Download the Fugs First Album the Fugs
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download the fugs first album The Fugs. The Fugs were a band formed in New York City in 1965 by Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg, with Ken Weaver on drums. Later that year they were joined by Peter Stampfel and Steve Weber of the Holy Modal Rounders. The band was named by Kupferberg who borrowed it from the euphemistic substitute for the word "fuck" famously used in Norman Mailer's novel, The Naked and the Dead. Incidentally, the band is featured in a chapter of Mailer's book, Armies of the Night as they play at the 1967 march on the Pentagon in protest of the Vietnam War (with Scott Rashap on upright bass). The band was named by Kupferberg who borrowed it from the euphemistic substitute for the word "fuck" famously used in Norman Mailer's novel, The Naked and the Dead. Incidentally, the band is featured in a chapter of Mailer's book, Armies of the Night as they play at the 1967 march on the Pentagon in protest of the Vietnam War (with Scott Rashap on upright bass). The Fugs were a satirical and self-satirizing rock band that performed at protests against the Vietnam War nationwide. Their 1968 Transatlantic Records album "It crawled into my hand, honest" (TRA 181) also helped to make them more widely known on the European side of the Atlantic. (This album is now also available as tracks 11 to 30 of "Electromagnetic Steamboat") The band's frank lyrics about sex, drugs, and politics aroused a hostile reaction in some quarters, and enthusiastic interest in others. One of their better known songs was an adaptation of Matthew Arnold's poem, Dover Beach. Another was a William Blake poem. The Fugs played their "final" concert of the 1960s in 1969 at the Hersheypark Arena in Hershey, Pennsylvania with the Grateful Dead. The Fugs, minus Weaver (plus Rashap), reunited in 1984 with several performances at the Bottom Line in New York. A reunited Fugs toured in the fall of 2004, with Josh Lieberman on glass armonica in several Chicago performances. Download the fugs first album. A loping, ridiculous, and scabrous release, the Fugs' debut mashed everything from folk and beat poetry to rock and rhythm & blues -- all with a casual disregard for sounding note perfect, though not without definite goals in mind. Actually compiled from two separate sessions originally done for Folkways Records, and with slightly different lineups as a result, it's a short but utterly worthy release that pushed any number of 1964-era buttons at once (and could still tick off plenty of people). Sanders produced the sessions in collaboration with the legendary Harry Smith, who was able to sneak the collective onto Folkways' accounts by describing them as a "jug band," and it's not a far-off description. A number of songs sound like calm-enough folk-boom fare, at least on casual listening, though often with odd extra touches like weirdly muffled drums or out of nowhere whistles and chimes. Others, meanwhile, are just out there -- thus, the details of the perfect "Supergirl." Then there's "Boobs a Lot," the post-toke/acid lament "I Couldn't Get High," and the pie-in-the-face to acceptable standards of the time, "Slum Goddess." Throughout it all, the Fugs sound like they're having a perfectly fun time; the feeling is loose, ragged, but right, and while things may be sloppy around the edges, often that's totally intentional. Certainly little else could explain the random jamming and rhythmic chanting/shouting on "Swinburne Stomp." Good as the original album is, the CD version is what any serious fan needs to find, thanks to the inclusion of 11 bonus tracks. Some come from the original sessions, including the signature tune "We're the Fugs" and "The Ten Commandments," while others appear from various live jams. Then there's the self-explanatory "In the Middle of Their First Recording Session the Fugs Sign the Worst Contract Since Leadbelly's." Music Downloads. Search and download from over 6 million songs, music videos and lyrics. Largest collection of free music. All songs are in the MP3 format and can be played on any computer or on any MP3 Player including the iPhone. Live concert albums of your favorite band. Learn how to download music and how to burn music. EMD offers a premium experience that includes unlimited access to CD quality music and advanced discovery features in an advertising free environment. Members also enjoy unlimited free mp3 music downloads without registration. Electromagnetic Steamboat: The Reprise Recordings. According to the copious 40-page full-color liner notes that accompany this strictly limited-edition three-CD set, Electromagnetic Steamboat: The Reprise Recordings gathers "every unique master recording of the Fugs that was delivered to and survives