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This day-by-day diary of The Fugs' live, studio, broadcasting, and private activities is the result of three decades of research and interview work by Bruno Ceriotti, but without the significant contributions by other kindred spirits this diary would not have been possible. So, I would like to thank all the people who, in one form or another, contributed to this timeline: Ed Sanders, Jonathan Kalb, John Anderson, Peter Stampfel, Deena Canale, Louis Bruno, Ken Adamany, Kenny Weber, Sam Frantz, Greg Vick, Rob Branigin, Christopher Hjort, Shigemi Sho, Mike Delbusso, Jeffrey Lewis, Jeff Pollock, Richie Unterberger, Dennis Donley (RIP), Jim Salzer (RIP), Tim Boxer, Corry Arnold, Ross Hannan, John Wilcock, Robert Shelton, Richard Avedon, Jim Franklin, The Concert Database, Ann Arbor Sun, Los Angeles Free Press, The Daily Pennsylvanian, Village Voice, The East Village Other, The Daily Californian, The Broadside, The New Journal at Yale, Toronto Daily Star, New York Times, and Splatt Gallery.
November 1964
The story of the Fugs, arguably the first underground rock group of all time, begins in the Lower East Side, an historic neighborhood in the southeastern part of Manhattan, New York City. It was there that, in the spring of ’64, a well known poet, author, publisher, and social activist named James Edward ‘Ed’ Sanders, started thinking about forming a group. “[One evening] I wrote a series of poems depicting the life and times of ‘Tillie the Toe Queen’ on white, elongated slats of thin cardboard from cigarette cartons,” recalls Sanders in his autobiography Fug You (Da Capo Press; 2011). “By the next weekend I had published The Toe-Queen Poems. When I read them at Le Metro, the response, in applause and overwhelming laughter, was the first I had received for anything I’d ever read in public, and I think it was an impetus to form a satiric proto-folk-rock group called The Fugs a few months later. One of the first Fugs songs, never, unfortunately, put on an album, was a ditty called ‘Toe Queen Love’.” As recalled by Ed, it was only a few months later, in late ‘64, that the idea of a group started to take form after another poetry reading night at Cafè Le Metro in the East Village. Along with him, that time, it was his friend Naphtali ‘Tuli’ Kupferberg, another well known poet, author, publisher, cartoonist, and pacifist anarchist that he had known since the summer of ‘62. “One night after a poetry reading at Cafè Le Metro, Tuli Kupferberg and I visited the Dom, where we watched poets such as Robert Creeley and Amiri Baraka (then still known as LeRoi Jones) dancing to the jukebox,” recalls Ed. “Then Tuli and I retired to another bar on St. Mark’s [Place], where I suggested we form a musical group. ‘We’ll set poetry to music,’ I proclaimed. Tuli was all in favor of it.” “We drew inspiration for The Fugs from a long and varied tradition,” he continues, “going all the way back to the dances of Dionysus in the ancient Greek plays and the ‘Theory of the Spectacle’ in Aristotle’s Poetics and moving forward to the famous premiere performance of Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi in 1896, to the poèmes simultanés of the Dadaists in Zurich’s Cabaret Voltaire in 1916, to the jazz-poetry of the Beats, to Charlie Parker’s seething sax, to the silence of John Cage, to the calm pushiness of the Happening movement, to the songs of the civil rights movement, and to our belief that there were oodles of freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution that were not being used.” “At first we didn’t have a name,” he concludes. “An early one I came up with was ‘The Yodeling Socialists.’ Tuli was too anarcho for that, and even though I am the only Beatnik who can yodel, he wasn’t into the Great Yod. Another early name for The Fugs was ‘The Freaks.’ Tuli and I immediately began writing a bunch of songs. In a notebook in late 1964, I jotted: Songs for the Freaks: 1. Banana 2. Little Mary Bell (Blake’s poem) 3. I Love to Tell the Story (Christian hymn from my youth) 4. How Sweet I Roamed from Field to Field (Blake) 5. Take Me Away to That Land of Peace. On the next page of the notebook were some possible lyrics to number 5: Take me / take take / away / way way / to that land / of peace / come o come with me / to that land of peace / where we meet / all rainy / under the / ashen tree / peace o peace / come stomp me on! Wish I had finished it and put it on the first Fugs album.
The story of the Fugs, arguably the first underground rock group of all time, begins in the Lower East Side, an historic neighborhood in the southeastern part of Manhattan, New York City. It was there that, in the spring of ’64, a well known poet, author, publisher, and social activist named James Edward ‘Ed’ Sanders, started thinking about forming a group. “[One evening] I wrote a series of poems depicting the life and times of ‘Tillie the Toe Queen’ on white, elongated slats of thin cardboard from cigarette cartons,” recalls Sanders in his autobiography Fug You (Da Capo Press; 2011). “By the next weekend I had published The Toe-Queen Poems. When I read them at Le Metro, the response, in applause and overwhelming laughter, was the first I had received for anything I’d ever read in public, and I think it was an impetus to form a satiric proto-folk-rock group called The Fugs a few months later. One of the first Fugs songs, never, unfortunately, put on an album, was a ditty called ‘Toe Queen Love’.” As recalled by Ed, it was only a few months later, in late ‘64, that the idea of a group started to take form after another poetry reading night at Cafè Le Metro in the East Village. Along with him, that time, it was his friend Naphtali ‘Tuli’ Kupferberg, another well known poet, author, publisher, cartoonist, and pacifist anarchist that he had known since the summer of ‘62. “One night after a poetry reading at Cafè Le Metro, Tuli Kupferberg and I visited the Dom, where we watched poets such as Robert Creeley and Amiri Baraka (then still known as LeRoi Jones) dancing to the jukebox,” recalls Ed. “Then Tuli and I retired to another bar on St. Mark’s [Place], where I suggested we form a musical group. ‘We’ll set poetry to music,’ I proclaimed. Tuli was all in favor of it.” “We drew inspiration for The Fugs from a long and varied tradition,” he continues, “going all the way back to the dances of Dionysus in the ancient Greek plays and the ‘Theory of the Spectacle’ in Aristotle’s Poetics and moving forward to the famous premiere performance of Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi in 1896, to the poèmes simultanés of the Dadaists in Zurich’s Cabaret Voltaire in 1916, to the jazz-poetry of the Beats, to Charlie Parker’s seething sax, to the silence of John Cage, to the calm pushiness of the Happening movement, to the songs of the civil rights movement, and to our belief that there were oodles of freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution that were not being used.” “At first we didn’t have a name,” he concludes. “An early one I came up with was ‘The Yodeling Socialists.’ Tuli was too anarcho for that, and even though I am the only Beatnik who can yodel, he wasn’t into the Great Yod. Another early name for The Fugs was ‘The Freaks.’ Tuli and I immediately began writing a bunch of songs. In a notebook in late 1964, I jotted: Songs for the Freaks: 1. Banana 2. Little Mary Bell (Blake’s poem) 3. I Love to Tell the Story (Christian hymn from my youth) 4. How Sweet I Roamed from Field to Field (Blake) 5. Take Me Away to That Land of Peace. On the next page of the notebook were some possible lyrics to number 5: Take me / take take / away / way way / to that land / of peace / come o come with me / to that land of peace / where we meet / all rainy / under the / ashen tree / peace o peace / come stomp me on! Wish I had finished it and put it on the first Fugs album.
THE YODELING SOCIALISTS (NOVEMBER 1964) / THE FREAKS #1 (NOVEMBER 1964 - DECEMBER 1964)
1) Ed Sanders vocals (saloon tenor), guitar, organ, sex-organ, harmonica, maracas, dick chimes, percussions
2) Tuli Kupferberg vocals (baritone), farto-phone, harmonica, erectorine, Brillo box, finger cymbals, tambourine, various percussion instruments
Ed Sanders, 1964
December 1964
The Freaks added a third member, a real musician, a drummer named Kenneth ‘Ken’ Weaver. “Tuli and I decided to invite a young man named Ken Weaver to join us in our new rock-and-roll/poetry adventure. (The term ‘folk rock’ had not yet been invented),” confirms Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “Weaver had been a drummer with the El Campo, Texas, Rice Birds marching band when in high school, and he owned a large buffalo hide drum. He had been tossed out of the air force for smoking pot, and he proudly displayed his discharge papers on the wall of his pad. He had been a volunteer typist for various Fuck You Press projects and, with his drumming skill, was soon an eager participant in the unnamed group with the very tentative title ‘The Freaks.’ I told the Folklore Center’s Israel Young about my plans to form a band. His advice was ‘Don’t do it’.”
THE FREAKS #2 (DECEMBER 1964 - JANUARY 1965) / THE FUGS #1 (JANUARY 1965 - FEBRUARY 1965)
1) Ed Sanders
2) Tuli Kupferberg
3) Ken Weaver vocals (high tenor), drums, bongos, congas, maracas
1) Ed Sanders
2) Tuli Kupferberg
3) Ken Weaver vocals (high tenor), drums, bongos, congas, maracas
January 1965
The Freaks became The Fugs. “As for the name, my main ideas, ‘The Freaks’ or ‘The Yodeling Socialists,’ were set aside when Tuli Kupferberg came up with ‘The Fugs,’ named after Norman Mailer’s euphemism for ‘Fuck,’ which he utilized in his World War II novel, The Naked and the Dead,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. At that point, “The Fugs began to rehearse at the Peace Eye Bookstore,” he adds, “and they became popular events as scads of friends began to show up to hang out during run-throughs.”
February 1965
Ed Sanders’ late poet friend Bill Szabo joined The Fugs on amphetamine flute and recorder.
The Freaks became The Fugs. “As for the name, my main ideas, ‘The Freaks’ or ‘The Yodeling Socialists,’ were set aside when Tuli Kupferberg came up with ‘The Fugs,’ named after Norman Mailer’s euphemism for ‘Fuck,’ which he utilized in his World War II novel, The Naked and the Dead,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. At that point, “The Fugs began to rehearse at the Peace Eye Bookstore,” he adds, “and they became popular events as scads of friends began to show up to hang out during run-throughs.”
February 1965
Ed Sanders’ late poet friend Bill Szabo joined The Fugs on amphetamine flute and recorder.
THE FUGS #2 (FEBRUARY 1965 - MARCH 1, 1965 (?))
1) Ed Sanders
2) Tuli Kupferberg
3) Ken Weaver
4) Bill Sazbo amphetamine flute, recorder
Sunday, February 21, 1965
That night someone broke into Ed Sanders’ Peace Eye Bookstore “and stole Fugs equipment, including Ken Weaver’s groovy wide buffalo hide drum,” recalls Sanders in his autobiography. “When the junkies stole his buffalo hide drum from Peace Eye, he [Weaver] was forced to perform on a drum made from a Krasdale peach box!,” added Sanders.
Wednesday, February 24, 1965: Peace Eye Bookstore, 383 East 10th Street, b/w Avenues B and C, East Village, Lower East Side, Lower Manhattan, New York City, New York
The Fugs played their first gig together at the grand opening of the Peace Eye Bookstore (which was also a celebration of the third anniversary issue of Ed Sanders’ Fuck You / A Magazine of the Arts). The Holy Modal Rounders, a folk duo constiting of Steve Weber and Peter Stampfel, also agreed to perform at the event which lasted from 6:00pm to 11:00pm. “The store was totally packed for the Opening,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “I affixed the three Andy Warhol silkscreened flower images to the walls of Peace Eye. Time magazine sent a team of reporters. A limousine arrived, depositing author James Michener in evening attire. He told me that Andy Warhol had urged him to attend. I asked the crowd to stand back, and The Fugs set up. I made sure the performance was taped. We did about twenty minutes, with ditties such as ‘Nothing,’ a tune called ‘Bull-Tongue Clit,’ also ‘The Ten Commandments’ and the ‘Swinburne Stomp,’ featuring a few stanzas from A. C. Swinburne’s play Atalanta in Calydon. One of my professors from NYU, Frank Peters, was there. His favorite tune from The Fugs set that night, he told me, was ‘Swinburne Stomp.’ William Burroughs asked me, ‘Which one is from Time?’ I pointed out the reporter with the first name Chris. He stared at the guy and replied, ‘I thought so.’ Burroughs disliked Time intensely. I think it had to do with Time’s coverage of Burroughs shooting his wife, Joan Vollmer, to death in September 1951.”
Saturday, February 27, 1965: Gallery 111, 111 St. Mark’s Place, East Village, Lower East Side, Lower Manhattan, New York City, New York
The Fugs’ second gig started at 4:00pm.
Monday, March 1, 1965 (?)
Bill Szabo left the Fugs because he was hooked on heroin at the time, which made it difficult for him to come to rehearsals or keep to an exact non-sweaty schedule. He was replaced by another Ed Sanders’ late poet friend named Aulden Jay ‘Al’ Fowler (b. Albany, New York). Also the Holy Modal Rounders, aka Steve Weber and Peter Stampfel, joined The Fugs as ‘auxiliary members.’
That night someone broke into Ed Sanders’ Peace Eye Bookstore “and stole Fugs equipment, including Ken Weaver’s groovy wide buffalo hide drum,” recalls Sanders in his autobiography. “When the junkies stole his buffalo hide drum from Peace Eye, he [Weaver] was forced to perform on a drum made from a Krasdale peach box!,” added Sanders.
Wednesday, February 24, 1965: Peace Eye Bookstore, 383 East 10th Street, b/w Avenues B and C, East Village, Lower East Side, Lower Manhattan, New York City, New York
The Fugs played their first gig together at the grand opening of the Peace Eye Bookstore (which was also a celebration of the third anniversary issue of Ed Sanders’ Fuck You / A Magazine of the Arts). The Holy Modal Rounders, a folk duo constiting of Steve Weber and Peter Stampfel, also agreed to perform at the event which lasted from 6:00pm to 11:00pm. “The store was totally packed for the Opening,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “I affixed the three Andy Warhol silkscreened flower images to the walls of Peace Eye. Time magazine sent a team of reporters. A limousine arrived, depositing author James Michener in evening attire. He told me that Andy Warhol had urged him to attend. I asked the crowd to stand back, and The Fugs set up. I made sure the performance was taped. We did about twenty minutes, with ditties such as ‘Nothing,’ a tune called ‘Bull-Tongue Clit,’ also ‘The Ten Commandments’ and the ‘Swinburne Stomp,’ featuring a few stanzas from A. C. Swinburne’s play Atalanta in Calydon. One of my professors from NYU, Frank Peters, was there. His favorite tune from The Fugs set that night, he told me, was ‘Swinburne Stomp.’ William Burroughs asked me, ‘Which one is from Time?’ I pointed out the reporter with the first name Chris. He stared at the guy and replied, ‘I thought so.’ Burroughs disliked Time intensely. I think it had to do with Time’s coverage of Burroughs shooting his wife, Joan Vollmer, to death in September 1951.”
Saturday, February 27, 1965: Gallery 111, 111 St. Mark’s Place, East Village, Lower East Side, Lower Manhattan, New York City, New York
The Fugs’ second gig started at 4:00pm.
Monday, March 1, 1965 (?)
Bill Szabo left the Fugs because he was hooked on heroin at the time, which made it difficult for him to come to rehearsals or keep to an exact non-sweaty schedule. He was replaced by another Ed Sanders’ late poet friend named Aulden Jay ‘Al’ Fowler (b. Albany, New York). Also the Holy Modal Rounders, aka Steve Weber and Peter Stampfel, joined The Fugs as ‘auxiliary members.’
THE FUGS #3 (MARCH 1, 1965 (?) - MARCH 1965)
1) Ed Sanders
2) Tuli Kupferberg
3) Ken Weaver
4) Al Fowler amphetamine flute, recorder
5) Steve Weber vocals (amphetamine soprano), guitar
6) Peter Stampfel vocals, fiddle, banjo, guitar, harmonica
Monday, March 8, 1965: East End Theatre, 85 East 4th Street, East Village, Lower East Side, Lower Manhattan, New York City, New York
The Fugs’ third gig started at 9:30pm.
March 1965
After only one gig and a few rehearsals, Al Fowler left the Fugs because, just like Bill Szabo, he was also hooked on heroin at the time, which made it difficult for him to come to rehearsals or keep to an exact non-sweaty schedule. “On January 23, 1980, Al Fowler either fell or was shoved into the path of an oncoming subway train in Manhattan,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “He showed up at the ticket booth, gave his name, then collapsed into unconsciousness. He lingered for nine days, never recovering consciousness, then passed away. It was two weeks after his fortieth birthday.”
The Fugs’ third gig started at 9:30pm.
March 1965
After only one gig and a few rehearsals, Al Fowler left the Fugs because, just like Bill Szabo, he was also hooked on heroin at the time, which made it difficult for him to come to rehearsals or keep to an exact non-sweaty schedule. “On January 23, 1980, Al Fowler either fell or was shoved into the path of an oncoming subway train in Manhattan,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “He showed up at the ticket booth, gave his name, then collapsed into unconsciousness. He lingered for nine days, never recovering consciousness, then passed away. It was two weeks after his fortieth birthday.”
THE FUGS #4 (MARCH 1965 - MAY 10, 1965 (?))
1) Ed Sanders
2) Tuli Kupferberg
3) Ken Weaver
4) Steve Weber
5) Peter Stampfel
Monday, March 29 - Tuesday, March 30 and Monday, April 5, 1965: ‘A three day FUG-festival,’ East End Theatre, 85 East 4th Street, East Village, Lower East Side, Lower Manhattan, New York City, New York
One show each day, started at 9:00pm. “I sometimes wore the cloth flower banners Andy Warhol had made for the opening of Peace Eye as a kind of shawl, especially at Fugs shows” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “At the three-day festival Tuli wanted to sing a ditty he’d just written. It was not my favorite tune, so I had him sing it bent over, with his head near the floor. During his bent-over crooning, I draped the yellow Warhol Flower silkscreen over him. He crooned a cappella to the melody of the James Bond movie theme Goldfinger, his tune with the title ‘Pussy Galore.’ It began: They call her Pussy Galore / She’s a girl from the Eastern Shore / And she flew out to fame / And her name it is Pussy Galore / A fink named Goldfinger / Tried to play some stinkfinger / With our Pussy but she wouldn’t give in / to a coldfinger . . . / et al. Later in the concert, during the freakout we always provided at the end of ‘Nothing,’ when we rolled on the floor and broke things - I was always smashing up tambourines - that very night, perhaps in a pique of self-abnegation, I tore up the beautiful Warhol banner, the very one I had used to drape the bent-over Tuli during ‘Pussy Galore,’ at the conclusion of ‘Nothing.’ It was a very expensive tearup. Another of the Warhol colored silk-screened flowers, the green one, I used as a rain cape and accidentally left in a deli near the Peace Eye Bookstore. The single red Warhol banner I managed to keep. Decades later [my wife] Miriam and I sold it. It’s now called ‘The Peace Eye Diptych.’ Not long ago I saw it in a Sotheby’s auction listing, where it sold for $250,000. That’s why I say a Fugs show in which I tore up a Warhol banner cost me $250,000, and if I count the time I left the Warhol flower screen in the deli, that places my loss at $500k!!”
One show each day, started at 9:00pm. “I sometimes wore the cloth flower banners Andy Warhol had made for the opening of Peace Eye as a kind of shawl, especially at Fugs shows” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “At the three-day festival Tuli wanted to sing a ditty he’d just written. It was not my favorite tune, so I had him sing it bent over, with his head near the floor. During his bent-over crooning, I draped the yellow Warhol Flower silkscreen over him. He crooned a cappella to the melody of the James Bond movie theme Goldfinger, his tune with the title ‘Pussy Galore.’ It began: They call her Pussy Galore / She’s a girl from the Eastern Shore / And she flew out to fame / And her name it is Pussy Galore / A fink named Goldfinger / Tried to play some stinkfinger / With our Pussy but she wouldn’t give in / to a coldfinger . . . / et al. Later in the concert, during the freakout we always provided at the end of ‘Nothing,’ when we rolled on the floor and broke things - I was always smashing up tambourines - that very night, perhaps in a pique of self-abnegation, I tore up the beautiful Warhol banner, the very one I had used to drape the bent-over Tuli during ‘Pussy Galore,’ at the conclusion of ‘Nothing.’ It was a very expensive tearup. Another of the Warhol colored silk-screened flowers, the green one, I used as a rain cape and accidentally left in a deli near the Peace Eye Bookstore. The single red Warhol banner I managed to keep. Decades later [my wife] Miriam and I sold it. It’s now called ‘The Peace Eye Diptych.’ Not long ago I saw it in a Sotheby’s auction listing, where it sold for $250,000. That’s why I say a Fugs show in which I tore up a Warhol banner cost me $250,000, and if I count the time I left the Warhol flower screen in the deli, that places my loss at $500k!!”
Spring 1965: ‘Grand Opening,’ Folklore Center, 321 6th Avenue at West 3rd Street, West Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
“Ken Weaver certainly could have used a [Andy] Warhol Brillo box as a drum for the first [sic] Fugs concert, held at the grand opening of the new location of Israel Young’s Folklore Center, on Sixth Avenue at West Third Street,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography.
