Original 1966 vinyl E.S.P. Records first pressing of the remarkable first FUGS album!

Beatnik poets from the Lower East Side drop acid and wax poetic/scatological on tunes such as "Slum Goddess," "Swinburne Stomp," "I Couldn't Get High" and "Supergirl," all famously recorded during one long bacchanal/jam session in 1965, released in 1966 on the E.S.P. label and now a scarce collectible from the counterculture underground of Amerika.

A loping, ridiculous, and scabrous release, the Fugs' 1st LP mashed everything from folk, garage 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 1965-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, naughty, 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." The lyrics would have been censored on several of the tracks, had they'd been on, say Columbia records. Way out stuff from the FUGS on their very first release.