugs, an avant-garde poetry/rock outfit formed in New York's Lower East Side in 1965.
Co-founded by Ed Sanders, Tuli Kupferberg and Ken Weaver, the initial contact came through Sanders, who had published Kupferberg's poetry in his literary journal, the quaintly titled Fuck You - A Magazine Of The Arts. With the band name borrowed from the euphemism for the well-known four-letter-word from Norman Mailer's The Naked And The Dead, The Fugs drew their inspiration from - deep breath, everyone - the "theory of the spectacle" in Aristotle's Poetics; the premier performance of Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi in 1896; the poΦmes simultanΘs of the Dadaists in Zurich's Cabaret Voltaire in 1916; the jazz-poetry of the Beats; the agitated sax of Charlie Parker; the silence of John Cage; and, in Ed Sanders's words, "the calm pushiness of the Happening movement, the songs of the Civil Rights movement, and our concept that there was oodles of freedom guaranteed by the United States Constitution that was not being used".
The Fugs' mixture of cultural dissonance, social irritation and political tomfoolery (the Chicago branch of the FBI contacted the main office in Washington at one point to inquire if it should arrest The Fugs for obscenity and un-American activities) flourished in the 1960s atmosphere, in which pretty much anything went. In 1965, The Fugs' dΘbut album, The Village Fugs: Ballads And Songs Of Contemporary Protest, Points Of View And General Dissatisfaction, was followed by a series of records that were idiomatic to say the least. They glorified sex and drugs as well as adhering to hippy politics, but eventually found their pursuance of both literary and sexual matters more directed towards the latter (typical song title? Coca-Cola Douche, which invited threats of lawsuits from the soft drinks company). The brilliantly titled 1968 album, It Crawled Into My Hand, Honest, led to the eventual disbanding of the group, who cleverly realised the dangers of self-parody.
Sanders has been a successful author for some time now (his book on Charles Manson, The Family, is a cult-read must); Kupferberg presents his own New York cable television show; while Weaver has written two books on - hey, hey, hey - How To Speak Texan.
The Fugs? They received bomb threats, they shook the hands of the great and the good, and playwright Sam Shepard was once a member. Their motto? Dum spiro, spero - while we breathe, we hope. Too fugging right.
For further information: www.furious.com/perfect/fugs.html or www.thefugs.com