April 1965: Cue Recordings Inc., 117 West 46th Street, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Ed Sanders’ avant-garde filmmaker, artist, and occultist friend Harry Smith arranged for the Fugs an afternoon recording session for Folkways Records that month. “Harry came to a number of early Fugs performances,” recalls Ed in his autobiography. “I usually called out to him from the stage. He liked it when I introduced, say, Tuli’s song ‘Nothing,’ ‘In the key of Metaphysical Distress —Nothing!!’. Then he told me he could arrange for a recording session for Folkways Records. I went to the Folkways office at 165 West Fortysixth Street, where I met Moe Asch, the owner. He okayed Harry supervising a Fugs recording session. Harry examined a list of tunes I had lying on the Peace Eye desk. He chuckled at a proposed Fugs tune (never recorded) ‘Whenever I’m in an Airplane Crash, I Reach for My Fly’.” “[For the session] I had prepared a sequence of twenty-two songs, in a certain order, and we recorded them in one long flow, then recorded them a second time,” he continues. “Steve and Peter also recorded some of their Holy Modal Rounder tunes during the session. At first we set up our positions — but seemed uncertain on how to proceed. ‘Just get going,’ Harry Smith commanded from the control booth, and so we did just that. We arrayed ourselves in front of microphones and began recording the sequence of twenty-two. In the middle of the session a guy from Folkways showed up with a contract and modest cash for each player. The contract was for ‘The Fugs Jug Band.’ I scratched out the words ‘Jug Band’ on the contract. Harry, as far as I know, received no financial reward for the recording. He asked for a bottle of rum, which I bought. During the session, I think perhaps to spur us to greater motivity and energy, he came in from the recording booth to the room where we were singing and smashed the bottle of rum against the wall. We took no breaks (except to sign the contracts), and Harry instructed the recording engineer just to let the tape keep running to catch the patter between takes. Little did I know that the tunes from this initial quick, maybe three-hour session would stay in print through the rest of the century and beyond.” Peter Stampfel also recalled the band’s first recording session in his regular column ‘Holy Modal Blither’ for The Broadside biweekly magazine (June 9, 1965): “In April, Weber and I cut a record with a group called 'The Fugs' who we are auxiliary members of. The record was done by Folkways and is supposed to be out this summer. The other Fugs are Ed Sanders, who edits that lurid magazine mentioned on the back of our record, Tuli Kupferberg, who puts out 'Yeah,' 'Birth,' 'Swing' and other publications, and Ken Weaver, a mad Oklahoma drummer who has had four drums stolen from him this year. The last one I heard of was stolen by two cats on East 10th Street who attacked him with a hammer. Honest to God. Hary Smith arranged the recording and broke a wine bottle in the middle of 'The Swineburn Stop [sic]’ [actually ‘Nothing’], which is pretty noisy, so I don't know if you'll be able to hear it on the record. All the Fugs hits on the record were written by the Fugs, and they usually glorify anti-social behavior, anarchy, peace-stomping, lust, and the expanding universe. Pester record dealers for it, and watch their shock when the record really appears.” “I’m just on two cuts (‘Swinebourne Stomp’ [sic] and ‘Nothing’),” added Peter in his later column ‘The Veer City Rider’ for The Broadside biweekly magazine (March 16, 1966). “The cut of ‘Nothing’ is where Harry Smith (of anthology fame) broke a wine bottle in the middle.” Anyway, among the 22 songs recorded that day, there were: ‘Defeated,’ ‘Home Made Yodel,’ ‘Saran Wrap,’ ‘Supergirl,’ ‘Kill for Peace,’ and the aforementioned ‘Nothing,’ and ‘Swinburne Stomp.’
Monday, May 10, 1965 (?)
Steve Weber and Peter Stampfel temporarily left the band because they had an out of town gig to play as the Holy Modal Rounders at the Unicorn coffeehouse in Boston from May 11 to 23. At that point, a couple of local guitarists, Vincent ‘Vinny’ Leary and Moe Mahoney, filled in for them, although it’s not clear if they had played together in the Fugs, or Vinny replaced Moe or vice versa.
THE FUGS #5 (MAY 10, 1965 (?) - MAY 24, 1965 (?))
1) Ed Sanders
2) Tuli Kupferberg
3) Ken Weaver
4) Vincent ‘Vinny’ ‘Vin’ Leary vocals, guitar, harmonica
and/or
5) Moe Mahoney guitar
Monday, May 24, 1965 (?)
Peter Stampfel and Steve Weber returned home in New York City and, supposedly, rejoined the Fugs instantly.
THE FUGS #6 (aka #4) (MAY 24, 1965 (?) - MAY 31, 1965 (?))
1) Ed Sanders
2) Tuli Kupferberg
3) Ken Weaver
4) Steve Weber
5) Peter Stampfel
1) Ed Sanders
2) Tuli Kupferberg
3) Ken Weaver
4) Steve Weber
5) Peter Stampfel
Monday, May 31, 1965 (?)
Peter Stampfel and Steve Weber temporarily left the band again because they had another out of town gig to play as the Holy Modal Rounders at the Chess Mate coffeehouse in Detroit from June 1 to 13. The Fugs replaced them with a local blues guitarist named William Henry ‘Bill’ Barth.
Peter Stampfel and Steve Weber temporarily left the band again because they had another out of town gig to play as the Holy Modal Rounders at the Chess Mate coffeehouse in Detroit from June 1 to 13. The Fugs replaced them with a local blues guitarist named William Henry ‘Bill’ Barth.
THE FUGS #7 (MAY 31, 1965 (?) - JUNE 14, 1965 (?))
1) Ed Sanders
2) Tuli Kupferberg
3) Ken Weaver
4) Bill Barth guitar
1) Ed Sanders
2) Tuli Kupferberg
3) Ken Weaver
4) Bill Barth guitar
Saturday, June 12, 1965: The Bridge (theatre), 4 St. Mark’s Place, East Village, Lower East Side, Lower Manhattan, New York City, New York
The Fugs played a midnight sold-out show. An ad published in The Village Voice dated June 10, 1965, said: “Who are The Fugs? What are The Fugs? When do The Fugs strike? Sources indicate The Fugs are a semi-deranged folk singing organism which includes Tuli Kupferberg, Ed Sanders, Ken Weaver and Bill Barth. This organism will (?) at The Bridge to encounter you. Come early - but not too early.”
Monday, June 14, 1965 (?)
Peter Stampfel and Steve Weber returned home in New York City and, supposedly, rejoined the Fugs instantly. Bill Barth, meanwhile, went to form a famous jazz-based rock band called the Insect Trust.
The Fugs played a midnight sold-out show. An ad published in The Village Voice dated June 10, 1965, said: “Who are The Fugs? What are The Fugs? When do The Fugs strike? Sources indicate The Fugs are a semi-deranged folk singing organism which includes Tuli Kupferberg, Ed Sanders, Ken Weaver and Bill Barth. This organism will (?) at The Bridge to encounter you. Come early - but not too early.”
Monday, June 14, 1965 (?)
Peter Stampfel and Steve Weber returned home in New York City and, supposedly, rejoined the Fugs instantly. Bill Barth, meanwhile, went to form a famous jazz-based rock band called the Insect Trust.
THE FUGS #8 (aka #4) (JUNE 14, 1965 (?) - JUNE 2?, 1965)
1) Ed Sanders
2) Tuli Kupferberg
3) Ken Weaver
4) Steve Weber
5) Peter Stampfel
Thursday, June 17, 1965
The Village Voice columnist John Wilcock interviewed Ed Sanders for his regular column ‘The Village Square,’ which was published in the today issue of the nation’s first alternative weekly newspaper based in New York City. In the interview, Ed speaked about everything, from his private life to his several activities which included, of course, The Fugs. About them, he said: “The Fugs are a rock and roll, folk, and poetry spew-singing group operating as an emanation of the culture of the lower East Side. All of their 40 or so songs are original creations or adaptions of poems. We believe in BODY POETRY. That is, the Fugs work through the genitals and the Big Beat to get to the brain, and through the brain and the Big Beat to get to the genitals, thus creating a thrilling cross-current. You can freak all this out in our forthcoming Folkways record album.”
Saturday, June 19, 1965: The Bridge (theatre), 4 St. Mark’s Place, East Village, Lower East Side, Lower Manhattan, New York City, New York
The Fugs played a midnight sold-out show. An ad published in The Village Voice dated June 17, 1965, said: “Who are The Fugs? What are The Fugs? When do The Fugs strike? Sources indicate The Fugs are a semi-deranged folk singing organism which includes Tuli Kupferberg, Ed Sanders, Ken Weaver and Bill Barth. This organism will (?) at The Bridge to encounter you. Come early - but not too early.”
June 2?, 1965
The Fugs added a bass player named John A. Anderson III (b. 1946), a freshman from Yale University (New Haven, Connecticut) who worked at the New York World’s Fair and lived in an apartment on the Lower East Side that summer. “I wandered around the neighborhood and heard about a rock group called the Fugs playing at the Bridge Street Theater [sic],” recalls Anderson in an interview with Jeff Pollock for the Yale University magazine The New Journal (February 9, 1969). “I went one night and talked to them and then met them again at the Peace Eye book store, which was run by their leader, Ed Sanders. They were all amazingly energetic guys. Ed got his B.A. in Greek and Latin literature from NYU and was a pretty active poet. He had worked at a tobacco stand on Times Square for a while until he got enough backing to open the Peace Eye. The Fugs had really gotten going during the previous winter. Ed had grown up with classical rock and roll in the fifties. He was high school class of ’56 and a cheerleader at the time, you know: ‘Tough as nails, hard as bricks, Southwest High School fifty-six!’ In fact, that’s why Ed is in a football uniform on the cover of the Fugs’ second album. The other core members of the group were Ken Weaver and Tuli Kupferberg, an old-time New York anarchist and poet. Tuli has always had a tremendous following, primarily of young girls. He’s a very beatific person, like a kindly wise uncle, but it wasn’t always totally platonic. He’s not a dirty old man--he takes young girls to bed sometimes and just interdigitates with them. My best friend was Ken Weaver. He was born a bastard in Texas and had some pretty traumatic times moving from one foster home to another. After four years in the Air Force as a Russian translator, he got a job working on Wall Street. As kind of a reaction to the service, he wore turtlenecks to work and started letting his hair and beard grow. He eventually quit Wall Street and lived by donating blood for five bucks a pint. When I met him he was sleeping in the back room of Ed’s book store.” “I was a guide that summer in the Federal pavilion at the New York World’s Fair,” continues Anderson. “The Fugs thought it was interesting, and I was a new kind of person for them to have as a friend, a Yalie. We made friends quickly enough so that there were no undercurrents--I laughed at them and they laughed at me. I bought a bass guitar and kind of joined up.” “He was an excellent bass player and could sing excellent harmonies,” recalls Ed Sanders about Anderson in his autobiography. “He was also an artist and designed the red, white, and blue Fugs logo, which we spray-painted on sweatshirts, using a stencil John created. We also sold black Fugs panties, with a gold ‘Fugs’ on each and an arrow leading downward to the mons veneris. I designed and printed The Fugs Songbook on the Peace Eye mimeograph, which we sold at performances and in the Peace Eye book catalogs.” “The group was playing the old kind of music I used to like,” also recalls John Anderson, “we sung two William Blake poems in bluegrass and did rock and roll parodies. Tuli and Ed had decided that they wanted to use rock and roll to convey poetry of their own. They had visions of merging modern poetry with modern music, which both of them appreciated as a classical idea. With Dylan’s new music a lot of rock was becoming poetic, and since I expressed an interest they indicated that they would like to have me along. Obviously I didn’t look like them much, because my hair wasn’t very long and I didn’t have a beard. But they were the last people at that time to worry about any kind of image. In fact, later on my image became valuable as a sort of oasis of innocence. They accepted me on the basis of the contribution I made, which was dependability and some sort of organized music. You see, I could be counted on to play the same note roughly at the same time in a given song, every time they played it.” “A lot of New York kids were our early following,” concludes Anderson, “as the hippie phenomenon was beginning. But we’d also get a lot of uptown, middle-class, middle-brow, middle-aged people, who would come in and giggle nervously away through the whole show. Most of the songs were Ed and Tuli’s. Things like ‘Swineburn Stomp,’ ‘Wet Dream over You’ and ‘Supergirl.’ Ed Sanders did most of the singing, although Tuli did some in the early days. The rest of us did background harmony, if you could call it that.”
The Village Voice columnist John Wilcock interviewed Ed Sanders for his regular column ‘The Village Square,’ which was published in the today issue of the nation’s first alternative weekly newspaper based in New York City. In the interview, Ed speaked about everything, from his private life to his several activities which included, of course, The Fugs. About them, he said: “The Fugs are a rock and roll, folk, and poetry spew-singing group operating as an emanation of the culture of the lower East Side. All of their 40 or so songs are original creations or adaptions of poems. We believe in BODY POETRY. That is, the Fugs work through the genitals and the Big Beat to get to the brain, and through the brain and the Big Beat to get to the genitals, thus creating a thrilling cross-current. You can freak all this out in our forthcoming Folkways record album.”
Saturday, June 19, 1965: The Bridge (theatre), 4 St. Mark’s Place, East Village, Lower East Side, Lower Manhattan, New York City, New York
The Fugs played a midnight sold-out show. An ad published in The Village Voice dated June 17, 1965, said: “Who are The Fugs? What are The Fugs? When do The Fugs strike? Sources indicate The Fugs are a semi-deranged folk singing organism which includes Tuli Kupferberg, Ed Sanders, Ken Weaver and Bill Barth. This organism will (?) at The Bridge to encounter you. Come early - but not too early.”
June 2?, 1965
The Fugs added a bass player named John A. Anderson III (b. 1946), a freshman from Yale University (New Haven, Connecticut) who worked at the New York World’s Fair and lived in an apartment on the Lower East Side that summer. “I wandered around the neighborhood and heard about a rock group called the Fugs playing at the Bridge Street Theater [sic],” recalls Anderson in an interview with Jeff Pollock for the Yale University magazine The New Journal (February 9, 1969). “I went one night and talked to them and then met them again at the Peace Eye book store, which was run by their leader, Ed Sanders. They were all amazingly energetic guys. Ed got his B.A. in Greek and Latin literature from NYU and was a pretty active poet. He had worked at a tobacco stand on Times Square for a while until he got enough backing to open the Peace Eye. The Fugs had really gotten going during the previous winter. Ed had grown up with classical rock and roll in the fifties. He was high school class of ’56 and a cheerleader at the time, you know: ‘Tough as nails, hard as bricks, Southwest High School fifty-six!’ In fact, that’s why Ed is in a football uniform on the cover of the Fugs’ second album. The other core members of the group were Ken Weaver and Tuli Kupferberg, an old-time New York anarchist and poet. Tuli has always had a tremendous following, primarily of young girls. He’s a very beatific person, like a kindly wise uncle, but it wasn’t always totally platonic. He’s not a dirty old man--he takes young girls to bed sometimes and just interdigitates with them. My best friend was Ken Weaver. He was born a bastard in Texas and had some pretty traumatic times moving from one foster home to another. After four years in the Air Force as a Russian translator, he got a job working on Wall Street. As kind of a reaction to the service, he wore turtlenecks to work and started letting his hair and beard grow. He eventually quit Wall Street and lived by donating blood for five bucks a pint. When I met him he was sleeping in the back room of Ed’s book store.” “I was a guide that summer in the Federal pavilion at the New York World’s Fair,” continues Anderson. “The Fugs thought it was interesting, and I was a new kind of person for them to have as a friend, a Yalie. We made friends quickly enough so that there were no undercurrents--I laughed at them and they laughed at me. I bought a bass guitar and kind of joined up.” “He was an excellent bass player and could sing excellent harmonies,” recalls Ed Sanders about Anderson in his autobiography. “He was also an artist and designed the red, white, and blue Fugs logo, which we spray-painted on sweatshirts, using a stencil John created. We also sold black Fugs panties, with a gold ‘Fugs’ on each and an arrow leading downward to the mons veneris. I designed and printed The Fugs Songbook on the Peace Eye mimeograph, which we sold at performances and in the Peace Eye book catalogs.” “The group was playing the old kind of music I used to like,” also recalls John Anderson, “we sung two William Blake poems in bluegrass and did rock and roll parodies. Tuli and Ed had decided that they wanted to use rock and roll to convey poetry of their own. They had visions of merging modern poetry with modern music, which both of them appreciated as a classical idea. With Dylan’s new music a lot of rock was becoming poetic, and since I expressed an interest they indicated that they would like to have me along. Obviously I didn’t look like them much, because my hair wasn’t very long and I didn’t have a beard. But they were the last people at that time to worry about any kind of image. In fact, later on my image became valuable as a sort of oasis of innocence. They accepted me on the basis of the contribution I made, which was dependability and some sort of organized music. You see, I could be counted on to play the same note roughly at the same time in a given song, every time they played it.” “A lot of New York kids were our early following,” concludes Anderson, “as the hippie phenomenon was beginning. But we’d also get a lot of uptown, middle-class, middle-brow, middle-aged people, who would come in and giggle nervously away through the whole show. Most of the songs were Ed and Tuli’s. Things like ‘Swineburn Stomp,’ ‘Wet Dream over You’ and ‘Supergirl.’ Ed Sanders did most of the singing, although Tuli did some in the early days. The rest of us did background harmony, if you could call it that.”
THE FUGS #9 (JUNE 2?, 1965 - JUNE 30, 1965 (?))
1) Ed Sanders
2) Tuli Kupferberg
3) Ken Weaver
4) Steve Weber
5) Peter Stampfel
6) John Anderson bass, vocals
1) Ed Sanders
2) Tuli Kupferberg
3) Ken Weaver
4) Steve Weber
5) Peter Stampfel
6) John Anderson bass, vocals
Tuesday, June 29, 1965: ‘The Cino’s Not for Burning - Benefit for The Caffe Cino,’ The Caffe Cino, 31 Cornelia Street, West Village, Greenwich Village, Lower Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two benefit shows, 8:00pm and 12 midnight. Also on the bill: Al Carmines, Ellen Stewart (MC), Warren Finnerty, John Herbert McDowell, and others.
Wednesday, June 30, 1965 (?)
Peter Stampfel and Steve Weber temporarily left the band again because they had another out of town gig to play as the Holy Modal Rounders at Club 47 in Cambridge on July 1 and 2.
Two benefit shows, 8:00pm and 12 midnight. Also on the bill: Al Carmines, Ellen Stewart (MC), Warren Finnerty, John Herbert McDowell, and others.
Wednesday, June 30, 1965 (?)
Peter Stampfel and Steve Weber temporarily left the band again because they had another out of town gig to play as the Holy Modal Rounders at Club 47 in Cambridge on July 1 and 2.
THE FUGS #10 (JUNE 30, 1965 (?) - JULY 3, 1965 (?))
1) Ed Sanders
2) Tuli Kupferberg
3) Ken Weaver
4) John Anderson
1) Ed Sanders
2) Tuli Kupferberg
3) Ken Weaver
4) John Anderson
Friday, July 2, 1965: ‘Freak with The Fugs,’ Ego East, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Saturday, July 3, 1965 (?)
While in Cambridge, the Holy Modal Rounders disbanded so when Peter Stampfel and Steve Weber returned home in New York City they each went their separate ways, with Stampfel which went solo while Weber rejoined the Fugs. At that point, to replace Stampfel as their second guitarist, the band called back Vinny Leary.
THE FUGS #11 (JULY 3, 1965 (?) - SEPTEMBER 22, 1965)
1) Ed Sanders
2) Tuli Kupferberg
3) Ken Weaver
4) John Anderson
5) Steve Weber
6) Vinny Leary
+
7) Nick Amster drums (only on August 7)
Saturday, July 3, 1965: The Bridge (theatre), 4 St. Mark’s Place, East Village, Lower East Side, Lower Manhattan, New York City, New York
The Fugs played a midnight sold-out show.
Saturday, July 10, 1965: The Bridge (theatre), 4 St. Mark’s Place, East Village, Lower East Side, Lower Manhattan, New York City, New York
The Fugs played a midnight sold-out show.
Saturday, July 17, 1965: The Bridge (theatre), 4 St. Mark’s Place, East Village, Lower East Side, Lower Manhattan, New York City, New York
The Fugs played a midnight sold-out show.
Saturday, July 24, 1965: The Bridge (theatre), 4 St. Mark’s Place, East Village, Lower East Side, Lower Manhattan, New York City, New York
The Fugs played a midnight sold-out show.
Saturday, July 31, 1965: The Bridge (theatre), 4 St. Mark’s Place, East Village, Lower East Side, Lower Manhattan, New York City, New York
The Fugs played a midnight sold-out show.
July 1965: Andy Warhol’s The Factory, 231 East 47th Street, Midtown Manhattan, New York City, New York
The Fugs performed en masse for one of Andy Warhol's impromptu portrait reels while Billy Name photographed their in-house performance. It is unknown how long this film is or whether it still exists.
Saturday, August 7, 1965: ‘A Night of Napalm In Support of the Assembly of Unrepresented People,’ The Bridge (theatre), 4 St. Mark’s Place, East Village, Lower East Side, Lower Manhattan, New York City, New York
The Fugs played a midnight sold-out benefit show. “We had learned about the use of napalm and defoliants in Vietnam, and it seemed almost too horrible to chant about,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “Tuli prepared a tape of patriotic songs, which we played. We performed our regular set, with songs such as ‘Kill for Peace,’ ‘Nothing,’ and my ‘Strafe Them Creeps in the Rice Paddy, Daddy.’ (I later used it as part of the ‘War Song’ suite on our album Tenderness Junction.) The band also worked up my ‘No Redemption’ chant, which I had intended to utilize in Amphetamine Head - A Study of Power in America: No Redemption No Redemption / No Redemption from Evil and Sin / No Redemption from the Hate and the Horror / No Redemption No Redemption / The River is full of Corpses / The River is full of the Boats of Death / No Redemption No Redemption . . . and on and on. Then we enacted what we called ‘The Fugs Spaghetti Death.’ We had boiled pot after pot of spaghetti at Betsy Klein’s apartment that afternoon until we had almost an entire wastebasket full of spaghetti. We threw globs of the spaghetti at one another and at the audience. It was all over the stage, and we began to slip, slide, and fall. I spotted Andy Warhol in the front row. It appeared that he was wearing a leather tie - then blap! I got him full face with a glop of spaghetti. Another surreal night at the Bridge Theater. And a huge job the next afternoon, scraping strings of dried spaghetti off a barren stage.” By the way, according to Ed Sanders, a 17-year-old musician and film aficionado friend of him, Nick Amster, played drums with the Fugs that night, although he did not specify if he played it along Ken Weaver or if the latter missed the gig so Nick filled in for him.
The Fugs played a midnight sold-out show.
Saturday, July 10, 1965: The Bridge (theatre), 4 St. Mark’s Place, East Village, Lower East Side, Lower Manhattan, New York City, New York
The Fugs played a midnight sold-out show.
Saturday, July 17, 1965: The Bridge (theatre), 4 St. Mark’s Place, East Village, Lower East Side, Lower Manhattan, New York City, New York
The Fugs played a midnight sold-out show.
