10 November 2007

it crawled into my hand, honest


This upload expired. If you are interested in this & many other things FUG, you can find them over at the United States posting on my Musick Around the World. It is included in the 3-disc set Electromagnetic Steamboat: The Reprise Recordings



 ONWARD EARTHLINGS


We wax weary of the tadpole smegma served to us as the primal data of the nations of Earth. In the face of a world led by a command generation of savage Honko-Cossack marauder pirates poisoning our air, murdering our youth & defiling our ethics, we declare our continuing commitment to the possibility of a benign civilization & the absolute right of each man on earth to:
1) a guaranteed grope,
2) land & money,
3) longevity,
4) happiness,
5) freedom,
6) supplies for his art,
7) sheep.

We wave the banners of these god-lit principles even now while Dom Dom Doom marches in waving a carrot & in the dreams of war lords mutant fruit flies devour syrup-coated telephone poles. Somehow great slurgul-slurguls of glee, humor, horniness & peacecraft can still escape our lips, for you, for us, for the love that can spurt & flow from the surfaces of song & poetry. The benevolent city of ivory colored grope spires in our vision. & all of us, all lovers & drooling minstrels aboard the Chariots of the Abyss, bend back into the terror, take knowledge of the City of Love we wish to create, flash it the fig fist, & spew onward, attempting radiance, into the skush. Onward! Grope for peace. Love the Earth. We have escaped the crone drivel. Up against the wall. - Ed Sanders

The Fugs here are: Ed Sanders - vocals; Ken Weaver - vocals, drums, routines; Tuli Kupferberg - vocals, futution; Ken Pine - guitar, vocals; Charles Larkey - bass; & Bob Mason - drums.

Having attained a professional rock-band sound on Tenderness Junction, the Fugs seemed determined to further expand their arrangements (aided, perhaps, by a major-label budget) on It Crawled into My Hand, Honest. Indeed, the album is ridiculously eclectic. There's stoned psychedelic folk-rock ("Crystal Liaison"); cry-in-your-beer country music with vehemently satirical or surrealistic lyrics ("Ramses II Is Dead My Love," "Johnny Pissoff Meets the Red Angel"); grand, sweeping classical orchestration ("Burial Waltz"); a Gregorian chant about "Marijuana"; down-home gospel with lyrics that no preacher would dare enunciate ("Wide Wide River," with the line: "I've been swimming in this river of shit/More than 20 years and I'm getting tired of it"); &, almost buried along the way, the kind of tuneful, countercultural folk-rock Tuli Kupferberg contributed to earlier albums ("Life Is Strange"). Choral backup vocals abound, and the mere presence of a half-dozen outside arrangers testifies to how much the group's attitude toward exploiting the studio had developed since the bare-bones ESP albums. Generally, the songs (most written by the core trio of Sanders, Kupferberg, and Weaver) are more concerned with deft poetry & humor than political statements, although the customary social satire & calls for sexual freedom & drug use are present in diminishing degrees. Although side one is five discrete tracks, side two is a side-long cut-&-paste of tracks varying in length from three seconds to four minutes, the stylistic jump-cuts similar to those employed by the Mothers of Invention in the same era.

Tracklist -

Crystal Liaison
Ramses II is Dead, My Love
Burial Waltz
Wide Wide River
Life is Strange
Johnny Pissoff Meets the Red Angel
Marijuana
Leprechaun
When the Mode of the Music Changes
Whimpers from the Jello
The Divine Toe (part 1)
We're Both Dead Now, Alice
Life is Funny
Grope Need (part 1)
Tuli, Visited by the Ghost of Plontinus
More Grope Need (Grope Need - part 2)
Robinson Crusoe
Claude Pelieu & J.J.Lebel Discuss the Early Verlaine Bread Crust
Fragments
The National Haiku Contest
The Divine Toe (part 2)
Irene

This stereo record can best be played while holding an antique porcelain foot.
Enjoy

4 comments:

  1. Hey Dood, Been on a minutemen kick lately, how about 'spoken word piece' off the 3 way tie for last album?

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  2. It makes me so happy to hear this record again. I had a scratchy old vinyl copy, and it would always skip during "Johnny Pissoff".

    I love "Crystal Liaison", and still smile when I hear "Wide Wide River" and "The National Haiku Contest". Thank you so much!

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  3. This is one of those recordings that I would take on a desert isle.
    Timeless yet reminiscent of the good old days.
    "The Divine Toe: pt.2"

    As I see you
    Standing in a sable robe
    And your breasts that launched a thousand round pounds
    You swirl to the light
    Your mons veneris shines like Chitzen Itza in the jungle dawn
    I get horny.

    They just don't write 'em like that anymore.

    ReplyDelete
  4. for more on ed sanders go to http://www.woodstockjournal.com/
    he ppublishes it. there is a healing drawing for lou reed
    i had at least one poetry class with ed as guest lecturer in the 1970's
    he was pretty funny
    robert

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