Virgin Fugs, released in 1967, included several of the better tracks from their first album release and a few bizarre, but essential outtakes lifted from early sessions.Most of the album has a lo-fi, demo kind of sound - the majority of the songs are very nearly acapella, with only distant acoustic guitars, bongos and various percussion joining in - leaning towards folk music; but folk of a very twisted kind, forcing some to put their fingers in their ears for reasons other than pitch.
The Fugs, like the Mothers of Invention, approached the new fashions and attitudes of the Love and Peace generation with a somewhat cynical eye; their satirical take challenging the most devoutest of liberal attitudes.
Free Love becomes an orgy for the depraved and the perverted; Liberalism leads to immorality; drugs open doors to the psychiatric ward, and free thinking turns to paranoia and scatology[!].
Here was a band who really knew their audience!
Some of these songs are still a little difficult to listen to; not due to complexity or atonal experimentation, but due to subject matter and attitude.I mean, I'm no prude, but 'Coca Cola Douche' is just such a twisted piece of misogyny, I have to interpret it as satire... it is satire, isn't it?
Despite the majority of the album adopting a dozen freaks in a room recording the result of some acid-spiked happening kind of feel, there are two electric tracks: 'I Command the House of the Devil' and the excellent 'I Saw the Best Minds of my Generation Rot', an adaptation of Ginsberg's Howl, ending in a massive accumulation of 'holy holy holies'.
Always good to end with a prayer.
A little redemption can go a long way.
The Fugs - Virgin Fugs (1967)
We're the Fugs
New Amphetamine Shriek
Saran Wrap
The Ten Commandments
Hallucination Horrors
I Command the House of the Devil
CIA Man
Coca Cola Douche
My Bed is Getting Crowded
Caca Rocka
I Saw the Best Minds of my Generation Rot
Excellent cassette rip @320kbs
Get your bongos out & join in here