Saturday, July 24, 1965: The Bridge (theatre), 4 St. Mark’s Place, East Village, Lower East Side, Lower Manhattan, New York City, New York
The Fugs played a midnight sold-out show.
Saturday, July 31, 1965: The Bridge (theatre), 4 St. Mark’s Place, East Village, Lower East Side, Lower Manhattan, New York City, New York
The Fugs played a midnight sold-out show.
July 1965: Andy Warhol’s The Factory, 231 East 47th Street, Midtown Manhattan, New York City, New York
The Fugs performed en masse for one of Andy Warhol's impromptu portrait reels while Billy Name photographed their in-house performance. It is unknown how long this film is or whether it still exists.
Saturday, August 7, 1965: ‘A Night of Napalm In Support of the Assembly of Unrepresented People,’ The Bridge (theatre), 4 St. Mark’s Place, East Village, Lower East Side, Lower Manhattan, New York City, New York
The Fugs played a midnight sold-out benefit show. “We had learned about the use of napalm and defoliants in Vietnam, and it seemed almost too horrible to chant about,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “Tuli prepared a tape of patriotic songs, which we played. We performed our regular set, with songs such as ‘Kill for Peace,’ ‘Nothing,’ and my ‘Strafe Them Creeps in the Rice Paddy, Daddy.’ (I later used it as part of the ‘War Song’ suite on our album Tenderness Junction.) The band also worked up my ‘No Redemption’ chant, which I had intended to utilize in Amphetamine Head - A Study of Power in America: No Redemption No Redemption / No Redemption from Evil and Sin / No Redemption from the Hate and the Horror / No Redemption No Redemption / The River is full of Corpses / The River is full of the Boats of Death / No Redemption No Redemption . . . and on and on. Then we enacted what we called ‘The Fugs Spaghetti Death.’ We had boiled pot after pot of spaghetti at Betsy Klein’s apartment that afternoon until we had almost an entire wastebasket full of spaghetti. We threw globs of the spaghetti at one another and at the audience. It was all over the stage, and we began to slip, slide, and fall. I spotted Andy Warhol in the front row. It appeared that he was wearing a leather tie - then blap! I got him full face with a glop of spaghetti. Another surreal night at the Bridge Theater. And a huge job the next afternoon, scraping strings of dried spaghetti off a barren stage.” By the way, according to Ed Sanders, a 17-year-old musician and film aficionado friend of him, Nick Amster, played drums with the Fugs that night, although he did not specify if he played it along Ken Weaver or if the latter missed the gig so Nick filled in for him.
Wednesday, August 11, 1965: Auditorium, Broadway Central Hotel, 673 Broadway, Manhattan, New York City, New York
The Fugs, along with the Falling Spikes (soon-to-be the Velvet Underground), provided music live entertainment at a benefit held to raise money to provide bail for Dale Wilbourne, who had been arrested with Jack William Martin on a marijuana charge. The late poet and underground filmmaker Piero Heliczer was the master of cerimonies. There were about 200 people present. “The Fugs and others held a benefit at the Broadway Central Hotel for defendants Jack Martin and Dale Wilbourne,” confirms Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “Federal agents showed up outside the gig and harassed people! I’ll never forget the image of filmmaker Jack Smith, his face bloodied from a confrontation with the police outside the Broadway Central. He and others (but not The Fugs) were arrested at the benefit.”
Saturday, August 14, 1965: The Bridge (theatre), 4 St. Mark’s Place, East Village, Lower East Side, Lower Manhattan, New York City, New York
The Fugs played a midnight sold-out show.
Saturday, August 21, 1965: The Bridge (theatre), 4 St. Mark’s Place, East Village, Lower East Side, Lower Manhattan, New York City, New York
The Fugs played a midnight sold-out show.
Sunday, August 22, 1965: ‘A benefit for Jack Smith, Jack Martin, Dale Wilbourne, Irene Noland & Piero Heliczer,’ Village Gate (theatre), 158 Bleecker Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
After the arrests at the above mentioned benefit, “there had to be ANOTHER benefit,” explains Ed Sanders in his autobiography, “this one at Art D’ Lu-goff’s Village Gate, on the afternoon of August 22, at which The Fugs again performed.” One show, from 3:00pm to 7:00pm. Also on the bill: The Cineola Transcendental Orchestra, John Vaccaro, Beverly Grant, Baby Jane Holzer, Mario Montez, plus underground movies by Warhol, Vehr, Linder, Heliczer, Anger, Smith, Vanderbeek, Frank, Leslie, and others. “We used to play at benefits with a group called the Falling Spikes, and together we’d be called the Transcendental Simulematic Orchestra [sic],” recalls John Anderson in an interview with Jeff Pollock for the Yale University magazine The New Journal (February 9, 1969), “we’d play the background music for underground movies and light shows on dancing people, which was all starting at that time. The Falling Spikes eventually became the musicians for Andy Warhol’s group, the Velvet Underground.” So, according to Anderson, the Cineola Transcendental Orchestra billed for this benefit was actually an ad-hoc supergroup formed by the Fugs and the Falling Spikes together. Well, it could be true even if some evidence would prove otherwise. For example the Fugs and the Falling Spikes actually shared the bill at one benefit but it was the one which was held on August 11 so maybe Anderson was referring to that, and if so both were billed with their names as two separate groups and no mention of the Cineola Trascendental Orchestra. Also the latter group was instead billed for this benefit along with the Fugs as two separate groups and no mention of the Falling Spikes. Last but not least, the Cineola Transcendental Orchestra was also billed at another benefit held on August 19 but neither the Fugs or the Falling Spikes were mentioned.
Saturday, August 28, 1965: The Bridge (theatre), 4 St. Mark’s Place, East Village, Lower East Side, Lower Manhattan, New York City, New York
The Fugs played a midnight sold-out show.
Saturday, September 4, 1965: The Bridge (theatre), 4 St. Mark’s Place, East Village, Lower East Side, Lower Manhattan, New York City, New York
The Fugs played a midnight sold-out show.
Saturday, September 11, 1965: The Bridge (theatre), 4 St. Mark’s Place, East Village, Lower East Side, Lower Manhattan, New York City, New York
The Fugs played a midnight sold-out show.
Saturday, September 18, 1965: The Bridge (theatre), 4 St. Mark’s Place, East Village, Lower East Side, Lower Manhattan, New York City, New York
The Fugs played a midnight sold-out show.
Wednesday, September 22, 1965: Sanders Recording Studios Inc., 167 West 48th Street, West Side, Midtown Manhattan, New York City, New York
The Fugs headed into the studio for their second recording session. “We wanted to entice Jerry Schoenbaum, who was running a label called ‘Verve/Folkways,’ into signing us,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “Verve/Folkways was the Blues Projects’ label. We prepared a sequence of songs and went uptown to a place called Sanders Sound studio. Moe Asch paid for the session, but the masters were to be owned by me. He said all he wanted was to be paid back for the session if Verve/Folkways decided to put out the album. Among The Fugs tunes we recorded at this session were Steve Weber’s new ‘Boobs-a-Lot,’ plus another Weber tune, ‘An Empty Heart.’ We also recorded my reworking of parts of Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’ into ‘The I Saw the Best Minds of My Generation Rock’ and an antiwar chant I wrote, ‘I Command the House of the Devil.’ Weaver sang his ‘I Couldn’t Get High,’ and we recorded his ‘Slum Goddess of the Lower East Side.’ To entice Verve/Folkways, we slurred the word ‘fuck’ in the opening line of Tuli’s ‘Supergirl’: ‘I want a girl that can [slur] like an angel.’ Yes! Getting on Verve Folkways! I sent the new demo to Schoenbaum, but to our shock he decided not to sign The Fugs!” “I was doing arrangements,” also recalls John Anderson in an interview with Jeff Pollock for the Yale University magazine The New Journal (February 9, 1969). “Ed would construct a song and its lyrics and just work out a sketchy tune on the tape recorder. The rest of us would translate it into playable music.” “It was pretty clear by this time that Ed and Tuli and Ken were the Fugs and the other musicians were just sidemen. When we finally got to the point of incorporating ourselves, I was included as one of the four principal Fugs. Not because I was making an equal contribution, but because I was dependable, compared to the other people. I managed to get along with them all.”
Thursday, September 23, 1965
Allegedly right after the above mentioned session, Vinny Leary left the Fugs.
THE FUGS #12 (SEPTEMBER 23, 1965 - OCTOBER ?, 1965)
1) Ed Sanders
2) Tuli Kupferberg
3) Ken Weaver
4) Steve Weber
5) John Anderson
Friday, September 24, 1965: ‘Sing-In For Peace! - An All-Night Singing Protest Against The War In Viet-Nam,’ Carnegie Hall, 881 7th Avenue, Upper West Side, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Also on the bill: Joan Baez, The Seventh Sons, Danny Kalb, Eric Andersen, Theodore Bikel, Oscar Brand, Guy Carawan, Chambers Bros., Len Chandler, Barbara Dane, Rev. Gary Davis, Jack Elliott, Logan English, Freedom Singers, Gale Garnett, Ronnie Gilbert, Greenbriar Boys, Fanny Lou Hamer, New Yorld Singers, New York Ramblers, Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton, Pennywhistlers, Earl Robinson, Pete Seeger, and many many others. Two shows, from 8:00pm to 12 midnight, and from 12 midnight to 3:30am. “There was a Sing-In for Peace on September 22 [sic] at Carnegie Hall to a capacity crowd of 2,800,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “Fanny Lou Hamer, cofounder of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, brought the house down. Joan Baez sang, among others, and so did The Fugs! We sang ‘Kill for Peace,’ with just Weaver on conga and John Anderson on bass because Steve Weber, our guitarist, missed the gig. Some in the audience booed the act before we were announced. Uh oh, I thought, as we stood at the mikes, but the crowd loved us! Some were even dancing in the aisles. In the next issue of the Village Voice Jack Newfield wrote a piece about the ‘Sing-In for Peace’ in which he noted, ‘The politicos in the crowd laughed at and booed the Seven Sons, a long-haired electronic rock ’n’ roll quartet, but when The Fugs - the underground Rolling Stones - performed ‘Kill for Peace,’ several couples began to frug in the aisles of the cultural temple Isaac Stern saved from demolition.’ After we left to thunderous applause, Ken Weaver was backstage when he realized that he’d left his conga on the stage, so he went to retrieve it. Blocking his path was eminent folksinger Theodore Bikel. Twice Weaver tried to retrieve his drum; twice Bikel stopped him, threatening to call security. Weaver called him a fucking Nazi. Perhaps there was a bit of cross-class scrounge-analysis against our East-Side-elegant drummer on the part of the elegant Bikel. Pete Seeger and Phil Ochs were wildly received, and the concert ended with the Chambers Brothers leading the packed throng in ‘Down by the Riverside.’ But the war went on for another nine and a half years.” “There was an archetypal black blues singer there, blind, who played the twelve-string guitar beautifully [ed. Rev. Gary Davis],” also recalls John Anderson in an interview with Jeff Pollock for the Yale University magazine The New Journal (February 9, 1969). “He started singing a slow spiritual song, and Joan Baez sort of popped into the room and joined in. Ken Weaver was drunk at the time and got into a big argument with Theodore Bikel, who kept pounding his chest and yelling that he had been a member of the Movement for 30 years and we were just punks. I guess it was the voice of the Establishment.”
Friday, September 24, 1965: ‘A Benefit for The Fugs!! - Cross Country Vietnam Protest Concert Tour,’ East End Theatre, 85 East 4th Street, East Village, Lower East Side, Lower Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows, 8:00pm and 10:00pm. This was the first of two benefits held to try to raise money for ‘The Fugs Cross Country Vietnam Protest Caravan.’ “There were big demonstrations scheduled in October at the Oakland Army Terminal, where soldiers were being shipped to Vietnam,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “The sponsoring group was called the Vietnam Day Committee (VDC), which had put on very successful antiwar demonstrations earlier in 1965. The VDC planned a nationwide protest known as the International Days of Protest Against American Military Intervention, which was scheduled to take place on October 15 and October 16. I had the idea to lead The Fugs across country, doing antiwar concerts and demonstrations along the way, culminating in an appearance at the Oakland demonstrations. I began planning for the first Fugs Cross-Country Tour.”
Saturday, September 25, 1965: The Bridge (theatre), 4 St. Mark’s Place, East Village, Lower East Side, Lower Manhattan, New York City, New York
The Fugs played a midnight sold-out show.
Sunday, September 26, 1965: ‘Fugathon! - benefit for the Fugs’ Cross Country Vietnam Protest Caravan,’ Bowery Poets Coop, 2 East 2nd Street, East Village, Lower East Side, Lower Manhattan, New York City, New York
One show, started at 3:00pm.
Thursday, September 30 - Friday, October 1, 1965: The Bridge (theatre), 4 St. Mark’s Place, East Village, Lower East Side, Lower Manhattan, New York City, New York
The Fugs played a couple of midnight sold-out shows.
Late September - Early October 1965
“To our lasting gratitude Moe Asch, after the Verve/Folkways turndown, agreed to put out The Fugs album on Folkways’ Broadside label,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “I figured out a sequence of tunes, listening to the original Cue Recording session and the Verve/Folkways session over and over on my aluminum-bodied Wollensak at our apartment on East Twenty-seventh. I went up to Folkways with Harry Smith and edited The Fugs first album. Harry was all business as we sequenced the takes onto a reel. He would rock the reel back and forth across the playback head, getting a kind of growling sound, until he located the exact spot to cut for a perfect sequencing. He was very skilled at cutting the tape on a grooved metal block, then affixing a small length of splicing tape connecting the end of a tune to some leader tape, then cutting the leader tape (to have several seconds between songs), then finding, through the growling tape method, the exact location of the beginning of the next tune, and so forth. I wrote some liner notes, which Moe Asch printed into a booklet, plus the song lyrics. I had no idea that we were making ‘history’ and that the album would stay in print for the next flow of decades and beyond. All I felt was that that sequence of songs and performances represented the very best that The Fugs could do at that time. I was determined to take the music forward, onward, and upward. I wanted to do some albums that would Stay New for the ages. My youthful energy and bacchic defiance obscured the difficulties of that desire. With The Fugs’ first album under way, I stepped up the sequence of gigs to try to raise money for the Protest Tour.”
October ?, 1965
John Anderson left the band and goes back to Yale University. “The summer was over, and I was tempted not to come back to New Haven, but I said I ought to try to make both scenes for a while,” recalls Anderson in an interview with Jeff Pollock for the Yale University magazine The New Journal (February 9, 1969). “The first semester wasn’t too bad and I went into New York to play on the weekends. I guess I got a fair amount of work done, but I was losing interest in English literature.” “At that point, I ran an ad in the Village Voice looking for a guitarist or a bass player to accompany us on the cross-country tour,” also recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “I interviewed four. The first was Larry Coryell, not yet famous, with a very expensive guitar; we couldn’t afford him. The second was underage, so I turned him down. The third turned out to be a police informant! I know this because George Plimpton called me at Peace Eye and told me that a famous crime reporter had brought to a party a police informant who had just tried out for The Fugs! Good thing I hadn’t been that impressed with the way he played the guitar. The fourth one, whom I hired, was named Jon Sheldon, who later became a doctor.”
Also on the bill: Joan Baez, The Seventh Sons, Danny Kalb, Eric Andersen, Theodore Bikel, Oscar Brand, Guy Carawan, Chambers Bros., Len Chandler, Barbara Dane, Rev. Gary Davis, Jack Elliott, Logan English, Freedom Singers, Gale Garnett, Ronnie Gilbert, Greenbriar Boys, Fanny Lou Hamer, New Yorld Singers, New York Ramblers, Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton, Pennywhistlers, Earl Robinson, Pete Seeger, and many many others. Two shows, from 8:00pm to 12 midnight, and from 12 midnight to 3:30am. “There was a Sing-In for Peace on September 22 [sic] at Carnegie Hall to a capacity crowd of 2,800,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “Fanny Lou Hamer, cofounder of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, brought the house down. Joan Baez sang, among others, and so did The Fugs! We sang ‘Kill for Peace,’ with just Weaver on conga and John Anderson on bass because Steve Weber, our guitarist, missed the gig. Some in the audience booed the act before we were announced. Uh oh, I thought, as we stood at the mikes, but the crowd loved us! Some were even dancing in the aisles. In the next issue of the Village Voice Jack Newfield wrote a piece about the ‘Sing-In for Peace’ in which he noted, ‘The politicos in the crowd laughed at and booed the Seven Sons, a long-haired electronic rock ’n’ roll quartet, but when The Fugs - the underground Rolling Stones - performed ‘Kill for Peace,’ several couples began to frug in the aisles of the cultural temple Isaac Stern saved from demolition.’ After we left to thunderous applause, Ken Weaver was backstage when he realized that he’d left his conga on the stage, so he went to retrieve it. Blocking his path was eminent folksinger Theodore Bikel. Twice Weaver tried to retrieve his drum; twice Bikel stopped him, threatening to call security. Weaver called him a fucking Nazi. Perhaps there was a bit of cross-class scrounge-analysis against our East-Side-elegant drummer on the part of the elegant Bikel. Pete Seeger and Phil Ochs were wildly received, and the concert ended with the Chambers Brothers leading the packed throng in ‘Down by the Riverside.’ But the war went on for another nine and a half years.” “There was an archetypal black blues singer there, blind, who played the twelve-string guitar beautifully [ed. Rev. Gary Davis],” also recalls John Anderson in an interview with Jeff Pollock for the Yale University magazine The New Journal (February 9, 1969). “He started singing a slow spiritual song, and Joan Baez sort of popped into the room and joined in. Ken Weaver was drunk at the time and got into a big argument with Theodore Bikel, who kept pounding his chest and yelling that he had been a member of the Movement for 30 years and we were just punks. I guess it was the voice of the Establishment.”
Friday, September 24, 1965: ‘A Benefit for The Fugs!! - Cross Country Vietnam Protest Concert Tour,’ East End Theatre, 85 East 4th Street, East Village, Lower East Side, Lower Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows, 8:00pm and 10:00pm. This was the first of two benefits held to try to raise money for ‘The Fugs Cross Country Vietnam Protest Caravan.’ “There were big demonstrations scheduled in October at the Oakland Army Terminal, where soldiers were being shipped to Vietnam,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “The sponsoring group was called the Vietnam Day Committee (VDC), which had put on very successful antiwar demonstrations earlier in 1965. The VDC planned a nationwide protest known as the International Days of Protest Against American Military Intervention, which was scheduled to take place on October 15 and October 16. I had the idea to lead The Fugs across country, doing antiwar concerts and demonstrations along the way, culminating in an appearance at the Oakland demonstrations. I began planning for the first Fugs Cross-Country Tour.”
Saturday, September 25, 1965: The Bridge (theatre), 4 St. Mark’s Place, East Village, Lower East Side, Lower Manhattan, New York City, New York
The Fugs played a midnight sold-out show.
Sunday, September 26, 1965: ‘Fugathon! - benefit for the Fugs’ Cross Country Vietnam Protest Caravan,’ Bowery Poets Coop, 2 East 2nd Street, East Village, Lower East Side, Lower Manhattan, New York City, New York
One show, started at 3:00pm.
Thursday, September 30 - Friday, October 1, 1965: The Bridge (theatre), 4 St. Mark’s Place, East Village, Lower East Side, Lower Manhattan, New York City, New York
The Fugs played a couple of midnight sold-out shows.
Late September - Early October 1965
“To our lasting gratitude Moe Asch, after the Verve/Folkways turndown, agreed to put out The Fugs album on Folkways’ Broadside label,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “I figured out a sequence of tunes, listening to the original Cue Recording session and the Verve/Folkways session over and over on my aluminum-bodied Wollensak at our apartment on East Twenty-seventh. I went up to Folkways with Harry Smith and edited The Fugs first album. Harry was all business as we sequenced the takes onto a reel. He would rock the reel back and forth across the playback head, getting a kind of growling sound, until he located the exact spot to cut for a perfect sequencing. He was very skilled at cutting the tape on a grooved metal block, then affixing a small length of splicing tape connecting the end of a tune to some leader tape, then cutting the leader tape (to have several seconds between songs), then finding, through the growling tape method, the exact location of the beginning of the next tune, and so forth. I wrote some liner notes, which Moe Asch printed into a booklet, plus the song lyrics. I had no idea that we were making ‘history’ and that the album would stay in print for the next flow of decades and beyond. All I felt was that that sequence of songs and performances represented the very best that The Fugs could do at that time. I was determined to take the music forward, onward, and upward. I wanted to do some albums that would Stay New for the ages. My youthful energy and bacchic defiance obscured the difficulties of that desire. With The Fugs’ first album under way, I stepped up the sequence of gigs to try to raise money for the Protest Tour.”
October ?, 1965
John Anderson left the band and goes back to Yale University. “The summer was over, and I was tempted not to come back to New Haven, but I said I ought to try to make both scenes for a while,” recalls Anderson in an interview with Jeff Pollock for the Yale University magazine The New Journal (February 9, 1969). “The first semester wasn’t too bad and I went into New York to play on the weekends. I guess I got a fair amount of work done, but I was losing interest in English literature.” “At that point, I ran an ad in the Village Voice looking for a guitarist or a bass player to accompany us on the cross-country tour,” also recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “I interviewed four. The first was Larry Coryell, not yet famous, with a very expensive guitar; we couldn’t afford him. The second was underage, so I turned him down. The third turned out to be a police informant! I know this because George Plimpton called me at Peace Eye and told me that a famous crime reporter had brought to a party a police informant who had just tried out for The Fugs! Good thing I hadn’t been that impressed with the way he played the guitar. The fourth one, whom I hired, was named Jon Sheldon, who later became a doctor.”
THE FUGS #13 (OCTOBER ?, 1965 - OCTOBER 19, 1965 (?))
