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OfflineLearyfanS
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The Fugs - "I Couldn't Get High" (mp3)
    #3750995 - 02/08/05 12:53 PM (19 years, 1 month ago)

This song is dedicated to JettaJay. First, a look back into the storied history of The Fugs curtosy of Borderline Books........


Quote:

Named after a Norman Mailer-coined sexual euphemism, The Fugs were easily the most lyrically outrageous band of their era with songs explicitly documenting sex, drugs, and radical politics and were formed in New York in late-1964 as a vehicle for the satirical talents of two beat poets, Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg.

Sanders, a veteran of the Civil Rights Marches, ran the Peace Eye Bookstore in NYC and published an arts magazine called 'Fuck You' which inexplicably failed to attain popular acceptance while Kupferberg was another Civil Rights stalwart who'd already achieved a certain hip status when celebrated in Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" for jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge and surviving.

An early lineup with two "amphetamine" flautists soon gave way to a more settled group which included Steve Weber and Peter Stampfel of the similarly anarchic Holy Modal Rounders. Texan Ken Weaver was added first on congas and later, when resources permitted, on a full drum-kit. Their first album was the result of two sessions in the spring and late summer of 1965: defiantly unprofessional but full of spirit and energy, it included musical adaptations of poems by Blake and Swinburne alongside satirical numbers like I Couldn't Get High, Boobs A Lot (a paean to cheerleaders' breasts), and Slum Goddess.

Meanwhile the band's live performances were achieving notoriety for such stunts as tossing spaghetti at the audience as well as their high obscenity content. Stampfel had left in the summer of '65 and was replaced by Vinny Leary who brought a more pronounced rock 'n' roll perspective to the original folky musical foundation. John Anderson, a student from Yale, was added on bass around this time.

After recording the first album, The Fugs embarked on a six-week tour across the U.S, adding keyboardist Lee Crabtree (who'd been first employed as Fugs chauffeur) to the lineup. The tour went surprisingly well, although one concert was terminated prematurely when college officials pulled the plug during a LSD-generated 45-minute rendition of River Of Shit.

Steve Weber left soon after and was replaced by Pete Kearney while Sanders was beset by obscenity charges arising from publication of his arts magazine, 'Fuck You'. It took eighteen months of court appearances to beat the charge. The band signed with ESP Disk and recorded their second album in the first two months of 1966. A more rock-oriented effort than their debut, it's considered by many to be their best and includes the anthemic satire Kill For Peace and the lengthy and atmospheric Virgin Forest. Group Grope celebrated free love complete with orgasmic noises while Coming Down detailed the downside of drugs. The album also contained two pretty ballads, Morning Morning and I Want To Know. Remarkably it made the album charts - surely the most outrageous LP to have done so at that date.

Under investigation by the FBI (whose documents repeatedly referred to the band as "The Fags"), the NYC DA's office, and the Postal Service, the Fugs were at the same time having trouble with their record company. They were also making changes to their lineup: three lead guitarists (Jon Kalb, Stefan Grossman, and Jake Jacobs (pre-Bunky and Jake)) came and went and bassist John Anderson was drafted despite The Fugs' valiant efforts to have him exempted as mentally unfit for service.

A third album, Virgin Fugs (composed of outtakes from the second album sessions) took the shock quotient to even higher levels with songs like Coca-Cola Douche, New Amphetamine Shriek and The Ten Commandments (memorably attributed to Kupferberg/God). Also notable are such gems as We're The Fugs, Hallucination Horrors, CIA Man and I Saw The Best Minds Of My Generation Rot which was written by Beat Poet Allen Ginsberg. The lyrics to We're The Fugs are atypical of the taboo subjects they set out to deal with.

'We Hate War
We Love Sex
Twos or threes
Four or Fives
LSD A dimethylatr'
(from We're The Fugs)

More vintage Fugs lyrics can be heard on Hallucination Horrors:-

'Benzedrine
Mescaline
Pot and LSD
I Need Aquamorphine
Hallucination Horrors is what I've got
Hallucination Horrors is what I've got
(from Hallucination Horrors)

The band, dissatisfied with their ESP contract (they were only receiving a royalty rate of 3%), signed with Atlantic Records in late 1966. They were promised complete recording freedom and completed an album using top Atlantic sessionmen like Bernard Purdie and Chuck Rainey but for some reason the Atlantic contract was abruptly terminated in June 1967 and the album was never released. At this time the band were well on the way to fame and fortune with Sanders appearing on the cover of Life magazine but the problems with Atlantic robbed the band of a great deal of momentum; in Sanders words, "we lost a year and that really screwed us up".

