The Fugs - Don’t Stop! Don’t Stop!

Priceless hoard of previously-unheard material joins The Fugs’ first two epochmaking albums

The Fugs were New York’s first punk band, broadsiding out of the East Village in the mid-60s with a new style of ribald, urban blues which lambasted the government while smashing social taboos and blasting the Vietnam War. They formed in late 1964 after activist writer Ed Sanders joined forces with downtown beat poet Tuli Kupferberg, plus musicians including drummer/lyricist Ken Weaver and Holy Modal Rounders Peter Stampfel and Steve Weber, who whipped up a suitably anarchic aural backdrop.

Pioneering archivist Harry Smith arranged to record The Fugs for Folkways, producing the joyful riot of their first album, The Village Fugs: Ballads & Songs of Contemporary Protest, Points Of View and General Dissatisfaction. The previously-available expanded versions of this and 1966’s The Fugs Second Album provide the first two discs on Ace’s fabulous box set, joined by two CDs of previously-unheard material from 1965-69. Compiled from Sanders’ huge archive, they include outtakes, demos and curios such as Allen Ginsberg knees-ups, Carpe Diem performed at Lenny Bruce’s funeral and Sanders’ brutally-moving Elegy To Bobby Kennedy, along with a 13-minute collage of Kupferberg musings.

The Fugs became the most dangerous band in America, harassed by the authorities until splintering in the early 70s (although they later reformed). Sanders remains a fiercely prolific writer, now publishing his epic America: A History In Verse. These recordings are now as historically important as Harry Smith’s Anthology Of American Folk Music or Alan Lomax’s field recordings in capturing a seismic era. They’re also rollickingly good fun.

Fugbox | 9 (4-CD)

Reviewed by Kris Needs
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