1) Ed Sanders
2) Tuli Kupferberg
3) Ken Weaver
4) Steve Weber
5) Jon Sheldon bass
1) Ed Sanders
2) Tuli Kupferberg
3) Ken Weaver
4) Steve Weber
5) Jon Sheldon bass
Friday, October 8, 1965
The Fugs leaved New York City and proceeded to California for their ‘Cross Country Vietnam Protest Caravan.’ “I published a two-page press release on the Peace Eye mimeo,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “Announcing the Fugs Cross Country Vietnam Protest Caravan, October 8–28th. I also mentioned a midnight concert in the middle of the Great Salt Desert, in celebration of ‘Group Gropes and the American West.’ We also intended to hold a graveside Fugs concert at James Dean’s stone.” “Lee Crabtree, a friend of Ted Berrigan’s, volunteered to drive,” he continues. “We located a Volkswagen bus, which we rented by paying the past-due parking bill for the bus at writer Bill Brammer’s apartment on the Upper East Side. Brammer was a well-known writer from Texas, part of a group who called themselves the Mad Dogs and included my friend Bud Shrake, Dan Jenkins, and Larry L. King. Brammer had written a novel, The Gay Place, in 1961 and was a pal of Bill Beckman’s. I turned over the key to Peace Eye to my comrade, poet Ted Berrigan, and left him in charge. Just before The Fugs departed on their cross-country tour, Ted sent a telegram to me at Peace Eye wishing us success on the voyage. He signed it ‘Bob Dylan’.” “We took off in our packed microbus on October 8 - five Fugs, [my wife] Miriam, [my daughter] Deirdre (then just over a year old), plus a portable sound system, a guitar amp, some drums, and a few hundred copies of The Fugs Songbook,” concludes Ed.
Saturday, October 9, 1965 (?): Muhlenberg College, 2400 West Chew Street, Allentown, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania (cancelled)
“Uh, oh, right away we discovered there was something wrong with the engine,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “It barely pulled us up the ramp to get on the New Jersey Turnpike. We limped onward, about thirty miles per hour, and there went my carefully calibrated set of events. We missed a gig at Muhlenberg College in Pennsylvania. Finally, we stopped a few days in Bloomington, Indiana, where we had a new engine put in the VW van. Tuli paid for it.”
Monday, October 11, 1965 (?): ‘Private Party,’ Frank Hoffman’s house, Bloomington, Monroe County, Indiana
“The Fugs had announced plans to hold a picket of support for the Kinsey Institute in Bloomington,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “When we showed up, we were invited to visit the Institute, where we met the staff, who volunteered to show us some of their pornographic art. They asked what country and time I was interested in. My mind flashed with ideas. Victorian erotomania? Should I request some eighteenth-century Norwegian teabag fetish art? We performed a concert at the house of a guy named Frank Hoffman, who was affiliated at the time with the institute. Frank and I at night went to the Kinsey Institute to pick up some pornographic films to show at his house after our performance, which was taped, I guess, for the institute’s archives.”
October 1?, 1965: James Dean’s grave, Park Cemetery, 7843 South 150 East, Fairmount, Grant County, Indiana (cancelled)
“We had planned to do an outdoor concert at James Dean’s grave, and I had a call from CBS-TV, Channel 8 Indianapolis, which wanted to film it,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “But we were running so late, we barreled across the Midwest toward our appointments in the ‘Western Night’.”
Monday, October 18, 1965
“We surged onward, pausing at dawn at William Burroughs’s birthplace at 4664 Pershing, in St. Louis, where we trooped up on the porch to hold, on October 18, 1965, a silent vigil for a minute or two in honor of our mentor,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “I left a note on the porch: Thank you, The Fugs on October 18, 1965 at 6:00 a.m. held a silent vigil in honor of William Burroughs’ birthplace at 4664 Pershing, St. Louis. I filmed the dawn kowtow on the Burroughs porch, and then we sped onward.” “The packed Fugs VW bus, with a sign on the side, “FUGS FOR PEACE,” pulled into the driveway of Terrence Williams; his wife, Nancy; and their three young sons, on Missouri Street in Lawrence, Kansas,” continues Ed. “Williams was a rare book librarian at Kansas University (KU) who had been given a grant by the university to purchase publications from the Mimeograph Revolution. He was a regular customer of the Peace Eye rare books catalogs. I had set up the visit from the Peace Eye Bookstore. Terrence Williams recalled it: ‘One day Ed called me to say that the band was traveling to California in a VW bus to attend an anti–Vietnam War rally. They were driving first to the University of Indiana. He asked if we could put them up in Lawrence for a few days as they traveled west. Without asking my wife, I said, ‘Sure. When will you be here?’ Williams further reported: ‘Ed Sanders, Tuli Kupferberg, Steve Weber and Ken Weaver brought the Lower East Side to our house. And these largerthan-life people from the foreign nation of New York did literally fill our house. My wife Nancy had lived for a time in Greenwich Village, and she was a welcoming and open-minded person. Like me, she held a firm anti-war position, but neither of us had taken our beliefs much past signing petitions and attending rallies. Her only concern about our houseful of musical war protesters was drugs.’ Borrowing from James Brown, I had banned all pot from the crosscountry tour. We were controversial enough, with copies of Fuck You and The Fugs Songbook aboard the bus. The only possible indication of ‘drugs,’ as Terrence Williams noted, was when he spotted Steve Weber tardily and lengthily staring at the round window of the clothes dryer as it tumbled and tumbled a load of wash.”
Monday, October 18 or Tuesday, October 19, 1965: ‘Private Party,’ Ed Grier’s house, Lawrence, Douglas County, Kansas
“The Fugs performed a set at the home of KU English professor Ed Grier. (A few weeks later Grier would suggest I approach the ACLU for help after the police raid on Peace Eye Bookstore.),” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “Lawrence had a well-developed underground scene. We met a young poet named George Kimball, who, out one night in town, ran into a man walking in William Blake nakedness. Kimball, later a well-known sports reporter, was arrested while picketing the Lawrence Draft Board with a sign ‘Fuck the Draft’ and was soon off to New York City, where in early ’66 he drove Panna Grady and me up to Gloucester, Massachusetts, to visit bard Charles Olson. During our two-day stay in Lawrence our bass player, Jon Sheldon, had had enough of the cramped VW van and he split. We were grateful for the additional floor space in the van. Steve Weber on guitar and Ken Weaver on conga were more than adequate music underneath our lyrics.”
The Fugs leaved New York City and proceeded to California for their ‘Cross Country Vietnam Protest Caravan.’ “I published a two-page press release on the Peace Eye mimeo,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “Announcing the Fugs Cross Country Vietnam Protest Caravan, October 8–28th. I also mentioned a midnight concert in the middle of the Great Salt Desert, in celebration of ‘Group Gropes and the American West.’ We also intended to hold a graveside Fugs concert at James Dean’s stone.” “Lee Crabtree, a friend of Ted Berrigan’s, volunteered to drive,” he continues. “We located a Volkswagen bus, which we rented by paying the past-due parking bill for the bus at writer Bill Brammer’s apartment on the Upper East Side. Brammer was a well-known writer from Texas, part of a group who called themselves the Mad Dogs and included my friend Bud Shrake, Dan Jenkins, and Larry L. King. Brammer had written a novel, The Gay Place, in 1961 and was a pal of Bill Beckman’s. I turned over the key to Peace Eye to my comrade, poet Ted Berrigan, and left him in charge. Just before The Fugs departed on their cross-country tour, Ted sent a telegram to me at Peace Eye wishing us success on the voyage. He signed it ‘Bob Dylan’.” “We took off in our packed microbus on October 8 - five Fugs, [my wife] Miriam, [my daughter] Deirdre (then just over a year old), plus a portable sound system, a guitar amp, some drums, and a few hundred copies of The Fugs Songbook,” concludes Ed.
Saturday, October 9, 1965 (?): Muhlenberg College, 2400 West Chew Street, Allentown, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania (cancelled)
“Uh, oh, right away we discovered there was something wrong with the engine,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “It barely pulled us up the ramp to get on the New Jersey Turnpike. We limped onward, about thirty miles per hour, and there went my carefully calibrated set of events. We missed a gig at Muhlenberg College in Pennsylvania. Finally, we stopped a few days in Bloomington, Indiana, where we had a new engine put in the VW van. Tuli paid for it.”
Monday, October 11, 1965 (?): ‘Private Party,’ Frank Hoffman’s house, Bloomington, Monroe County, Indiana
“The Fugs had announced plans to hold a picket of support for the Kinsey Institute in Bloomington,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “When we showed up, we were invited to visit the Institute, where we met the staff, who volunteered to show us some of their pornographic art. They asked what country and time I was interested in. My mind flashed with ideas. Victorian erotomania? Should I request some eighteenth-century Norwegian teabag fetish art? We performed a concert at the house of a guy named Frank Hoffman, who was affiliated at the time with the institute. Frank and I at night went to the Kinsey Institute to pick up some pornographic films to show at his house after our performance, which was taped, I guess, for the institute’s archives.”
October 1?, 1965: James Dean’s grave, Park Cemetery, 7843 South 150 East, Fairmount, Grant County, Indiana (cancelled)
“We had planned to do an outdoor concert at James Dean’s grave, and I had a call from CBS-TV, Channel 8 Indianapolis, which wanted to film it,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “But we were running so late, we barreled across the Midwest toward our appointments in the ‘Western Night’.”
Monday, October 18, 1965
“We surged onward, pausing at dawn at William Burroughs’s birthplace at 4664 Pershing, in St. Louis, where we trooped up on the porch to hold, on October 18, 1965, a silent vigil for a minute or two in honor of our mentor,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “I left a note on the porch: Thank you, The Fugs on October 18, 1965 at 6:00 a.m. held a silent vigil in honor of William Burroughs’ birthplace at 4664 Pershing, St. Louis. I filmed the dawn kowtow on the Burroughs porch, and then we sped onward.” “The packed Fugs VW bus, with a sign on the side, “FUGS FOR PEACE,” pulled into the driveway of Terrence Williams; his wife, Nancy; and their three young sons, on Missouri Street in Lawrence, Kansas,” continues Ed. “Williams was a rare book librarian at Kansas University (KU) who had been given a grant by the university to purchase publications from the Mimeograph Revolution. He was a regular customer of the Peace Eye rare books catalogs. I had set up the visit from the Peace Eye Bookstore. Terrence Williams recalled it: ‘One day Ed called me to say that the band was traveling to California in a VW bus to attend an anti–Vietnam War rally. They were driving first to the University of Indiana. He asked if we could put them up in Lawrence for a few days as they traveled west. Without asking my wife, I said, ‘Sure. When will you be here?’ Williams further reported: ‘Ed Sanders, Tuli Kupferberg, Steve Weber and Ken Weaver brought the Lower East Side to our house. And these largerthan-life people from the foreign nation of New York did literally fill our house. My wife Nancy had lived for a time in Greenwich Village, and she was a welcoming and open-minded person. Like me, she held a firm anti-war position, but neither of us had taken our beliefs much past signing petitions and attending rallies. Her only concern about our houseful of musical war protesters was drugs.’ Borrowing from James Brown, I had banned all pot from the crosscountry tour. We were controversial enough, with copies of Fuck You and The Fugs Songbook aboard the bus. The only possible indication of ‘drugs,’ as Terrence Williams noted, was when he spotted Steve Weber tardily and lengthily staring at the round window of the clothes dryer as it tumbled and tumbled a load of wash.”
Monday, October 18 or Tuesday, October 19, 1965: ‘Private Party,’ Ed Grier’s house, Lawrence, Douglas County, Kansas
“The Fugs performed a set at the home of KU English professor Ed Grier. (A few weeks later Grier would suggest I approach the ACLU for help after the police raid on Peace Eye Bookstore.),” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “Lawrence had a well-developed underground scene. We met a young poet named George Kimball, who, out one night in town, ran into a man walking in William Blake nakedness. Kimball, later a well-known sports reporter, was arrested while picketing the Lawrence Draft Board with a sign ‘Fuck the Draft’ and was soon off to New York City, where in early ’66 he drove Panna Grady and me up to Gloucester, Massachusetts, to visit bard Charles Olson. During our two-day stay in Lawrence our bass player, Jon Sheldon, had had enough of the cramped VW van and he split. We were grateful for the additional floor space in the van. Steve Weber on guitar and Ken Weaver on conga were more than adequate music underneath our lyrics.”
THE FUGS #14 (OCTOBER 20, 1965 (?) - NOVEMBER ??, 1965)
1) Ed Sanders
2) Tuli Kupferberg
3) Ken Weaver
4) Steve Weber
1) Ed Sanders
2) Tuli Kupferberg
3) Ken Weaver
4) Steve Weber
Thursday, October 21, 1965 (?)
“Then we speed across the prairies and mountains to the West Coast,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “In San Francisco all The Fugs stayed for the first few days of our visit at a two-story apartment owned by Judith Wehlau, a friend of Tuli’s, on Downey Street, just down the hill from Michael and Joanna McClure’s pad.” “We had money problems,” he continues. “I reached out to Panna Grady in New York, who graciously sent a check. Don Allen helped sell a full run of Fuck You/ A Magazine of the Arts, which covered more of our expenses.”
Thursday, October 21, 1965 (?): The Matrix, 3138 Fillmore Street, Marina District, San Francisco, California
The Fugs were scheduled to perform an unbilled audition set at the Matrix club on October 18 during the usual hootenanny night held there every Monday, but they did not arrived in San Francisco in time so their performance was re-scheduled for October 20. However, in the club’s ledger, near their name on October 20 there was an arrow pointing to October 21, probably because the club owner was not sure if they would arrive in the city on October 20 or 21 exactly. At this point, assuming that the band arrived in San Francisco on October 21 due to the distance between Kansas and California (27 hours with a car, so two full days on the road), it was probably that day that they finally played at the Matrix sharing the bill with comedian Larry Hankin and folksinger Jean Ball. “I was eager to scare up some paying gigs,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “We auditioned at the Matrix, which was somehow associated with a new group I had heard about, the Jefferson Airplane. During our audition I noticed how wonderfully our quiet driver, Lee Crabtree, played the electric piano set up on stage! We didn’t get the gig, but Crabtree was soon a member of The Fugs.”
Friday, October 22, 1965: ‘The Fantastic Four VDC (Vietnam Day Committee) Campus Benefit,’ Berkeley Community Theatre, 1930 Allston Way, Berkeley, Alameda County, California
Also on the bill: Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Paul Krassner (MC). One show, started at 8:00pm.
“Then we speed across the prairies and mountains to the West Coast,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “In San Francisco all The Fugs stayed for the first few days of our visit at a two-story apartment owned by Judith Wehlau, a friend of Tuli’s, on Downey Street, just down the hill from Michael and Joanna McClure’s pad.” “We had money problems,” he continues. “I reached out to Panna Grady in New York, who graciously sent a check. Don Allen helped sell a full run of Fuck You/ A Magazine of the Arts, which covered more of our expenses.”
Thursday, October 21, 1965 (?): The Matrix, 3138 Fillmore Street, Marina District, San Francisco, California
The Fugs were scheduled to perform an unbilled audition set at the Matrix club on October 18 during the usual hootenanny night held there every Monday, but they did not arrived in San Francisco in time so their performance was re-scheduled for October 20. However, in the club’s ledger, near their name on October 20 there was an arrow pointing to October 21, probably because the club owner was not sure if they would arrive in the city on October 20 or 21 exactly. At this point, assuming that the band arrived in San Francisco on October 21 due to the distance between Kansas and California (27 hours with a car, so two full days on the road), it was probably that day that they finally played at the Matrix sharing the bill with comedian Larry Hankin and folksinger Jean Ball. “I was eager to scare up some paying gigs,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “We auditioned at the Matrix, which was somehow associated with a new group I had heard about, the Jefferson Airplane. During our audition I noticed how wonderfully our quiet driver, Lee Crabtree, played the electric piano set up on stage! We didn’t get the gig, but Crabtree was soon a member of The Fugs.”
Friday, October 22, 1965: ‘The Fantastic Four VDC (Vietnam Day Committee) Campus Benefit,’ Berkeley Community Theatre, 1930 Allston Way, Berkeley, Alameda County, California
Also on the bill: Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Paul Krassner (MC). One show, started at 8:00pm.
Monday, October 25 - Thursday, October 28, 1965 (?): Coffee and Confusion, 1339 Upper Grant Avenue, North Beach, San Francisco, California
“I managed to get us a multiday gig at a coffeehouse at 1339 Upper Grant Avenue, in North Beach, called Coffee and Confusion, but after one set the owner fired us!,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “A songwriter named Ivan Ulz ran the open mike at Coffee and Confusion and was upset at our firing. He organized a revolt by coffeehouse employees, who demanded that the owner bring us back, with the result that The Fugs, with our risqué, antiwar repertoire, finished the brief run. We made just a few dollars, but it paid for gas for the VW bus.”
Friday, October 29, 1965: The Orb Theater, 1470 Washington Street, San Francisco, California
One show, started at 8:00pm. Also on the bill poetry reading by local poets. “With a 50¢ ‘suggested donation’ at the Orb, the influx of moolah was scant,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography.
Saturday, October 30, 1965
“The League for Sexual Freedom held a ‘[Picket To] Legalize Cunnilingus [oral contact with female genitals]’ demonstration at Union Square in San Francisco [at noon]. A few Fugs took Part,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography.
Sunday, October 31, 1965: ‘Opening Night,’ Raped & Strangled Art Gallery, 883 Golden State Avenue, San Francisco, California
“While we were in San Francisco, poet Charles Plymell sent me a note about a gallery a friend of his was opening on Halloween,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “It was called the ‘Raped & Strangled Art Gallery.’ It was located at 883 Golden Gate Avenue. I gulped and allowed us to play. It was a Halloween costume affair, but The Fugs were already in Fugs costume, so we came as we were: On the Edge, Out There, a Bit Famished, but bearing with us a tender child, Deirdre, then almost fourteen months old. It was a wild night. The Fugs, Miriam, and young Deirdre slept on the gallery floor. Crashing on the floor of something called the Raped and Strangled Art Gallery made it certain, if certainty needed further certainty, that we were ‘down and out.’ I remember as a kid in the dorm at Missouri University reading George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London. Now I was there, Down and Out in San Francisco in an overloaded VW bus with hungry and very talkative Fugs, wife, daughter, sound equipment, Fugs Songbook, on the edge of panic. Miriam somehow lost one of her tennis shoes. And for a while we didn’t have the cash to get a new pair.”
Friday, November 5, 1965: ‘Folk-Rock-Mantra,’ 2000 Life Sciences Building, UC Berkeley campus, Campanile Way at Harmon Way, Berkeley, Alameda County, California
Also on the bill: Allen Ginsberg, Country Joe and The Fish. “Ed Denson, manager of a band just then forming called Country Joe and the Fish, contacted me about performing with Allen Ginsberg on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley on November 5,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “I agreed, and they put out a flier around Berkeley for the gig, held in a chemistry lecture room, whose central table, down in the front of the room, we used as a stage. We had a large crowd, given the scantiness of the prepublicity. First Country Joe and the Fish performed (it was their first performance ever!), then Ginsberg, sitting lotus position in the middle of the chemistry table stage. The Fugs closed the show, a highlight of which occurred when Steve Weber fell back off the stage, landing on his back while keeping the beat perfectly and not missing a note. I collected the money, dividing it exactly among all the performers, $20 each, which caused Allen to grumble a bit because his renown obviously (his image was featured prominently on the poster) had led to the crowd paying the $1 admission.”
Saturday, November 6, 1965: ‘Benefit For S.F. Mime Troupe (Appeal Party),’ San Francisco Mime Troupe’s headquarter loft (aka Calliope Warehouse), 924 Howard Street b/w 5th Street and 6th Street, San Francisco, California
Also on the bill: Jefferson Airplane, Sandy Bull, John Handy Quintet, The Committee, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jeanne Brechan, Jim Smith, Ullett & Hendra, The Family Dog, Sam Hanks, Mystery Trend, Peter Orlovsky, Allen Ginsberg.
Sunday, November 7 or Monday, November 8, 1965
“In early November Neal Cassady drove me and Peter Orlovsky from San Francisco to Ken Kesey’s place in La Honda,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “Neal drove our Volkswagen van very fast on the twisting Pacific Coast Highway, sometimes straying into the other lane on the curves, while talking nonstop. One curve Neal was rapidly negotiating while he was praising race driver Stirling Moss. ‘Moss,’ he said, ‘can go into a power slide on a curve while adjusting his goggles at the same time.’ Neal mimicked adjusting his goggles as we careened around the curve. The Fates were not ready to snip, so we reached La Honda safely.”
Tuesday, November 9, 1965
“A day or so later The Fugs began to wend the packed VW bus back across the Great States. First to Los Angeles, where we stayed with the Mothers of Invention keyboard man, Don Preston,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography.
Thursday, November 11, 1965
“Next we traveled onward across the desert and visited Robert and Bobbie Creeley in Placitas, New Mexico, a small town north of Albuquerque, in November 1965,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “Bobbie and Bob graciously put us up for several days. Right after we arrived, Bob Creeley drove down to the store and purchased cigarettes for those who smoked in an act of instant analysis of the band’s impecuniosity. Bobby shot some footage of us as we came out of our VW van, including Miriam Sanders and our fifteen-month-old daughter, Deirdre. Miriam and I wandered out in the open fields. She was looking for cacti near their house and found antique Native pottery shards. Ed cleaning his Bell and Howell, Steve, Bob Creeley, by The Fugs’ VW van, Placitas.”
November 1?, 1965
“After visiting and replenishing our vim in Placitas, there followed a long, nonstop surge across the prairies,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “We arrived back in New York City broke, beat, metaphysically distressed, yet full of grit and determination. The lights had been turned off at Peace Eye, and we needed to pay rent on the store and on our pad on Twenty-seventh.”
November ??, 1965
The Fugs added Lee Crabtree on piano.
THE FUGS #15 (NOVEMBER ??, 1965 - DECEMBER ?, 1965)
1) Ed Sanders
2) Tuli Kupferberg
3) Ken Weaver
4) Steve Weber
5) Lee Crabtree piano, organ, flute, percussion, celeste, bells
1) Ed Sanders
2) Tuli Kupferberg
3) Ken Weaver
4) Steve Weber
5) Lee Crabtree piano, organ, flute, percussion, celeste, bells
Saturday, November 27, 1965: The Bridge (theatre), 4 St. Mark’s Place, East Village, Lower East Side, Lower Manhattan, New York City, New York
The Fugs played a midnight sold-out show.