They quickly signed with Reprise and were promised a no censorship deal by label head Mo Ostin and this time the deal was honoured. Most of the ESP band had left by this time because Sanders was insisting on a level of professionalism they were unwilling to provide. The core trio of Sanders, Kupferberg, and Weaver enlisted a team of crack players - Ken Pine and Danny Kootch on guitars and Charles Larkey on bass. Their first Reprise album, Tenderness Junction, reprised much of the material from the lost Atlantic album and included the lengthy Aphrodite Mass, a musical adaptation of Mathew Arnold's Dover Beach, the celebratory Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out, as well as the usual obscenities (Wet Dream). The ubiquitous Allen Ginsberg also popped in to chant Hare Krishna but the album is best known for documenting The Fugs' attempt to exorcize the Evil Spirits from the Pentagon on October 21, 1967. It was, as Sanders admits, a failure because the Vietnam War went on for another seven years but at least the "Out Demons, Out!" chant later provided the Edgar Broughton Band with their best-known number.

Sanders and Kupferberg attended the Chicago demonstrations in August 1968 and their support of the Yippies was reflected in the songs Chicago and Yodelling Yippie which appeared on The Belle Of Avenue A album. A second drummer, Bob Mason, had been added for their next Reprise album, It Crawled Into My Hand, Honest which was probably their best effort since The Fugs. Full of parodies of various musical styles - country, gospel, jazz, classical, Broadway musicals, etc - it resurrected the notorious River Of Shit as Wide Wide River and contained a Gregorian chant Marijuana intoning the various names of the drug as well as more songs about sex (Grope Need).

However Sanders was rapidly tiring of the whole affair, which had started as fun but had become a fulltime business operation - he was working ten to fifteen hours a day just to keep things on an even keel and drinking too much - and he simply didn't want to become a "beatnik business person". After recording a country-flavoured and slightly tired-sounding final studio album, The Fugs played their last concert in Hersey, Pennsylvania in March, 1969 and quietly disbanded. Sanders soon after covered the Manson trial for Esquire magazine and wrote a book about Manson called "The Family" while Kupferberg formed a satirical theatrical group called the Revolting Theatre. Sanders recorded two country-parody albums, Sander's Truckstop (1970) and Beer Cans On The Moon (1973) while Kupferberg had released a solo spoken-word LP No Deposit, No Return in 1967.

In 1984, Sanders and Kupferberg reformed The Fugs without Ken Weaver and recorded a number of albums, Refuse To Be Burnt Out (1985), No More Slavery (1986), Star Peace (1987), and The Real Woodstock Festival (1995).

Lee Crabtree died in the early '70s and Pete Kearney is also deceased; Steve Weber and Pete Stampfel are still playing; Danny Kootch played with Carole King and Don Henley; Charles Larkey also played with King and married (and later divorced) her; and John Anderson became a lawyer.






The Fugs - "I Couldn't Get High"
1966





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Mp3 of the month:  Sons Of Adam - Feathered Fish


Edited by Learyfan (02/08/05 01:00 PM)

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InvisibleJettaJay
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Re: The Fugs - "I Couldn't Get High" (mp3) [Re: Learyfan]
    #3751104 - 02/08/05 01:26 PM (19 years, 1 month ago)

Thank you LearyFan. I apprecaite it Brother.


~~ JJ :gd_icon: :heart: Shine On


--------------------
I saw a little green light buzzing around in a tree, and it dawned on me that "they" were here
~~~LouiseLouise



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OfflineLearyfanS
It's the psychedelic movement!
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Registered: 04/20/01
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Re: The Fugs - "I Couldn't Get High" (mp3) [Re: JettaJay]
    #3751183 - 02/08/05 01:45 PM (19 years, 1 month ago)

You're welcome. What did you think of the song?





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Mp3 of the month:  Sons Of Adam - Feathered Fish


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InvisibleJettaJay
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Registered: 10/14/04
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Re: The Fugs - "I Couldn't Get High" (mp3) [Re: Learyfan]
    #3751224 - 02/08/05 01:53 PM (19 years, 1 month ago)

Quote:

Learyfan said:
You're welcome. What did you think of the song?








I like it ... alot actually !!! It really awesome !! I saved it to my shar folder on Soul Seek


--------------------
I saw a little green light buzzing around in a tree, and it dawned on me that "they" were here
~~~LouiseLouise



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OfflineoDin
Registered: 08/12/99
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Re: The Fugs - "I Couldn't Get High" (mp3) [Re: JettaJay]
    #3751800 - 02/08/05 04:47 PM (19 years, 1 month ago)

good song...i heard a cover of it by slightly stoopid

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OfflineLearyfanS
It's the psychedelic movement!
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Registered: 04/20/01
Posts: 34,168
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Last seen: 7 hours, 19 minutes
Re: The Fugs - "I Couldn't Get High" (mp3) [Re: oDin]
    #3752173 - 02/08/05 06:10 PM (19 years, 1 month ago)

Interesting. I had never heard of a band doing a cover of a Fugs song.

An interesting fact about Ed Saunders, BTW, is that he's the author of the early 70's book called "The Family" about Charles Manson.





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Mp3 of the month:  Sons Of Adam - Feathered Fish


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InvisibleGreat_Satan
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Registered: 09/05/04
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Re: The Fugs - "I Couldn't Get High" (mp3) [Re: oDin]
    #3752241 - 02/08/05 06:20 PM (19 years, 1 month ago)

Try some of your music through a tube amp. http://www.decware.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=Tubes

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