FIRST ALBUM includes the material from The Fugs' 1965 debut and 11 previously unissued tracks. 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.
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.
1 Slum Goddess 2 Ah, Sunflower Weary of Time 3 Supergirl 4 Swinburne Stomp 5 I Couldn't Get High 6 How Sweet I Roamed 7 Carpe Diem 8 My Baby Done Left Me 9 Boobs a Lot 10 Nothing 11 We're the Fugs 12 Defeated 13 Ten Commandments 15 In the Middle of Their First Recording Session the Fugs Sign the Worst 16 I Saw the Best Minds of My Generation Rock 17 Spontaneous Salute to Andy Warhol 18 War Kills Babies 19 The Fugs National Anthem 20 Fugs Spaghetti Death, The (No Redemption No Redemption) 21 Rhapsody of Tuli