The Fugs played a midnight sold-out show.
November or December 1965
The Fugs’ first album, ‘The Village Fugs Sings Ballads of Contemporary Protest, Point of Views, and General Dissatisfaction,’ (Broadside Records) was released in the US. “The cover featured a Dave Gahr photograph taken in an empty lot down the street from the Peace Eye Bookstore,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “At least we weren’t listed as The Fugs Jug Band. The impact was almost instantaneous. The sequence I chose, from those two early sessions, with the help of Harry Smith, which we edited on a tape machine at Folkways Records before leaving for the cross-country tour, was to catch on and become, some say, a classic American folk recording.” “For a long time our music was very rough and ragged, and yet people preferred the first album to the second, because it was so … patently what it was, so blatant,” recalls John Anderson in an interview with Jeff Pollock for the Yale University magazine The New Journal (February 9, 1969).
November or December 1965
Ed Sanders turned down an ownership position at the East Village Other, a local underground newspaper. “I had followed EVO since its planning stage. In fact I was offered an ownership position by Walt Bowart if I’d get involved,” confirms Ed in his autobiography. “I knew Bowart as an artist and a bartender at Stanley’s. In later decades he became an important scholar in the field of robowash and hypnotic/narcotic behavior modifications and wire-ups of programmed agents. I meditated seriously about jumping into the EVO project. In the end I turned it down because of all my obligations—filmmaking, publishing, Peace Eye, The Fugs, my family, and poetry. Early East Village Other contributors included Ishmael Reed, Allan Katzman, John Wilcock, and Bill Beckman, with his Captain High cartoon panels. Beckman would soon design The Fugs’ stage set at the Astor Place Playhouse. How much did EVO cost back then? Twenty-five cents a copy. A feature of each EVO issue was a Slum Goddess pictorial, inspired by The Fugs tune.”
Thursday, December 2, 1965: The Bridge (theatre), 4 St. Mark’s Place, East Village, Lower East Side, Lower Manhattan, New York City, New York
The Fugs played a midnight sold-out show.
December ?, 1965
The Fugs hired a new guitar player and singer named Pete Kearney. “We ran ads in the East Village Other and Village Voice and found Pete Kearney, a guitarist who worked at the NYU bookstore,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “Pete Kearney had a gravelly, high-tenor harmony, which can be heard on ‘Coming Down’ on The Fugs Second Album. He looked good on stage. We sometimes called him ‘Bomb Eyes’ because they had a haunting combination of wastedness and wildness.”
THE FUGS #16 (DECEMBER ?, 1965 - DECEMBER 2?, 1965)
1) Ed Sanders
2) Tuli Kupferberg
3) Ken Weaver
4) Steve Weber
5) Lee Crabtree
6) Pete Kearney (aka Bomb Eyes) vocals, lead guitar
1) Ed Sanders
2) Tuli Kupferberg
3) Ken Weaver
4) Steve Weber
5) Lee Crabtree
6) Pete Kearney (aka Bomb Eyes) vocals, lead guitar
Friday, December 10 - Saturday, December 11, 1965: Cafe Au Go Go, 152 Bleecker Street, West Greenwich Village, Manhattan , New York City, New York
Also on the bill: Richie Havens, The New Group. Apparently, Lee Crabtree missed at least one gig of the band’s extend stay at the Cafe Au Go Go that month, because he didn’t appeared in some photos taken during one of their shows there.
Tuesday, December 14 - Thursday, December 16, 1965: Cafe Au Go Go, 152 Bleecker Street, West Greenwich Village, Manhattan , New York City, New York
Also on the bill: Richie Havens.
Friday, December 17 - Sunday, December 26, 1965: 'A Special Xmas Program of Blues & Folk Music,’ Cafe Au Go Go, 152 Bleecker Street, West Greenwich Village, Manhattan , New York City, New York
Also on the bill: The Blues Project, David Blue.
Also on the bill: Richie Havens, The New Group. Apparently, Lee Crabtree missed at least one gig of the band’s extend stay at the Cafe Au Go Go that month, because he didn’t appeared in some photos taken during one of their shows there.
Tuesday, December 14 - Thursday, December 16, 1965: Cafe Au Go Go, 152 Bleecker Street, West Greenwich Village, Manhattan , New York City, New York
Also on the bill: Richie Havens.
Friday, December 17 - Sunday, December 26, 1965: 'A Special Xmas Program of Blues & Folk Music,’ Cafe Au Go Go, 152 Bleecker Street, West Greenwich Village, Manhattan , New York City, New York
Also on the bill: The Blues Project, David Blue.
Monday, December 20, 1965
“I read poetry at Israel Young’s Folklore Center with Ted Berrigan. (It had already moved from 110 MacDougal to 321 Sixth Avenue, on the second floor next to the Waverly Theater, west side of the avenue.),” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “In late ’65 Ted wrote a song for The Fugs, ‘Doin’ All Right,’ which went on our second album.”
Friday, December 24 - Saturday, December 25, 1965: The Bridge (theatre), 4 St. Mark’s Place, East Village, Lower East Side, Lower Manhattan, New York City, New York
The Fugs played a couple of midnight sold-out shows.
December 2?, 1965
Steve Weber was kicked out of the Fugs for irresponsibility. “As leader of The Fugs, I found myself in the unenviable position of hiring and firing,” explains Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “Steve Weber was becoming a problem. He had missed our triumphal performance at Carnegie Hall back in September, so we were forced to perform before a sold-out crowd with just a bass and Weaver on the conga. Weber was loath to practice. I was determined to morph and mutate our music into the level of the bands I had been watching intently at the Cafe Au Go Go. In one of our recent gigs we were in the midst of performing ‘Slum Goddess’ and suddenly the uptempo feel of the guitar utterly vanished. I looked over at Weber, and he was seated in a chair with his head resting on the set list on his guitar. He was asleep! He was a bit difficult to travel with.”
THE FUGS #17 (DECEMBER 2?, 1965 - JANUARY 1966)
1) Ed Sanders
2) Tuli Kupferberg
3) Ken Weaver
4) Pete Kearney (aka Bomb Eyes)
5) Lee Crabtree
1) Ed Sanders
2) Tuli Kupferberg
3) Ken Weaver
4) Pete Kearney (aka Bomb Eyes)
5) Lee Crabtree
Friday, December 31, 1965 - Saturday, January 1, 1966: The Bridge (theatre), 4 St. Mark’s Place, East Village, Lower East Side, Lower Manhattan, New York City, New York
The Fugs played a couple of midnight sold-out shows.
Sunday, January 2, 1966
“The Fugs gave a midnight concert at the Bridge Theater, Saturday into Sunday, January 1–2, after which I went home to our apartment on East Twenty-seventh Street and hit the hay,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “Then Zzzont Zzzzzunh! Zzzuht! Zzzuh! There was an insistent buzzing of the downstairs door around 4:30 AM. It was Tuli Kupferberg. He said there were policemen inside Peace Eye. We took a cab back down to 383 East Tenth. The lights were on inside the store, and a window was broken. There were police cars outside, and there were a couple of police officers in the store. A few were also in the middle room where I kept the Fuck You Press mimeograph machine and piles of uncollated publications, such as The Toe-Queen Poems, the Marijuana Newsletter, The Fugs Songbook , Bugger (an Anthology of Buttockry), Auden’s “Platonic Blow,” and various issues of Fuck You/ A Magazine of the Arts. The officers were examining some pages.” “I was wondering what it all meant as I grabbed a hammer and some wood and started boarding up the broken window and fixing the front door,” he continues. “A cop was stationed outside on the street. As I was hammering, he said, ‘I don’t care personally, but the sergeant is upset.’ In recent months I’d begun to get the attention of law enforcement. For one thing, an undercover police informant had auditioned for the band. So I couldn’t help but wonder, had the police deliberately smashed their way in? It was not long before I became aware of Sergeant Charles Fetta, who was then assigned to the Ninth Precinct. Fetta did seem upset and appeared to have a case of phallophobia, commingled, I thought, with a splash of phallophilia because he seemed miffed about instances of exposed male genitalia in some of my publications. Maybe a bit too miffed. He asked, ‘Are all these publications yours?’ I thought I should show some confusion and not really answer. My generation knew Lenny Bruce’s dictum—‘deny deny deny’—to the walls of our being, so I thought maybe if I appeared vague, I could avoid legal trouble. Next, the sergeant’s hand seemed to tremble as he thrust an issue of Fuck You/ A Magazine of the Arts close to my face. ‘What about that?’ he asked, as he pointed to the cover. He was clutching the cover to volume 5, number 4, which showed a boy I had copied from a Danish tobacco package at the cigar store where I worked on Times Square. Next to the lad was an Egyptian deity with a peace sign on his head and a spurting phallus. He wanted to know what the cover meant. Was the bird threatening the boy? What’s that bird going to do with that boy? The sergeant was so upset over the cover that I was later surprised when it did not show up as one of the exhibits in my trial the following year. I was placed under arrest and the police carted away some valuable boxes of my publications. Tens of thousands of dollars worth, as measured in eBay wealth, say forty years ahead. I asked for a receipt (which they promised to supply but never did). The Ninth Precinct headquarters was at 321 East Fifth. The Ninth covers all the Alphabet Part of the Lower East Side, Houston to Fourteenth, and Broadway east to the East River. We arrived at the polished wood-paneled front doors, which to me had a kind of medieval feel to them. We pushed through and inside. The officers within the precinct house seemed eager for my arrival.” “Indeed, there was a marked contrast of facial expressions between the grumpy arresting officer and the policemen at the station house,” he continues. “For being such a serious matter—that is, the booking of a likely criminal, me—there certainly was a lot of mirth in the Ninth Precinct. ‘Hey, you’re Peace Eye!’ one officer boomed. I nodded. ‘Hello, Peace Eye!’ another exclaimed. I nodded. ‘Let me take a look!’ another commented and smiled, and laughing officers passed magazines hand to hand. In my press release issues several days later I described being driven to the precinct house: ‘I was taken to the 9th precinct where they spent several hours rolling on the floor screaming with glee as they contemplated the copies of Fuck You/ A Magazine of the Arts, Bugger, The Platonic Blow, The Marijuana Newsletter and other goodies they had scarfed from Peace Eye. During this time, however, several officers were carefully examining the New York State Penal Code to find a felony to place upon me. I steadily informed them that it was a misdemeanor. It was.’ All they could come up with to validate the sergeant’s trembles and shakes was a misdemeanor charge of possession of obscene literature with intent to sell. I was asked to sit at a desk, where an officer asked me questions and typed on a nonelectric typewriter, peck peck peck. Name, address, phone, age, height, weight, then he asked if I had any tattoos, to which I replied, ‘No.’ Meanwhile, various officers kept on chuckling and chortling, reading through issues of Fuck You. About a half hour later, my arresting office, Sergeant Fetta, along with another officer, came into the room where I was being questioned. Fetta said, ‘Okay, Sanders, get into that room and take off your clothes.’ ‘What’s up?’ I replied. Then I noticed he was holding the very issue whose cover had so upset him back at Peace Eye. ‘I thought you said you didn’t have any tattoos.’ He was pointing to the ‘Notes on Contributors’ page, where I often placed humorous and speculative comments about the poets in the issue. In this particular issue I stated that Ed Sanders had ‘the Ankh symbol tattooed on his penis’ and ‘the first 53 hieroglyphs of Akh-en- Aten’s Hymn to the Sun Disk on his nuts.’ I was escorted to the bathroom, where I was asked to lower my trousers. Then the two of them bent down fairly closely—I thought a bit too closely—to scope my pants-down groin area in a vain search for Akh-en-Aten’s ‘Hymn to the Sun Disk.’ I was grateful they did not lean down so closely that I could feel the huffs of their agitated nostrils upon my privies. In the press release I sent out upon my bust, I noted the historic aspect of the nut-gaze: ‘I am the only person in the history of American obscenity cases who has had his penis examined during station house questioning.’ At least they didn’t try to touch it or otherwise look underneath, say, for hidden evidence of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. When they were satisfied I didn’t have Akh-en-Aten’s famous hymn written down there on the thrill farm, I was driven to the New York Criminal Court Building at 100 Centre Street, also known as the Tombs. As we passed through the bowels of the Tombs, wending toward the courtroom, we paused along a rail. I said to Sergeant Fetta, ‘You know, I’m going to win this. I’ll fight it all the way to the Supreme Court. And when I win, I’m going to throw a big party, and invite you to come to it.’ Even so, I was not feeling spiritually uplifted. I was feeling the morning terror that the unjustly accused feel—sliding in through the robotic front doors of the Tombs/Criminal Court Building. It reminded me of some dirty electric shoebox. Then I went before the judge. On the one hand I felt upbeat and defiant; on the other I felt like a plate of lemur urine. It lifted my heart a bit to see friends in the courtroom. My bail was a mere $500. My sister and her husband came down from Westchester County and put up a savings passbook to vouch that I would show up in court hearings. Word spread quickly in the counterculture. Allen Ginsberg did a benefit poetry reading in LA at midnight on January 21 at the Cinema Theater. Friends and supporters sent donations for my defense, among them Norman Holmes Pearson, Frank O’Hara, George Plimpton, and John Ashbery. Artist Joe Brainard sent six ink drawings for me to sell to help pay legal expenses. I tried to get information on the arresting officer. I heard he was a go-getter, looking to become lieutenant or captain. I worked to get him moved out of the 9th Precinct. I asked friends to write to our liberal New York City mayor, John Lindsay, and complain about Fetta. These efforts seemed to bear results, though it was difficult to measure precisely. For whatever reason, by the time of my trial next year he had been reassigned to the 111th Precinct out in Bayside, Queens.” “More than one friend suggested I get in touch with the ACLU, so one morning I brought a full run of all thirteen issues of Fuck You to the New York ACLU chapter, located at 156 Fifth Avenue, and had a chat,” he concludes. “To my enormous gratitude, the lawyers agreed to take the case! Yay! And put a notice about the decision in the March ’66 ACLU newsletter.”
The Fugs played a couple of midnight sold-out shows.
Sunday, January 2, 1966
“The Fugs gave a midnight concert at the Bridge Theater, Saturday into Sunday, January 1–2, after which I went home to our apartment on East Twenty-seventh Street and hit the hay,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “Then Zzzont Zzzzzunh! Zzzuht! Zzzuh! There was an insistent buzzing of the downstairs door around 4:30 AM. It was Tuli Kupferberg. He said there were policemen inside Peace Eye. We took a cab back down to 383 East Tenth. The lights were on inside the store, and a window was broken. There were police cars outside, and there were a couple of police officers in the store. A few were also in the middle room where I kept the Fuck You Press mimeograph machine and piles of uncollated publications, such as The Toe-Queen Poems, the Marijuana Newsletter, The Fugs Songbook , Bugger (an Anthology of Buttockry), Auden’s “Platonic Blow,” and various issues of Fuck You/ A Magazine of the Arts. The officers were examining some pages.” “I was wondering what it all meant as I grabbed a hammer and some wood and started boarding up the broken window and fixing the front door,” he continues. “A cop was stationed outside on the street. As I was hammering, he said, ‘I don’t care personally, but the sergeant is upset.’ In recent months I’d begun to get the attention of law enforcement. For one thing, an undercover police informant had auditioned for the band. So I couldn’t help but wonder, had the police deliberately smashed their way in? It was not long before I became aware of Sergeant Charles Fetta, who was then assigned to the Ninth Precinct. Fetta did seem upset and appeared to have a case of phallophobia, commingled, I thought, with a splash of phallophilia because he seemed miffed about instances of exposed male genitalia in some of my publications. Maybe a bit too miffed. He asked, ‘Are all these publications yours?’ I thought I should show some confusion and not really answer. My generation knew Lenny Bruce’s dictum—‘deny deny deny’—to the walls of our being, so I thought maybe if I appeared vague, I could avoid legal trouble. Next, the sergeant’s hand seemed to tremble as he thrust an issue of Fuck You/ A Magazine of the Arts close to my face. ‘What about that?’ he asked, as he pointed to the cover. He was clutching the cover to volume 5, number 4, which showed a boy I had copied from a Danish tobacco package at the cigar store where I worked on Times Square. Next to the lad was an Egyptian deity with a peace sign on his head and a spurting phallus. He wanted to know what the cover meant. Was the bird threatening the boy? What’s that bird going to do with that boy? The sergeant was so upset over the cover that I was later surprised when it did not show up as one of the exhibits in my trial the following year. I was placed under arrest and the police carted away some valuable boxes of my publications. Tens of thousands of dollars worth, as measured in eBay wealth, say forty years ahead. I asked for a receipt (which they promised to supply but never did). The Ninth Precinct headquarters was at 321 East Fifth. The Ninth covers all the Alphabet Part of the Lower East Side, Houston to Fourteenth, and Broadway east to the East River. We arrived at the polished wood-paneled front doors, which to me had a kind of medieval feel to them. We pushed through and inside. The officers within the precinct house seemed eager for my arrival.” “Indeed, there was a marked contrast of facial expressions between the grumpy arresting officer and the policemen at the station house,” he continues. “For being such a serious matter—that is, the booking of a likely criminal, me—there certainly was a lot of mirth in the Ninth Precinct. ‘Hey, you’re Peace Eye!’ one officer boomed. I nodded. ‘Hello, Peace Eye!’ another exclaimed. I nodded. ‘Let me take a look!’ another commented and smiled, and laughing officers passed magazines hand to hand. In my press release issues several days later I described being driven to the precinct house: ‘I was taken to the 9th precinct where they spent several hours rolling on the floor screaming with glee as they contemplated the copies of Fuck You/ A Magazine of the Arts, Bugger, The Platonic Blow, The Marijuana Newsletter and other goodies they had scarfed from Peace Eye. During this time, however, several officers were carefully examining the New York State Penal Code to find a felony to place upon me. I steadily informed them that it was a misdemeanor. It was.’ All they could come up with to validate the sergeant’s trembles and shakes was a misdemeanor charge of possession of obscene literature with intent to sell. I was asked to sit at a desk, where an officer asked me questions and typed on a nonelectric typewriter, peck peck peck. Name, address, phone, age, height, weight, then he asked if I had any tattoos, to which I replied, ‘No.’ Meanwhile, various officers kept on chuckling and chortling, reading through issues of Fuck You. About a half hour later, my arresting office, Sergeant Fetta, along with another officer, came into the room where I was being questioned. Fetta said, ‘Okay, Sanders, get into that room and take off your clothes.’ ‘What’s up?’ I replied. Then I noticed he was holding the very issue whose cover had so upset him back at Peace Eye. ‘I thought you said you didn’t have any tattoos.’ He was pointing to the ‘Notes on Contributors’ page, where I often placed humorous and speculative comments about the poets in the issue. In this particular issue I stated that Ed Sanders had ‘the Ankh symbol tattooed on his penis’ and ‘the first 53 hieroglyphs of Akh-en- Aten’s Hymn to the Sun Disk on his nuts.’ I was escorted to the bathroom, where I was asked to lower my trousers. Then the two of them bent down fairly closely—I thought a bit too closely—to scope my pants-down groin area in a vain search for Akh-en-Aten’s ‘Hymn to the Sun Disk.’ I was grateful they did not lean down so closely that I could feel the huffs of their agitated nostrils upon my privies. In the press release I sent out upon my bust, I noted the historic aspect of the nut-gaze: ‘I am the only person in the history of American obscenity cases who has had his penis examined during station house questioning.’ At least they didn’t try to touch it or otherwise look underneath, say, for hidden evidence of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. When they were satisfied I didn’t have Akh-en-Aten’s famous hymn written down there on the thrill farm, I was driven to the New York Criminal Court Building at 100 Centre Street, also known as the Tombs. As we passed through the bowels of the Tombs, wending toward the courtroom, we paused along a rail. I said to Sergeant Fetta, ‘You know, I’m going to win this. I’ll fight it all the way to the Supreme Court. And when I win, I’m going to throw a big party, and invite you to come to it.’ Even so, I was not feeling spiritually uplifted. I was feeling the morning terror that the unjustly accused feel—sliding in through the robotic front doors of the Tombs/Criminal Court Building. It reminded me of some dirty electric shoebox. Then I went before the judge. On the one hand I felt upbeat and defiant; on the other I felt like a plate of lemur urine. It lifted my heart a bit to see friends in the courtroom. My bail was a mere $500. My sister and her husband came down from Westchester County and put up a savings passbook to vouch that I would show up in court hearings. Word spread quickly in the counterculture. Allen Ginsberg did a benefit poetry reading in LA at midnight on January 21 at the Cinema Theater. Friends and supporters sent donations for my defense, among them Norman Holmes Pearson, Frank O’Hara, George Plimpton, and John Ashbery. Artist Joe Brainard sent six ink drawings for me to sell to help pay legal expenses. I tried to get information on the arresting officer. I heard he was a go-getter, looking to become lieutenant or captain. I worked to get him moved out of the 9th Precinct. I asked friends to write to our liberal New York City mayor, John Lindsay, and complain about Fetta. These efforts seemed to bear results, though it was difficult to measure precisely. For whatever reason, by the time of my trial next year he had been reassigned to the 111th Precinct out in Bayside, Queens.” “More than one friend suggested I get in touch with the ACLU, so one morning I brought a full run of all thirteen issues of Fuck You to the New York ACLU chapter, located at 156 Fifth Avenue, and had a chat,” he concludes. “To my enormous gratitude, the lawyers agreed to take the case! Yay! And put a notice about the decision in the March ’66 ACLU newsletter.”