in the Reprise [Records] archives." This includes not only the four long-players: Tenderness Junction, It Crawled Into My Hand, Honest, The Belle of Avenue A, and Golden Filth, but also an additional 40 minutes of material that never made it onto a standard commercial release. The Fugs first gained notoriety with their cerebral marriage of Lower East Side beatnik philosophies to electric folk music in 1964. This culminated in a series of definitive underground recordings on the New York City based ESP label. It was after a somewhat acrimonious split that the Fugs signed with the decidedly West Coast Reprise Records. The band's revolving door personnel features a few familiar session musicians during this era. Among the more notable names are Danny Kortchmar (guitar), Charles Larkey (bass), Bob Mason (drums), Richard Tee (organ), jazz legend Julius Watkins (French horn), and Ken Pine (guitar). Remaining at the inventive center of the Fugs are Tuli Kupferberg (vocals), Ed Saunders (vocals), and Ken Weaver (vocals/drums). Even with the lack of stability in the lineup, the nature of the band remained pure. In light of the political and social situations that the world faced in the late '60s, the Fugs' single-minded resonance of a Dionysian reality seemed practically surreal. The multi-dimensional "War Song" -- originally issued on Tenderness Junction -- acknowledges the duality of base gratification during wartime. Golden Filth is conspicuous as the only live album in the lot. Recorded at Bill Graham's Fillmore East, the set includes "I Want to Know," in addition to tracks from their ESP days -- including "Coca Cola Douche," which is titled "CCD" for obvious legal reasons. The original album art from Cal Schenkel is also reproduced within the memorabilia-laden liner notes. The bonus material includes a monophonic mix of "Tenderness Junction," as well as a unique edit of the "Divine Toe" medley, which was previously available on The 1969 Warner/Reprise Songbook -- a mail order-only promotional album offered from the record label. Additionally there is the "promo album version" of "Crystal Liaison" that was issued exclusively on the Some of Our Best Friends Are disc. Finally, the infamous five-track demo reel delivered -- but never issued -- to Atlantic Records is released here for the first time in its entirety. Electromagnetic Steamboat: The Reprise Recordings is limited to an edition of 5,000 and available exclusively through the Rhino HandMade. The Fugs: At The Forefront Of The Counterculture. The Fugs' CDs are available from the band's Web site. In 1964, a band called The Fugs surfaced on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Led by poets Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg, The Fugs became an important part of the American counterculture of the mid- to late '60s. The group retired in 1969, but re-formed in the mid-'80s and has performed and recorded regularly ever since. The Fugs will soon release what could be the band's last album, titled Be Free. The Fugs' name comes from a euphemism in a Norman Mailer novel. Like the word's source, much of the band's music can't be heard on the radio. It sang raunchy songs about sex and drugs. One Fugs tune that did get FM radio play, "Kill for Peace," was about the war in Vietnam. "We were not the Mormon Tabernacle Choir," co-founder Sanders says of the group's controversial lyrics. "We were not The Beach Boys. We were The Fugs. And we had our own pizazz and energy and elan, especially early on. Those old records just scream and steam with fun and joy and raising our fists to the sky to demand a new type of American reality." That new reality grew out of the anarchy of the beats at a time when The Beatles were singing "Yesterday." Author Larry "Ratso" Sloman was a straight-laced college student when he caught The Fugs playing at a small Greenwich Village theater in 1965. "To hear these proscribed topics talked about so freely, and to hear that kind of vulgarity, was mind-boggling. Just a great, liberating experience to be able to hear drugs discussed," Sloman says. "And it was just kind of putting up a mirror to the emerging counterculture." Beyond The Possible. "The Fugs were right on the barricades of what was possible," says Danny Goldberg, a longtime music-industry executive and author of two books about popular culture. "There was a fearlessness, an intensity, an unwillingness to pander to any commercial norms that was very exciting." And sometimes downright silly. Co-founder Kupferberg was known for putting new lyrics to old Jewish melodies. Somehow, The Fugs were embraced by a big commercial label — and not just any label, but Reprise Records, founded and run by Frank Sinatra. Music producer Hal Willner says two of Sinatra's top executives played him a Fugs recording.