Ed Sanders' mugshot, New York City, January 2, 1966
January 1966
The Fugs signed a new recording contract with a local label called ESP-Disk. “I met a human being named Bernard Stollman who owned a record company called ESP Disk, which his parents were bankrolling for him,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “We lunched at a vegetarian restaurant by Union Square and worked out a tentative deal to record for his company. The Fugs very badly wanted an Off-Broadway theater where we could set up scenery and lights to work our tunes and routines. ESP agreed to acquire us a theater. I was not very impressed with Stollman, but ESP did rent us a theater. However, all costs for it, and more, were slurped out of our pitiful royalty rate for the second album. It was only after I had learned more about music contracts that I realized what a hideous deal Stollman offered the acts he enticed to work for him. The oi is still oi-ing in the Oi over the ESP contract terms. So again without any outside help, such as a lawyer or an agent, we signed a strange, shackling contract. We had signed a strange piece of paper with Folkways, and the deal with ESP was stranger. For example, the ESP royalty rate was 25¢ per album, regardless of the retail price, which in 1966 was $5 per unit. The 25¢ included both publishing and recording royalties, so our royalty rate was less than 3 percent, one of the lower percentages in the history of Western civilization.” With an upcoming second album to record, the Fugs soon welcomed back in the band Vinny Leary and John Anderson. “Second semester at Yale, things became difficult because I was in New York every dat recording for our second album,” recalls John Anderson in an interview with Jeff Pollock for the Yale University magazine The New Journal (February 9, 1969). “At that time there was a kind of identity crisis going on: Was I a student or a rock-and-roll star? I was really trying to lead two lives, and though it wasn’t Yale’s fault, the scene in New York seemed to offer me more. I was dropping courses, so I figured I’d better resign for a year.”
THE FUGS #18 (JANUARY 1966 - MAY 1966 (?))
1) Ed Sanders
2) Tuli Kupferberg
3) Ken Weaver
4) Pete Kearney (aka Bomb Eyes)
5) Lee Crabtree
6) Vinny Leary
7) John Anderson
1) Ed Sanders
2) Tuli Kupferberg
3) Ken Weaver
4) Pete Kearney (aka Bomb Eyes)
5) Lee Crabtree
6) Vinny Leary
7) John Anderson
The Fugs #18 (minus Tuli Kupferberg who probably just missed the photo shooting), 1966 - from left: Ed Sanders, Lee Crabtree, Pete Kearney, John Anderson, Vinny Leary, and Ken Weaver
January - February 1966: Impact Sound Studios, 225 West 65th Street, Upper West Side, Manhattan, New York City, New York
The Fugs recorded their second album. “One good thing happened as a result of The Fugs relationship with ESP—we met engineer/producer Richard Alderson, who owned (with Harry Belafonte) RLA/Impact Sound Studios at 225 West Sixty-fifth Street, a building later torn down when Lincoln Center was constructed,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “Alderson had built his own studio to experiment with electronic music.” “Alderson originally had an investor in his recording studio named Tamara Safford, who put in around $7,000 or $8,000,” he continues. “Belafonte then invested a considerable amount of money in RLA, around $80,000, and its name was changed to Impact Sound. The studio, awaiting being torn down for the Lincoln Center Parking Garage, had egg carton sound baffling on the ceiling, with Alderson himself exposing a raw brick wall and putting in a partition so that he could live in the back. Chip Monck, then the lighting designer for the Village Gate, had offices upstairs in the same building. Even though condemned, the building lasted for around seven years. RLA Studios/Impact Sound had a four-track Ampex recorder and a two-track, which was state of the art for 1966; even The Beatles recorded four-track. So The Second Fugs Album involved many fourtrack to two-track to four-track bounces to free up tracks for overdubs. Richard Alderson wasn’t one of those ‘don’t touch the console’ technobots, so we were able to learn the art of recording while we cut the tunes. He had good ears and good ideas, and he brought precision to our recording.” “The First Fugs Album had taken two approximately three-hour sessions; for the second album we spent about four weeks in Alderson’s studio,” he continues. “We wanted to do some good electronic rock and roll. We sensed the truth of the adage ‘Tapes don’t lie,’ and we wanted to get beyond tribal primitive in our recording techniques, believing that if we could ‘get our brains on tape,’ we’d arrive as recording artists. For the second album the musicians consisted of me, Kupferberg, Weaver, brilliant keyboardist Lee Crabtree, Vinny Leary on guitar, Pete Kearney on guitar, and Jon Anderson on bass. We quickly formed a fairly tight recording unit. With our newfound renown we acquired some equipment. Ampeg gave us some amplifiers in exchange for our ‘endorsement,’ and Ken Weaver advanced from congas to a full set of rock-and-roll drums. John Anderson stenciled his red, white, and blue Fugs logo on the bass drum head. I had an idea for an extended piece that would involve spontaneous music, dialogue, poetry. I sketched it out for the band. Lee Crabtree thought of the name for it, ‘Virgin Forest.’ We felt like we were entering new ground. Alderson dubbed in exciting frog sounds. Vinny Leary made his guitar into an electronic music instrument of greatness. We stitched together ‘Virgin Forest’—picking the best sections of takes, mixing together fragments. ‘Out of the foam’ (for which there were five takes), for instance, we spliced the beginning out of take four and the rest out of take five. For ‘Me Want Woman,’ we did the same thing, using, out of four takes, the beginning from take three and the ‘Me Want Woman’ section from take one. I’ve heard that ‘Virgin Forest’ impressed The Beatles when they heard it, and it seems to have helped give them some ideas to create extended pieces, such as ‘A Day in the Life’ on Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Betsy Klein, an early Fugs supporter (we cooked the spaghetti for the ‘Fugs Spaghetti Death’ at her apartment), sang harmony on ‘Morning Morning’ and sang a duet with Ken Weaver on ‘Virgin Forest.’ We’d heard that Peter, Paul, and Mary had taken over one hundred takes to get a basic track for one of their tunes, so we weren’t worried about something like seventy-one takes for ‘Morning Morning.’ Our harmonies still lacked the polish of the Beach Boys, but just as we did in our first sessions back in ’65, we stood in front of Alderson’s microphones and gave forth all the totally attentive energy and genius the Fates and our genetic codes would allow us to summon. Some of the songs on our second album are not what is currently known as PC, or politically correct, and we might not now write them in quite the same way, but they were true to the testosterone-crazed era in which they were created. In addition to genius Ted Berrigan, other poets and songwriters submitted songs to The Fugs. One was a young man, born in the Bronx, named Lionel Goldbart, who used to hang out at the Peace Eye Bookstore. He submitted a few tunes, two of which we recorded. The first was a satire called ‘Dirty Old Man,’ which wound up on our new album; the second was ‘River of Shit,’ which we recorded the following year for our Reprise album, It Crawled into My Hand, Honest. In another submission poets Jack Micheline and Al Fowler approached me all excited on Avenue B, near Stanley’s Bar at Twelfth Street. They were laughing as they thrust into my hands some notes for a song called ‘Sugar Shit.’ SS is heroin cut with sugar. It was a tune The Fugs never recorded. There were additional ‘out-there’ submissions from various lyricists over the years.” “Everything is a writing surface in the mania of Sudden Fame,” he concludes. “While I was waiting for a bus on Second Avenue, some lines from Charles Olson’s great poem ‘Maximus from Dogtown—I’ came to mind: We drink / or break open / our veins solely / to know . . . I began to sing it, and within a few minutes, on the bus, I wrote ‘I Want to Know,’ which we immediately recorded for the second album.”
Thursday, January 20 or Friday, January 21, 1966
Ed Sanders, Tuli Kupferberg, Ken Weaver and Pete Kearney headed into television talk show host David Susskind’s office in Newsweek Building at 432-450 Madison Avenue, Manhattan, and were interviewed by Jean Kennedy, producer of Susskind’s Open End television talk show. The interview led to an appearance of the band, or at least of Sanders and Kupferberg, at one of the upcoming episodes of Open End a week later.
Friday, January 21 - Sunday, January 23, 1966: Astor Place Playhouse, 434 Lafayette Street, near 8th Street and Cooper Union, NoHo, Manhattan, New York City, New York
The Fugs played two shows a day on Friday and Sunday (8:00pm and 10:00pm), and three on Saturday (5:00pm, 8:00pm, and 10:00pm). “Artist Bill Beckman, on the staff of the East Village Other and author of a successful cartoon series, ‘Captain High,’ designed The Fugs museum in the lobby of the Astor Place Playhouse,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “He also made the sign for the Peace Eye Bookstore. He lived with his wife, Deborah, on East Ninth, east of Tompkins Park. Deborah and my wife, Miriam, were close friends during the 1960s.” “I rented a strobe light, with a dial to set the speed of the strobe,” he continues. “We pointed it at the audience at the end of ‘Nothing,’ whereupon I switched it on during the musical freakout that we always entered during the end of the tune. I had read that about fifty-eight strobes per minute tended to give visual hallucinations. That was the setting on the strobe dial.” “We also had Lee Cragtree [sic], who was a masterful keyboard pianist,” recalls John Anderson in an interview with Jeff Pollock for the Yale University magazine The New Journal (February 9, 1969). “But Lee would get pissed off at the lack of musical organization or he’d have some metaphysical ‘vector’ interferring with Ed that he’d periodically stomp off stage in the middle of a song, and we wouldn’t see him for a few days.”
The Fugs #18 (minus John Anderson probably just out of the picture), Astor Place Playhouse, New York City, 1966 - from left: Pete Kearney, Vinny Leary, Ken Weaver, Ed Sanders, Tuli Kupferberg, and Lee Crabtree
Thursday, January 27 - Sunday, January 30, 1966: Astor Place Playhouse, 434 Lafayette Street, near 8th Street and Cooper Union, NoHo, Manhattan, New York City, New York
The Fugs played two shows a day on Thursday, Friday and Saturday (8:30pm and 10:00pm), and one on Sunday (5:00pm). “One evening just as we were getting ready to perform at the Astor Place Playhouse, I learned that an assistant district attorney was in the audience,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “I vowed not to alter the show a whit, and we didn’t. Soon thereafter the district attorney’s office filtered the word to us that it had decided against pressing charges. On another evening a man who identified himself as the vice president of the Coca Cola Company attended a show and was offended by our ditty ‘Coca Cola Douche.’ He came up to me backstage and threatened to sue. ‘Go ahead and sue us!’ I begged. ‘Please, please, sue us!’ I was thinking of the enormous publicity that would accrue in such a case.” “Our shows were very controversial for their day, though they were nothing when measured against what would be allowed, on television for instance, in the year 2011,” also explains Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “Lenny Bruce had been prosecuted not long before by an overzealous hater of personal freedom. And so naturally we were nervous when more representatives of the New York District Attorney’s Office attended a show at the Astor Place Playhouse. We decided not to confront them and did not alter a single wiggle, erotic expletive, or complaint about the Vietnam War in our show. Only years later, after we got our FBI files, did we realize that there was a full-fledged investigation by the government of The Fugs.”
Thursday, January 27 or Friday, January 28, 1966: ‘Open End with David Susskind: Wild Beatniks,’ WPIX (Channel 11) TV Show, WNJU-TV Studios, Mosque Theatre, 1020 Broad Street, Newark, Essex County, New Jersey
The Fugs, or at least Ed Sanders, Tuli Kupferberg and Ken Weaver - along with members of the Velvet Underground (at least John Cale and Moe Tucker), plus Andy Warhol and his contingent featuring the likes of Gerard Malanga, Paul Morrisey, Barbara Rubin, Danny Williams, Nat Finklestein, Angus MacLise, etc. - filmed a talked-only appearance at Open End, a talk show hosted by David Susskind which was aired every Sunday from 10pm to 11pm on WPIX Channel 11 in New York City. “The Fugs appeared on the prestigious David Susskind Show in early 1967 [sic],” confirms Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “Susskind was a leading television producer and winner of numerous Emmy awards. In my archives is a reel of tape containing the interview, which in the interest of completeness I listened to while writing this book. The tape commences with Susskind introducing us: Some of the most rebellious people I know, and some of the most way-out people—they are The Fugs, and I’d like to present them individually: Ed Sanders, he founded The Fugs in ’65, a poet, he’s also the editor of the Marijuana Newsletter, a graduate of New York University, Ed Sanders was born in Kansas City, Missouri; next Ken Weaver, also a poet, he’s been with The Fugs since the group was formed; and Tuli Kupferberg, who in addition to his Fugs activities also teaches a course on the Sexual Revolution at the Free University of New York, and he is the editor of the Birth Press. Now The Fugs make record albums—they’re musicians, and they have extraordinary tunes and songs—‘Kill for Peace,’ ‘Slum Goddess,’ ‘We Love Grass,’ ‘Group Grope,’ ‘What Are You Gonna Do After the Orgy?’ ‘Hallucination Horrors,’ and ‘Bed Is Getting Crowded’ [rise of laughter]. Now, WHY do you compose such songs, and where can you sing and perform them, Ed? Ed: All over the United States. We perform at colleges, campuses, coffeehouses, and theaters. Why do we write songs like that? Because it feels good [another round of laughter]. No, because it’s a manifestation of certain concerns we have about changes in sexual mores in this country, and it has to do with our opinions on a number of psychosocial, and philosophical, and religious and spiritual things. Susskind: Yeah, but these songs are pretty dirty. Ed: Because we have seventy songs, man, you just went through our songbook, and copied out—you left out some songs I bet you couldn’t say here. Susskind: Yes, I have left those songs out [more laughter]. But the language is so guttural. Tuli: Like guttural, like in the gutter. Susskind: Yes. Tuli: I thought you meant guttural, like in the German language. Susskind: Are you sort of doing what those people do who write dirty stuff on walls? Doesn’t it amount to the same thing? Tuli: Some of that’s good poetry [big laugh]. Ed: ‘The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls.’ You miss the point. The point is that we’re taking highly charged language, we’re taking poetry, some of which is highly charged with sexual connotations, and we’re dropping it into modern music, into pop music, into rock and roll, into chants and religious statements, and social statements. Some of it involves using the Blip words, the four-letter words, the seven-letter words, and the sixteen-letter words that are banned on the airwaves, but which we can say in the context of theater, and we actually say them on albums. Tuli: These words are implied in all the other music; it’s just that they are euphemistic. But I think that most young people who sing those songs know what they’re singing about. Ed: Hey, man, the American automobile has revolutionized sex. The backseat has revolutionized. . . . You can’t go out to Freakville, Arkansas, without having everybody knowing what’s on page thirtyseven of the Kama Sutra. They know all about pot and music and the ‘backseat boogie.’ Susskind: Why do you look this way? Ken, why no haircut ever? Ken: Actually, I’m emulating Uncle Sam. He has long hair and a beard [laughter and applause]. Tuli: Not only Uncle Sam, but Abraham Lincoln, Alexander Hamilton, George, Ben Franklin, Andrew Jackson. Susskind: Is the whole thing adding up to total rebellion—appearance? . . . Ed: Not at all. The point is there’s no reason for a man to restrict himself to repressive clothing [pointing to Susskind]. Your suit has embellishments; you’ve got some sort of modified Beatle boots on [lots of laughter]. The point is, there’s a way of expressing yourself through clothes; there’s a way of going around expressing yourself colorfully, with artistry; it’s esthetic. If more people tried to make their lives more esthetic, and more complexly and richly colorful, then you’d have a more interesting and fruitful voyage as a human being. Susskind: Doesn’t it add up to slobness? Ed: Up against the Wall! We dress very carefully. We’re not slobs. Tuli: Aren’t you bored by black jackets? Susskind: No, not particularly. Susskind: What is it about the sexual mores of the country that give you a pain? Ed: The repression of sex by people who are growing old and are afraid they’re going to die is often manifested in war hysteria. Susskind: What’s wrong with the sexual conventions of America today. What is it that you’re so angry about? Tuli: The fact that people can be punished by indulging in any kind of sexual practice they want that does not hurt anyone. Susskind: You’re for total promiscuity? Ed: No, people want a full spectrum of sexual activity . . . . Susskind: Let’s not get too clinical. Ed: If a man and woman discover that they want to live together in a monogamous situation without any adultery, then that’s fine. Although there are some in the United States that want to engage in group marriages, or situations where they have matrilinear descent for children, you have situations where three or four people want to live together, you have where people don’t want to marry at all; you have a right to be a homosexual. The point is, man, you’ve got to examine the sexual possibilities, and in all the sexual possibilities where there is no violence and no one hurt, then they should be allowed by the law. Tuli: These are crimes without victims. Susskind: How about drugs. Do you advocate complete permissiveness, Ken? Ken: How do I feel about drugs? I really like them [big surge of laughter]. I don’t foist what I like on other people. I never tell people to take LSD. Susskind: Do you take LSD? Weaver: I have taken it, yeah. Susskind: Do you find it productive? Weaver: Unutterably beautiful. Susskind: Can you describe what it does for you that makes it unutterably beautiful? Weaver: Nope [burst of laughter from audience]. Susskind: Is marijuana part of your lives? Ed: The Fugs take no formal positions about any of these things. It’s not like we’re running some sort of Freak Cell here, that’s giving out manifestos, but some of us, I particularly, happen to believe in the legalization of marijuana. I think marijuana is a gentle, benevolent herb falsely prosecuted by alcoholics and creeps [laughter]. Susskind: You think it does no harm? Ed: I think it does infinite good to the human psyche, and I think it should be sold in vending machines just like cigarettes and combs in Howard Johnsons. And on it went, this tape from early 1967 [sic], giving a slice of Fugs Thought before a large national television audience. This was at a moment of fairly great fame for The Fugs.” Anyway, the episode, titled Wild Beatniks, it should have aired on February 13, 1966 as announced on the TV guide on February 12, but apparently it was withdrawn at last minute (and apparently never aired at all) because the TV guide of the next day, February 13, announced another episode titled Escape From Terror, about five Cuban refugees who recently left their Castro-dominated island.
January or February 1966
“We suffered a mild greed spasm,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “Ted Berrigan told us an anecdote about short story writer Damon Runyon, who reportedly had a sign above his desk, ‘Get the Money.’ Inspired by that, we formed a company called G.T.M. Enterprises to market T-shirts, Fugs underwear, and buttons.” “For the first few months of 1966 my old friend Nelson Barr [who was a regular contributor to Fuck You / A Magazine of the Arts since 1962] served as manager of The Fugs,” he added. “At the same time we hired a publicist named Tim Boxer, who brought in gluts of ink for us. One of the publicity events Tim lined up for The Fugs was at a car dealership.”
Thursday, February 3 - Sunday, February 6, 1966: Astor Place Playhouse, 434 Lafayette Street, near 8th Street and Cooper Union, NoHo, Manhattan, New York City, New York
The Fugs played two shows a day on Thursday, Friday and Saturday (8:30pm and 10:00pm), and one on Sunday (5:00pm).
Thursday, February 10 - Sunday, February 13, 1966: Astor Place Playhouse, 434 Lafayette Street, near 8th Street and Cooper Union, NoHo, Manhattan, New York City, New York
The Fugs played two shows a day on Thursday, Friday and Saturday (8:30pm and 10:00pm), and one on Sunday (5:00pm).
Thursday, February 17 - Sunday, February 20, 1966: Astor Place Playhouse, 434 Lafayette Street, near 8th Street and Cooper Union, NoHo, Manhattan, New York City, New York
The Fugs played two shows a day on Thursday, Friday and Saturday (8:30pm and 10:00pm), and one on Sunday (5:00pm).
Thursday, February 24 - Sunday, February 27, 1966: Astor Place Playhouse, 434 Lafayette Street, near 8th Street and Cooper Union, NoHo, Manhattan, New York City, New York
The Fugs played two shows a day on Thursday, Friday and Saturday (8:30pm and 10:00pm), and one on Sunday (5:00pm).
Thursday, March 3, 1966
The Fugs held a press conference at the Astor Place Playhouse in Manhattan to announce the simultaneous release, that day, of their first two singles: ‘Frenzy / I Want To Know’ (ESP-Disk 4507) and ‘Kill For Peace / Morning Morning’ (ESP-Disk 4508).
Thursday, March 3 - Sunday, March 6, 1966: Astor Place Playhouse, 434 Lafayette Street, near 8th Street and Cooper Union, NoHo, Manhattan, New York City, New York
The Fugs played two shows a day on Thursday, Friday and Saturday (8:30pm and 10:00pm), and one on Sunday (5:00pm).
Thursday, March 10 - Sunday, March 13, 1966: Astor Place Playhouse, 434 Lafayette Street, near 8th Street and Cooper Union, NoHo, Manhattan, New York City, New York
The Fugs played two shows a day on Thursday, Friday and Saturday (8:30pm and 10:00pm), and one on Sunday (5:00pm).
Tuesday, March 15, 1966
The Fugs’ second album, ‘The Fugs’ (ESP-Disk), was released in the US. Allen Ginsberg wrote liner notes for the album. “On July 9 the Troggs’ ‘Wild Thing’ was number seven on the singles list and ‘Paperback Writer’ was number two. And wow! there on the album charts! The Fugs! at eighty-nine, just above Martha and the Vandellas’ Greatest Hits!,” exclaims Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “It spawned the peculiar hunger that I call ‘chart-anguia,’ a thirst to get on the charts again, difficult to do with tunes like ‘Kill for Peace’ and ‘I Feel Like Homemade Shit.’ Even so, for a few years I compulsively looked at the Billboard or Cashbox charts, even though none of my projects got very far up in the lists!”
Allen Ginsberg's liner notes for The Fugs' second album, March 1966
Thursday, March 17 - Sunday, March 20, 1966: Astor Place Playhouse, 434 Lafayette Street, near 8th Street and Cooper Union, NoHo, Manhattan, New York City, New York
The Fugs played two shows a day on Thursday, Friday and Saturday (8:30pm and 10:00pm), and one on Sunday (5:00pm).
Thursday, March 24 - Sunday, March 27, 1966: Astor Place Playhouse, 434 Lafayette Street, near 8th Street and Cooper Union, NoHo, Manhattan, New York City, New York
The Fugs played two shows a day on Thursday, Friday and Saturday (8:30pm and 10:00pm), and one on Sunday (5:00pm).
Thursday, March 31, 1966: Astor Place Playhouse, 434 Lafayette Street, near 8th Street and Cooper Union, NoHo, Manhattan, New York City, New York
At 6:30pm, two hours before their first evening show (see below), the Fugs held at the Astor Place Playhouse a party for the release of their second album and the official opening of the Fugs Museum. “Catered macrobiotic food was served at the official opening of The Fugs Museum, designed by artist Bill Beckman, and the release of The Fugs Second Album,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “Tim Leary showed up, and a fun time was had by all.”
Thursday, March 31 - Sunday, April 3, 1966: Astor Place Playhouse, 434 Lafayette Street, near 8th Street and Cooper Union, NoHo, Manhattan, New York City, New York
The Fugs played two shows a day on Thursday, Friday and Saturday (8:30pm and 10:00pm), and one on Sunday (3:00pm). At that time “the fourteen-year-old daughter of Jack Kerouac [ed. Jan] began to hang out in the Fugs milieu,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “She looked older than her years and drank heavily in bars such as the Annex, just around the corner from Peace Eye. She was very sexually active. One friend who made it with her described how she pulled on her nipples while they were balling. The manager of the Astor Place Playhouse late at night encountered Jan and a Fugs guitarist making out atop the drum riser on stage in the gloom.” “I remember how the owner of the Astor Place Playhouse had come on Jan and a Fugs guitarist making it on the drum riser one midnight,” added Sanders.
Thursday, March 31, 1966: ‘April Fools Dance Models Ball,’ Village Gate, 158 Bleecker Street, West Greenwich Village, Manhattan , New York City, New York
One show, started at 9:00pm. Also on the bill: The Velvet Underground & Nico.
Thursday, April 7 - Sunday, April 10, 1966: Astor Place Playhouse, 434 Lafayette Street, near 8th Street and Cooper Union, NoHo, Manhattan, New York City, New York
The Fugs played two shows a day on Thursday, Friday and Saturday (8:30pm and 10:00pm), and one on Sunday (5:00pm).
Thursday, April 14 - Sunday, April 17, 1966: Astor Place Playhouse, 434 Lafayette Street, near 8th Street and Cooper Union, NoHo, Manhattan, New York City, New York
The Fugs played two shows a day on Thursday, Friday and Saturday (8:30pm and 10:00pm), and one on Sunday (5:00pm). “At the Bridge Theater, however, an antiwar group had burned an American flag, which is always controversial in America,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “As a result there were front-page news stories and police and fire inspectors at all the East Village theaters. We decided to burn a flag representing something we held very, very dear to make the point that it’s just a flag and you could still love a book even if you burned its cover. So we painted a flag that said ‘Lower East Side,’ and on stage at the Astor Place Playhouse we torched it. Well-known columnist Sidney Zion misreported in an article read by New York City officials that The Fugs had burned an AMERICAN flag during a concert. (I had told him we had burned a ‘flag of the Lower East Side.’) The NYC establishment assumed it had been a U.S. flag, so the theater was right away visited by fire inspectors and building inspectors, and soon The Fugs had to leave the Astor Place Playhouse, after a run of almost four months. Here’s some of the April 19, 1966, article by Sid Zion that got The Fugs snuffed out of the Astor Place Playhouse: An artists and writers committee, led by Allen Ginsberg, the poet, charged yesterday that ‘petty officials’ in the Lindsay administration were conducting a campaign of harassment to drive avant garde artistic endeavors out of the city. ‘The current drive against the avant garde arts, against the consciousness-expanding drugs, the clean-up of Greenwich Village and 42d Street, and many, many other cases can be explained only as a desperate gathering of evil or sick forces to delay the development of man,’ Jonas Mekas, film critic and filmmaker said in a statement adopted by the committee yesterday at a press conference in the Bridge Theater at 2 St. Mark’s Place. The group charged that The Fugs, a politically oriented rock ’n’ roll singing group, was being harassed by the License Department. According to the committee, personnel of the License Department had warned the owner of the Astor Place Playhouse, where The Fugs have been performing, that unless the group ‘toned down’ its show, the license for the theater would be revoked. As a result, the committee said, the owner, Mrs. Muriel Morse, has shut off the box office telephone. Mrs. Morse could not be reached for comment, but the telephone is ‘temporarily disconnected.’ Assistant License Commissioner Walter Kirshenbaum ‘categorically’ denied the charges yesterday. And Ed Sanders, leader of The Fugs, said he believed ‘the pressure is off.’ In fact, Mr. Sanders said that his group burned an American flag at a performance last Saturday night [April 16] and that nothing had happened as a result.’”
April 1966 (?)
“Before we were tossed out of the Astor Place Playhouse, we had time to appear in Conrad Rooks’s film Chappaqua, for which we performed some songs [actually one, ‘I Couldn’t Get High’],” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “Robert Frank was the cinematographer. I recall groveling on the stage of Astor Place while Paula Prentice [actually Pritchett] in long leather boots stomped on mock LSD-suffused sugar cubes.”
May 1966 (?)
Lee Crabtree left the Fugs.
THE FUGS #19 (MAY 1966 (?) - JULY 1966)
1) Ed Sanders
2) Tuli Kupferberg
3) Ken Weaver
4) Pete Kearney (aka Bomb Eyes)
5) Vinny Leary
6) John Anderson
1) Ed Sanders
2) Tuli Kupferberg
3) Ken Weaver
4) Pete Kearney (aka Bomb Eyes)
5) Vinny Leary
6) John Anderson
Sunday, June 12, 1966: ‘An Evening With The Fugs,’ Town Hall, 123 West 43rd Street, b/w 6th Avenue and Broadway, Manhattan, New York City, New York
One show, started at 8:30pm. Also on the bill: Frozen Flowers. The show was presented by Rambling Sounds, Ltd. (Henry Abramson, Lewis Levy, and Hayden Harris). “A young fan named Henry Abramson put up money for The Fugs to ‘move uptown’ to a concert at Town Hall!,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “The Town Hall gig came along at a miracle moment for us. We were without a theater, having been tossed from the Astor Place Playhouse. I used the $1,500 concert fee from Town Hall to rent the Players Theatre on MacDougal Street, and we soon began a long, long run. Robert Shelton reviewed the Town Hall concert in the New York Times. To my enormous relief, given his stature among writers on current music, Shelton liked the show! Among his comments: The Fugs might be considered the musical children of Lenny Bruce, the angry satirist. Their music, while growing in capability, is secondary to their lyrics, patter and antics. Complete personal freedom, whether in sex or in drug experiences, seems to be one of the Fugs’ ensigns. Two songs, including ‘Turn On, Tune In and Drop Out,’ were dedicated to Dr. Timothy Leary, the researcher in use of psychedelic drugs. ‘Kill for Peace’ lambasted the United States policy in Vietnam. While obviously far out by most accepted standards of popular music, the Fugs are clever, biting and effective satirists. In settings of poems by William Blake and Charles Olson, they showed a gentler nature. While not for every taste, the group can be commended for its originality, courage and wit.”
One show, started at 8:30pm. Also on the bill: Frozen Flowers. The show was presented by Rambling Sounds, Ltd. (Henry Abramson, Lewis Levy, and Hayden Harris). “A young fan named Henry Abramson put up money for The Fugs to ‘move uptown’ to a concert at Town Hall!,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “The Town Hall gig came along at a miracle moment for us. We were without a theater, having been tossed from the Astor Place Playhouse. I used the $1,500 concert fee from Town Hall to rent the Players Theatre on MacDougal Street, and we soon began a long, long run. Robert Shelton reviewed the Town Hall concert in the New York Times. To my enormous relief, given his stature among writers on current music, Shelton liked the show! Among his comments: The Fugs might be considered the musical children of Lenny Bruce, the angry satirist. Their music, while growing in capability, is secondary to their lyrics, patter and antics. Complete personal freedom, whether in sex or in drug experiences, seems to be one of the Fugs’ ensigns. Two songs, including ‘Turn On, Tune In and Drop Out,’ were dedicated to Dr. Timothy Leary, the researcher in use of psychedelic drugs. ‘Kill for Peace’ lambasted the United States policy in Vietnam. While obviously far out by most accepted standards of popular music, the Fugs are clever, biting and effective satirists. In settings of poems by William Blake and Charles Olson, they showed a gentler nature. While not for every taste, the group can be commended for its originality, courage and wit.”
July 1966
Pete Kearney left the Fugs (a couple of years later he played briefly with It’s A Beautiful Day in San Francisco, and then disappeared from the music scene and I only know that he passed away at some point) and was replaced by an extraordinarie local blues guitarist named Jonathan ‘Jon’ Kalb, the younger brother of the legendary Danny Kalb of the Blues Project.
THE FUGS #20 (JULY 1966 - SEPTEMBER 1966)
1) Ed Sanders
2) Tuli Kupferberg
3) Ken Weaver
4) Vinny Leary
5) John Anderson
6) Jonathan ‘Jon’ Kalb lead guitar
The Fugs #20, Greenwich Village Park, New York City, summer of 1966 - from front to back: Jon Kalb, Tuli Kupferberg, John Anderson, Vinny Leary, Ken Weaver, and Ed Sanders
Wednesday, July 6, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm, presented by Julius Orlovsky & Aleister Crowley in association with the Hydrogen Foot Fetish Society of America, Inc. “Located at 115 MacDougal, the Players Theatre was owned by a gentleman named Donald Goldman, who did not seem to mind our rough language and wild stage antics,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “His theater manager, on the other hand, was an ex-army guy named Howard Dwyer, who didn’t like the word ‘fuck.’ In fact his face went red at it, and although all other words were okay, he seethed at the use of fuck in our routines. Thank goodness theater owner Goldman was more worldly and didn’t care about our language. Whew. The Café Wha was located in the basement, and there were oodles of Greenwich Village sidewalk traffic, so our shows started selling out when we opened in July. Our run there during 1966 and 1967 lasted over seven hundred performances. During the summer and fall we did three shows a night on the weekends—8:00, 10:00, and midnight. The theater was filled, and the shows were fluid, well done, and hot. It was the peak time for The Fugs.” “Famous people began to watch our shows at the Players Theatre,” he added, “and we were thrilled to shake the hands of stars such as Richard Burton, Peter O’Toole, Tennessee Williams, and Leonard Bernstein in quick backstage visits. To Kim Novak we gave a Fugs T-shirt, hoping she might pop it on.” “In addition to renowned guests such as Kim Novak, ‘New York Intellectuals,’ including those associated with the New York Review of Books, began to appear at Fugs shows at the Players Theatre that summer,” he concludes. “Elizabeth Hardwick actually wrote a good review of the show, which we cherished. Novelist Philip Roth also came to a show on an evening that Tuli sang ‘Jack Off Blues,’ which always brought an explosive round of applause from the audience. It was around then that Roth began Portnoy’s Complaint , which was published in 1969. A lingering question is this: Was Portnoy’s Complaint inspired by the ‘Jack Off Blues’ lyrics? Could there have been royalties for Tuli? Probably not. Shakespeare did not have to give credit, and certainly no bread, for plundering histories of Denmark when writing Hamlet.”
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Thursday, July 7, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Friday, July 8 - Saturday, July 9, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, July 10, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Wednesday, July 13 - Thursday, July 14, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm. “AN EVENING WITH THE FUGS opened last night (Wednesday) at the Players’ Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street,” reported the Village Voice (July 14, 1966). “Ken Weaver, Ed Sanders, and Tuli Kupferberg are presenting ‘an evolving provisational revue’ satirizing political involvement, patriotism, rock ‘n’ roll, war, hate, and super-abundant love.” “We had a program to follow during the shows, a strict format,” recalls John Anderson in an interview with Jeff Pollock for the Yale University magazine The New Journal (February 9, 1969). “It was presented as a kind of theater. ‘An Evening with the Fugs’, with Playbills and all that. The way the performance developed and continued, Ed Sanders had a continuous monologue throughout the show, making various comments, introducing people and songs and talking to the audience. Tuli would go through costume changes and pantomimes, and Ken Weaver would act the part of some hideous character like a bum on the Bowery or a faggot in Times Square, and Ed would be David Freakpuke interviewing him for the mass media.”
Friday, July 15 - Saturday, July 16, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, July 17, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Wednesday, July 20 - Thursday, July 21, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Friday, July 22 - Saturday, July 23, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, July 24, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Wednesday, July 27 - Thursday, July 28, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Friday, July 29, 1966: El Patio Beach Club, 1395 Beech Street, Atlantic Beach, Nassau County, New York
One show, started at 8:30pm. Also on the bill: Anthony & The Imperials.
Friday, July 29 - Saturday, July 30, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, July 31, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
August 1966
“I was grateful to get to know a great young guitarist, Jimi Hendrix, who was performing at the Café Wha in the basement next to the Players Theatre,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “Jimi came to some Fugs shows, where I was wearing a wide-brimmed cowboy hat, which seemed to turn him on to the idea, and he began himself to sport a cowboy. I attended some Hendrix shows at the Wha, where he was performing as Jimi James and the Blue Flames. I remember him turning around to glare a couple of times at his players as they fell out of musical focus. One evening as we chatted, Jimi Hendrix told me he didn’t like his voice. I told him his voice was beautiful. It was right around the time the wah wah pedal was invented, and Dan Green, who was working for The Fugs at the time as equipment manager, turned Jimi on to the wah wah, and soon afterward he began utilizing it in his songs. Then Hendrix was discovered and taken to England, where he soared all the way to the Monterey Pop Festival of the following spring.”
Wednesday, August 3 - Thursday, August 4, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Friday, August 5 - Saturday, August 6, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, August 7, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Wednesday, August 10 - Thursday, August 11, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Friday, August 12, 1966: ‘Lenny Bruce Memorial,’ Judson Memorial Church, 55 Washington Square South at Thompson Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
“On August 3 Lenny Bruce was found face down on the bathroom floor, a needle sticking from his right arm and a blue bathrobe sash around his elbow, in his house in Los Angeles,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “The Fugs sang ‘Carpe Diem’ at the packed Lenny Bruce Memorial held at the Judson Memorial Church on the edge of Washington Square Park on August 12, with Bob Fass producing the recording of it for WBAI. The Fugs performing at the Bruce Memorial can be found on The Fugs boxed set Don’t Stop! Don’t Stop.”
Friday, August 12 - Saturday, August 13, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, August 14, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Tuesday, August 16, 1966: ‘Free Fugs In Park,’ Tompkins Square Park, E 10th Street, Alphabet City, East Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
“We were very excited about our free outdoor concert in Tompkins Square Park, scheduled for the evening of August 16,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “The audience filled up the park from the new bandshell all the way to Tenth Street at the park’s northernmost point and spilled out onto the sidewalks of Avenues A and B. There must have been over 10,000 on hand. Walt Bowart, editor of the East Village Other, spotted my nemesis in the crowd, Sergeant Fetta, who had led the raid on Peace Eye, and asked him, ‘What do you think of the concert?’ Fetta: ‘You call this a concert?’ Bowart: ‘Do you have any comments you’d like to make about this concert?’ [loud music] Fetta: ‘About what?’ Bowart: ‘About this music? About the lyrics.’ Fetta: ‘Why don’t you go about the audience asking them? With this crowd here tonight, it doesn’t seem to matter what I think.’ We were asked by the cops to turn down the amplifiers because our tunes, such as ‘Slum Goddess of the Lower East Side’ and ‘Group Grope,’ could be heard all the way to Fourteenth Street. We got through our first set, and we were backstage hanging out. Suddenly there were police officers on the stage. And who should come back behind the scrim to see us but my nemesis, Sergeant Charles Fetta!? ‘We’ve had a telephone call that there’s a bomb planted in the park.’ A guy from the Lower East Side Civic Improvement Association came to the microphone and intoned, ‘The police have informed us that there is a bomb in the park. It’s probably just a hoax, but will the audience please move back from the pavement and benches onto the grass?’ There were a few boos and hisses. I then went to the mike and told the crowd that we were cooperating with the bomb search. Meanwhile backstage, Fetta was looking for bombs in people’s musette bags, you know, joint-sized receptacles. Finally we went back on stage and resumed our concert with ‘Ah Sun-flower, Weary of Time,’ ‘Supergirl,’ ‘Turn On/Tune In/Drop Out,’ and, of course, the epoch-shaking Kupferberg masterwork, ‘Monday nothing, Tuesday nothing.’ To me the police action smacked of fascism. And I pulled as many strings as I could to get Sergeant Fetta transferred out of the Lower East Side.”
Wednesday, August 17 - Thursday, August 18, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Friday, August 19 - Saturday, August 20, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, August 21, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Wednesday, August 24 - Thursday, August 25, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Friday, August 26 - Saturday, August 27, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, August 28, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Wednesday, August 31 - Thursday, September 1, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Friday, September 2 - Saturday, September 3, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, September 4, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Wednesday, September 7 - Thursday, September 8, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Friday, September 9 - Saturday, September 10, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, September 11, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
September 1966
Jonathan Kalb left the Fugs and returned to college. The band replaced him with another extraordinarie local folk and blues guitarist named Stefan Grossman.
THE FUGS #21 (SEPTEMBER 1966 - OCTOBER 1966)
1) Ed Sanders
2) Tuli Kupferberg
3) Ken Weaver
4) Vinny Leary
5) John Anderson
6) Stefan Grossman lead guitar
1) Ed Sanders
2) Tuli Kupferberg
3) Ken Weaver
4) Vinny Leary
5) John Anderson
6) Stefan Grossman lead guitar
Wednesday, September 14 - Thursday, September 15, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Friday, September 16 - Saturday, September 17, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, September 18, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Wednesday, September 21 - Thursday, September 22, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Friday, September 23 - Saturday, September 24, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, September 25, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Wednesday, September 28 - Thursday, September 29, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Friday, September 30 - Saturday, October 1, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, October 2, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
October 1966
John Anderson was drafted into the Army so he left the Fugs. “When I left Yale, it ocucred to me that I might be drafted, but I intended to cop out, like so many people I know in New York,” recalls Anderson in an interview with Jeff Pollock for the Yale University magazine The New Journal (February 9, 1969). “I had originally planned to appear before the physical board as a drug user and hope that they would reject me. The guys in the band didn’t want me to go and offered to come with me and throw a big scene and help me put holes in my arms. But I was called up in the peak month of October, ’66, and anyone with two legs was accepted. So it came down to a choice of going in peacefully or going to jail. And I doubted what support the Fugs could provide in a court case.” “I hatched a scheme for The Fugs to accompany John to his Draft Board naked, but alas, it was not to be, and after his father showed up, John allowed the Draft to go forward,” also recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “Soon he was ‘Pfc John Anderson, 206th Sig. Co. at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.’ After serving in Vietnam, he returned to Yale, graduated, then got a law degree from Harvard. His legacy: The Fugs first and second albums and our red, white, and blue logo.” At that point the Fugs replaced him with singer and arranger Allan ‘Jake’ Jacobs (b. December 3, 1942, Brooklyn, New York City, New York). “Jacobs had been in a band called The Magicians, which had taken over the gig of house band at the Night Owl on West Third from the Lovin’ Spoonful, when the latter had surged to fame,” also recalls Sanders. “Jake had a beautiful voice and was an excellent arranger.”
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Friday, September 16 - Saturday, September 17, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, September 18, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Wednesday, September 21 - Thursday, September 22, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Friday, September 23 - Saturday, September 24, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, September 25, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Wednesday, September 28 - Thursday, September 29, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Friday, September 30 - Saturday, October 1, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, October 2, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
October 1966
John Anderson was drafted into the Army so he left the Fugs. “When I left Yale, it ocucred to me that I might be drafted, but I intended to cop out, like so many people I know in New York,” recalls Anderson in an interview with Jeff Pollock for the Yale University magazine The New Journal (February 9, 1969). “I had originally planned to appear before the physical board as a drug user and hope that they would reject me. The guys in the band didn’t want me to go and offered to come with me and throw a big scene and help me put holes in my arms. But I was called up in the peak month of October, ’66, and anyone with two legs was accepted. So it came down to a choice of going in peacefully or going to jail. And I doubted what support the Fugs could provide in a court case.” “I hatched a scheme for The Fugs to accompany John to his Draft Board naked, but alas, it was not to be, and after his father showed up, John allowed the Draft to go forward,” also recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “Soon he was ‘Pfc John Anderson, 206th Sig. Co. at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.’ After serving in Vietnam, he returned to Yale, graduated, then got a law degree from Harvard. His legacy: The Fugs first and second albums and our red, white, and blue logo.” At that point the Fugs replaced him with singer and arranger Allan ‘Jake’ Jacobs (b. December 3, 1942, Brooklyn, New York City, New York). “Jacobs had been in a band called The Magicians, which had taken over the gig of house band at the Night Owl on West Third from the Lovin’ Spoonful, when the latter had surged to fame,” also recalls Sanders. “Jake had a beautiful voice and was an excellent arranger.”
THE FUGS #22 (OCTOBER 1966 - DECEMBER 1966)
1) Ed Sanders
2) Tuli Kupferberg
3) Ken Weaver
4) Vinny Leary
5) Stefan Grossman
6) Allan ‘Jake’ Jacobs vocals, lead guitar, sitar, vibes, bells
1) Ed Sanders
2) Tuli Kupferberg
3) Ken Weaver
4) Vinny Leary
5) Stefan Grossman
6) Allan ‘Jake’ Jacobs vocals, lead guitar, sitar, vibes, bells
Fall 1966
“The Fugs’ relationship with ESP records was, to state it mildly, turbulent,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “We were told, for instance, that Organized Crime was illegally manufacturing Fugs records and selling them. We can be forgiven for not really believing that the Genovese crime family would bother with The Fugs when there were The Beatles, The Stones, Mantovani, and Petula Clark to rip off. The owner of ESP had insisted on ducking some of the lyrics of Ted Berrigan’s song, ‘Doin’ All Right,’ when we mixed it. ‘I ain’t never going to go to Vietnam / I’d rather stay right here and screw your mom.’ ‘Screw,’ after the level duck, became like a ‘humm.’ Things didn’t add up. A close relative of the label’s owner told me the family viewed the owner as unstable and helped bankroll in lieu of therapy or confinement.” “It would have been difficult to break up The Fugs right at that moment,” he continues. “Jerry Wexler of Atlantic Records had expressed interest in signing us. I had gone out to dinner with him at an uptown Chinese restaurant and had visited his office to pitch having The Fugs on his label. At that time it was the label of The Rolling Stones. He’d also put out an album of Allen Ginsberg reading his great poem Kaddish.”
Wednesday, October 5 - Thursday, October 6, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Friday, October 7 - Saturday, October 8, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, October 9, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Wednesday, October 12 - Thursday, October 13, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Friday, October 14 - Saturday, October 15, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, October 16, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Wednesday, October 19 - Thursday, October 20, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Friday, October 21 - Saturday, October 22, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, October 23, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Wednesday, October 26 - Thursday, October 27, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Friday, October 28 - Saturday, October 29, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, October 30, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Wednesday, November 2 - Thursday, November 3, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Friday, November 4 - Saturday, November 5, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, November 6, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Wednesday, November 9 - Thursday, November 10, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Friday, November 11 - Saturday, November 12, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, November 13, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Wednesday, November 16 - Thursday, November 17, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Friday, November 18 - Saturday, November 19, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, November 20, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Wednesday, November 23 - Thursday, November 24, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Friday, November 25 - Saturday, November 26, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, November 27, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Wednesday, November 30 - Thursday, December 1, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Friday, December 2 - Saturday, December 3, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, December 4, 1966: ‘The 1966 Night Beat Freak Out Happening - An Evening You Will Never Forget!!,’ Action House, 50 Austin Boulevard, Island Park, Nassau County, New York
One show, from 7:30pm to 2:00am. Also on the bill: Andy Warhol, Nico, The Velvet Underground And The Exploding Plastic Inevitable, The Godz, The Seventh Sons, Rudy Stern & Richard Aldercroff and Their Infinity Machines, (Timothy Leary), Monti Rock III, A Psychadelic Experience M.C.’d by Scott Ross, plus Special Guests: The Ronettes, The Vagrants, Carl Holmes & The Commanders with Ruth MacFadden, The Shangri-Las, and Clay Cole - Scott Muni with Anita Venturi (The Topless Girl From The Crystal Room Doing Her Entire Act), The Left Banke, Lenny Welch, Terry Knight and The Pack, Bryan Hyland, The Last Words, The Crests, The Wild Ones, Joey Greco and The In Crowd, The Bit A’ Sweet, The Shaggy Boys, The Youngesters, The Brooklyn Symphony Orchestra, The Innkeepers, plus many more with The Nightbeat Birds & Exotic Long Hair Freako’s Running Amok and Crazy.
Sunday, December 4, 1966: ‘The David Susskind Show: Liquor, Sex, Dope: The World Of The Fugs - Part I,’ WNEW (Channel 5) TV Show, New York City, New York (aired date)
Sunday, December 4, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
December 1966
Stefan Grossman and Vinny Leary left the Fugs (Stefan went to play with Chicago Loop) and were replaced by the return of Lee Crabtree.
“The Fugs’ relationship with ESP records was, to state it mildly, turbulent,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “We were told, for instance, that Organized Crime was illegally manufacturing Fugs records and selling them. We can be forgiven for not really believing that the Genovese crime family would bother with The Fugs when there were The Beatles, The Stones, Mantovani, and Petula Clark to rip off. The owner of ESP had insisted on ducking some of the lyrics of Ted Berrigan’s song, ‘Doin’ All Right,’ when we mixed it. ‘I ain’t never going to go to Vietnam / I’d rather stay right here and screw your mom.’ ‘Screw,’ after the level duck, became like a ‘humm.’ Things didn’t add up. A close relative of the label’s owner told me the family viewed the owner as unstable and helped bankroll in lieu of therapy or confinement.” “It would have been difficult to break up The Fugs right at that moment,” he continues. “Jerry Wexler of Atlantic Records had expressed interest in signing us. I had gone out to dinner with him at an uptown Chinese restaurant and had visited his office to pitch having The Fugs on his label. At that time it was the label of The Rolling Stones. He’d also put out an album of Allen Ginsberg reading his great poem Kaddish.”
Wednesday, October 5 - Thursday, October 6, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Friday, October 7 - Saturday, October 8, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, October 9, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Wednesday, October 12 - Thursday, October 13, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Friday, October 14 - Saturday, October 15, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, October 16, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Wednesday, October 19 - Thursday, October 20, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Friday, October 21 - Saturday, October 22, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, October 23, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Wednesday, October 26 - Thursday, October 27, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Friday, October 28 - Saturday, October 29, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, October 30, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Wednesday, November 2 - Thursday, November 3, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Friday, November 4 - Saturday, November 5, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, November 6, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Wednesday, November 9 - Thursday, November 10, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Friday, November 11 - Saturday, November 12, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, November 13, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Wednesday, November 16 - Thursday, November 17, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Friday, November 18 - Saturday, November 19, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, November 20, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Wednesday, November 23 - Thursday, November 24, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Friday, November 25 - Saturday, November 26, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, November 27, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Wednesday, November 30 - Thursday, December 1, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Friday, December 2 - Saturday, December 3, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, December 4, 1966: ‘The 1966 Night Beat Freak Out Happening - An Evening You Will Never Forget!!,’ Action House, 50 Austin Boulevard, Island Park, Nassau County, New York
One show, from 7:30pm to 2:00am. Also on the bill: Andy Warhol, Nico, The Velvet Underground And The Exploding Plastic Inevitable, The Godz, The Seventh Sons, Rudy Stern & Richard Aldercroff and Their Infinity Machines, (Timothy Leary), Monti Rock III, A Psychadelic Experience M.C.’d by Scott Ross, plus Special Guests: The Ronettes, The Vagrants, Carl Holmes & The Commanders with Ruth MacFadden, The Shangri-Las, and Clay Cole - Scott Muni with Anita Venturi (The Topless Girl From The Crystal Room Doing Her Entire Act), The Left Banke, Lenny Welch, Terry Knight and The Pack, Bryan Hyland, The Last Words, The Crests, The Wild Ones, Joey Greco and The In Crowd, The Bit A’ Sweet, The Shaggy Boys, The Youngesters, The Brooklyn Symphony Orchestra, The Innkeepers, plus many more with The Nightbeat Birds & Exotic Long Hair Freako’s Running Amok and Crazy.
Sunday, December 4, 1966: ‘The David Susskind Show: Liquor, Sex, Dope: The World Of The Fugs - Part I,’ WNEW (Channel 5) TV Show, New York City, New York (aired date)
Sunday, December 4, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
December 1966
Stefan Grossman and Vinny Leary left the Fugs (Stefan went to play with Chicago Loop) and were replaced by the return of Lee Crabtree.
THE FUGS #22 (DECEMBER 1966 - APRIL ?, 1967)
1) Ed Sanders
2) Tuli Kupferberg
3) Ken Weaver
4) Lee Crabtree
5) Allan ‘Jake’ Jacobs
1) Ed Sanders
2) Tuli Kupferberg
3) Ken Weaver
4) Lee Crabtree
5) Allan ‘Jake’ Jacobs
Wednesday, December 7 - Thursday, December 8, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Friday, December 9 - Saturday, December 10, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, December 11, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Wednesday, December 14 - Thursday, December 15, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Friday, December 16 - Saturday, December 17, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, December 18, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Wednesday, December 21 - Thursday, December 22, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Friday, December 23 - Saturday, December 24, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, December 25, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Wednesday, December 28 - Thursday, December 29, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Friday, December 30, 1966
“On December 30 I received a letter from attorney Edward Ennis announcing that the Trustees of the Poets Foundation had selected me for a $500 award ‘in recognition of your contribution to poetry,’” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “The award was given ‘in honor of the memory of Frank O’Hara.’ I was very grateful.”
Friday, December 30 - Saturday, December 31, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, January 1, 1967: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Friday, January 13 - Saturday, January 14, 1967: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Friday, January 20 - Saturday, January 21, 1967: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Wednesday, January 25, 1967
The Fugs signed a new multialbum contract with Atlantic Records in New York City.
Friday, January 27 - Saturday, January 28, 1967: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Friday, February 3, 1967: 'Folk and Rock Marathon presented as part of Angry Arts Week', Loeb Student Center, NYU (New York University) campus, 566 LaGuardia Place, Manhattan, New York City, New York
A Folk and Rock Marathon from 4pm to 11pm, which also featured Guy Carawan, Children Of Paradise, Barbara Dane, The Blues Project, Gene & Francesca, Janis Ian, Jim & Jean, Emmett Lake, Phil Ochs, Pennywhistlers, Don Sear, Jacqueline Sharpe, Jerry Silverman, and many others. Lights by Gene Youth.
Friday, February 3 - Saturday, February 4, 1967: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Early February 1967: Talent Masters Studios, 126 West 42nd Street, Manhattan, New York City, New York
The Fugs started the recording of their third album. “We did a demo recording at the Atlantic Studios,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “Jerry Wexler then suggested we record at Bob Gallo’s Talent Master Studio on Fortysecond Street and Broadway. It was a block away from the cigar store where I had worked the night shift off and on from 1960 until 1965 when I opened the Peace Eye Bookstore. It was a well-known studio. Bob Gallo was instrumental in the production of a good number of hit singles, such as James Brown’s ‘It’s a Man’s World,’ ‘96 Tears’ by Question Mark and the Mysterians, and, soon, ‘Groovin’’ by the Young Rascals. He would write for and produce such acts as Otis Redding, Patti LaBelle, Aretha Franklin, The Drifters, and Bo Diddley. Atlantic Records’ Jerry Wexler had arranged to buy into Bob Gallo’s Talent Master recording studios.” “Beginning in early February the lineup was Ed Sanders, Ken Weaver, Tuli Kupferberg, Jake Jacobs, Lee Crabtree, and some great studio players—Eric Gale on guitar, Chuck Rainey on bass, Robert Banks on piano and organ, and Bernard Purdie on drums,” Ed also recalls. “Chris Huston was our engineer. Huston was a young Englishman who had been the guitarist for a group called The Undertakers, which had recorded an album at Gallo’s studio. Huston went on to engineer and produce sessions for such groups as Led Zepplin, The Who, War, the Rascals, Todd Rundgren, Van Morrison, Blood, Sweat and Tears, Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, Ben E. King, The Drifters, Patti La Belle and the Blue-belles, Solomon Burke, Mary Wells, Wilson Pickett, John Hammond Jr., James Brown, not to mention Question Mark and the Mysterians. When recording at Talent Masters, we noticed that there were all these unused sixteen-track Otis Redding instrumental tapes in the tape storage room. We listened to some of them. They were great!! What a temptation! They featured guys like the great studio drummer Bernard Purdie. All we would have had to do was stick on our own wild Fugs lyrics and vocals and we’d have had a bunch of quick tunes! It gave us the idea to cut some songs with some of the hot Atlantic session players. So we booked some legendary Atlantic players—Bernard Purdie, Eric Gale, Chuck Rainey—to cut some basic tracks. This ensemble recorded the track, for instance, to ‘River of Shit,’ Lionel Goldbart’s tune. I was struggling mightily, through plenty of rehearsals, and shifting and adding musicians in the studio, to make an album that was both revolutionary and commercially appealing.” “We recorded ‘Nameless Voices Crying for Kindness,’ based on a line from an interview Allen Ginsberg gave that I had spotted in the underground newspaper the Los Angeles Free Press,” concludes Ed. “We recorded ‘Hare Krishna’ that winter, with Allen Ginsberg singing lead, Gregory Corso on harmonium, Maretta Greer and Peter Orlovsky singing along, and Jake Jacobs on sitar. Allen came to me and suggested he might copyright the melody. I replied, ‘It’s a 5,000-year-old tune!’ And so that plan was scrapped. I was busy making lists of possible titles for the Atlantic album: Weirdness Pie was one, Ablution in the Abyss was another, Aphrodite Mass was yet another, plus The Fugs Eat It.”
Friday, February 10 - Saturday, February 11, 1967: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, February 12, 1967: ‘Perception ’67,’ Convocation Hall, University of Toronto campus, 31 King’s College Circle, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Also on the bill: Marshall McLuhan, Richard Alpert, Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary (he was there only on tape but not in person because the Canadian Government refused to let him into the country), Paul Krassner. “This was the headline of a front-page article in the Toronto Daily Star for February 13 tracing The Fugs’ performance at the Perception ’67 weekend,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “The article reported: At 11:15 last night, the whole psychedelic weekend at the University of Toronto fused into a blinding white light. Everybody who was a psychedelic anybody blew his mind. It happened as a New York group called the Fugs held a ‘concert’ in hallowed Convocation Hall. Dr. Richard Alpert, who says you don’t need drugs to blow your mind if you’re turned on, pulled a fur coat he was holding over his nose, sprawled on a stage raiser, and tapped his foot to an anti–Viet Nam song titled ‘Kill for Peace.’ Crazy-clothes fashion designer Tiger Morse nodded madly, her oversize sunglasses bobbing with the beat. Michael Hayden, the 24-year-old behind the 10-room mind excursion of popcorn, strobe lights and total experience, grinned happily at Fug Tuli Kupferberg. Cynic Paul Krassner tried to look bored, then laughed and bounced up and down; poet Allen Ginsberg giggled and bobbed his beard in time to ‘Knock! Knock! Knock!’ Suddenly the whole audience of 2,000 heard the Fugs screaming words that are only an echo today—and probably won’t be heard again. What everybody had been talking about for two days finally happened; the whole place just sort of turned on.”
Friday, February 17, 1967
Presented as ‘a leader of New York’s Other Culture,” Ed Sanders appeared on the cover of the latest issue of Life magazine published today. “In late January and early February I was interviewed a number of times by Barry Farrell, who was writing a piece on the New York underground for Life magazine,” recalls Ed in his autobiography. “A photographer came to 196 Avenue A and took some pictures. I had no idea I would be on the cover.” “I learned I was on the cover of Life magazine for the February 17 issue when the Johnny Carson television show called to have me on as a guest,” he continues. “Before I would appear, I insisted on Carson allowing The Fugs to sing ‘Kill for Peace’ as a protest against the Vietnam War, which was refused. In retro-spect I should have taken up the offer. Maybe I could have started to appear regularly, like Truman Capote, in front of late-night millions. For a while I basked in the Glory of being on the cover. I remembered my bet with Lanny Kenfield that The Fugs would some day be on the cover of Time magazine. For now Life would do.” “On February 12, for instance, we flew to a large celebration in Toronto called ‘Perception ’67,’ with Marshall McLuhan, The Fugs, Richard Alpert, Allen Ginsberg, Tim Leary (who was not allowed into Canada), and Paul Krassner,” he concludes. “My issue of Life was on the newsstand at the Toronto airport, where it was minus five degrees outside! No one told us that fame did not automatically mean getting a glut of money. It was sometimes not so easy to pay the rents for our apartment on Avenue A and the Peace Eye Bookstore. Nevertheless, it’s a place of masks, this fame, so when my father visited New York City from Kansas City not long after I was on the cover of Life, I went out in a limousine to pick him up at the airport. He stayed at the 1 Fifth Avenue Hotel and enjoyed himself immensely. I remember there was a party for Jimi Hendrix at a club in Sheridan Square in the West Village, where brilliant photographer Margaret Bourke-White was on hand. She mentioned me being a Life cover, and she pulled down her blouse to show me a tattoo above one of her breasts.”
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Friday, December 9 - Saturday, December 10, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, December 11, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Wednesday, December 14 - Thursday, December 15, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Friday, December 16 - Saturday, December 17, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, December 18, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Wednesday, December 21 - Thursday, December 22, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Friday, December 23 - Saturday, December 24, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, December 25, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Wednesday, December 28 - Thursday, December 29, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Friday, December 30, 1966
“On December 30 I received a letter from attorney Edward Ennis announcing that the Trustees of the Poets Foundation had selected me for a $500 award ‘in recognition of your contribution to poetry,’” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “The award was given ‘in honor of the memory of Frank O’Hara.’ I was very grateful.”
Friday, December 30 - Saturday, December 31, 1966: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, January 1, 1967: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Friday, January 13 - Saturday, January 14, 1967: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Friday, January 20 - Saturday, January 21, 1967: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Wednesday, January 25, 1967
The Fugs signed a new multialbum contract with Atlantic Records in New York City.
Friday, January 27 - Saturday, January 28, 1967: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Friday, February 3, 1967: 'Folk and Rock Marathon presented as part of Angry Arts Week', Loeb Student Center, NYU (New York University) campus, 566 LaGuardia Place, Manhattan, New York City, New York
A Folk and Rock Marathon from 4pm to 11pm, which also featured Guy Carawan, Children Of Paradise, Barbara Dane, The Blues Project, Gene & Francesca, Janis Ian, Jim & Jean, Emmett Lake, Phil Ochs, Pennywhistlers, Don Sear, Jacqueline Sharpe, Jerry Silverman, and many others. Lights by Gene Youth.
Friday, February 3 - Saturday, February 4, 1967: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Early February 1967: Talent Masters Studios, 126 West 42nd Street, Manhattan, New York City, New York
The Fugs started the recording of their third album. “We did a demo recording at the Atlantic Studios,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “Jerry Wexler then suggested we record at Bob Gallo’s Talent Master Studio on Fortysecond Street and Broadway. It was a block away from the cigar store where I had worked the night shift off and on from 1960 until 1965 when I opened the Peace Eye Bookstore. It was a well-known studio. Bob Gallo was instrumental in the production of a good number of hit singles, such as James Brown’s ‘It’s a Man’s World,’ ‘96 Tears’ by Question Mark and the Mysterians, and, soon, ‘Groovin’’ by the Young Rascals. He would write for and produce such acts as Otis Redding, Patti LaBelle, Aretha Franklin, The Drifters, and Bo Diddley. Atlantic Records’ Jerry Wexler had arranged to buy into Bob Gallo’s Talent Master recording studios.” “Beginning in early February the lineup was Ed Sanders, Ken Weaver, Tuli Kupferberg, Jake Jacobs, Lee Crabtree, and some great studio players—Eric Gale on guitar, Chuck Rainey on bass, Robert Banks on piano and organ, and Bernard Purdie on drums,” Ed also recalls. “Chris Huston was our engineer. Huston was a young Englishman who had been the guitarist for a group called The Undertakers, which had recorded an album at Gallo’s studio. Huston went on to engineer and produce sessions for such groups as Led Zepplin, The Who, War, the Rascals, Todd Rundgren, Van Morrison, Blood, Sweat and Tears, Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, Ben E. King, The Drifters, Patti La Belle and the Blue-belles, Solomon Burke, Mary Wells, Wilson Pickett, John Hammond Jr., James Brown, not to mention Question Mark and the Mysterians. When recording at Talent Masters, we noticed that there were all these unused sixteen-track Otis Redding instrumental tapes in the tape storage room. We listened to some of them. They were great!! What a temptation! They featured guys like the great studio drummer Bernard Purdie. All we would have had to do was stick on our own wild Fugs lyrics and vocals and we’d have had a bunch of quick tunes! It gave us the idea to cut some songs with some of the hot Atlantic session players. So we booked some legendary Atlantic players—Bernard Purdie, Eric Gale, Chuck Rainey—to cut some basic tracks. This ensemble recorded the track, for instance, to ‘River of Shit,’ Lionel Goldbart’s tune. I was struggling mightily, through plenty of rehearsals, and shifting and adding musicians in the studio, to make an album that was both revolutionary and commercially appealing.” “We recorded ‘Nameless Voices Crying for Kindness,’ based on a line from an interview Allen Ginsberg gave that I had spotted in the underground newspaper the Los Angeles Free Press,” concludes Ed. “We recorded ‘Hare Krishna’ that winter, with Allen Ginsberg singing lead, Gregory Corso on harmonium, Maretta Greer and Peter Orlovsky singing along, and Jake Jacobs on sitar. Allen came to me and suggested he might copyright the melody. I replied, ‘It’s a 5,000-year-old tune!’ And so that plan was scrapped. I was busy making lists of possible titles for the Atlantic album: Weirdness Pie was one, Ablution in the Abyss was another, Aphrodite Mass was yet another, plus The Fugs Eat It.”
Friday, February 10 - Saturday, February 11, 1967: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, February 12, 1967: ‘Perception ’67,’ Convocation Hall, University of Toronto campus, 31 King’s College Circle, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Also on the bill: Marshall McLuhan, Richard Alpert, Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary (he was there only on tape but not in person because the Canadian Government refused to let him into the country), Paul Krassner. “This was the headline of a front-page article in the Toronto Daily Star for February 13 tracing The Fugs’ performance at the Perception ’67 weekend,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “The article reported: At 11:15 last night, the whole psychedelic weekend at the University of Toronto fused into a blinding white light. Everybody who was a psychedelic anybody blew his mind. It happened as a New York group called the Fugs held a ‘concert’ in hallowed Convocation Hall. Dr. Richard Alpert, who says you don’t need drugs to blow your mind if you’re turned on, pulled a fur coat he was holding over his nose, sprawled on a stage raiser, and tapped his foot to an anti–Viet Nam song titled ‘Kill for Peace.’ Crazy-clothes fashion designer Tiger Morse nodded madly, her oversize sunglasses bobbing with the beat. Michael Hayden, the 24-year-old behind the 10-room mind excursion of popcorn, strobe lights and total experience, grinned happily at Fug Tuli Kupferberg. Cynic Paul Krassner tried to look bored, then laughed and bounced up and down; poet Allen Ginsberg giggled and bobbed his beard in time to ‘Knock! Knock! Knock!’ Suddenly the whole audience of 2,000 heard the Fugs screaming words that are only an echo today—and probably won’t be heard again. What everybody had been talking about for two days finally happened; the whole place just sort of turned on.”
Friday, February 17, 1967
Presented as ‘a leader of New York’s Other Culture,” Ed Sanders appeared on the cover of the latest issue of Life magazine published today. “In late January and early February I was interviewed a number of times by Barry Farrell, who was writing a piece on the New York underground for Life magazine,” recalls Ed in his autobiography. “A photographer came to 196 Avenue A and took some pictures. I had no idea I would be on the cover.” “I learned I was on the cover of Life magazine for the February 17 issue when the Johnny Carson television show called to have me on as a guest,” he continues. “Before I would appear, I insisted on Carson allowing The Fugs to sing ‘Kill for Peace’ as a protest against the Vietnam War, which was refused. In retro-spect I should have taken up the offer. Maybe I could have started to appear regularly, like Truman Capote, in front of late-night millions. For a while I basked in the Glory of being on the cover. I remembered my bet with Lanny Kenfield that The Fugs would some day be on the cover of Time magazine. For now Life would do.” “On February 12, for instance, we flew to a large celebration in Toronto called ‘Perception ’67,’ with Marshall McLuhan, The Fugs, Richard Alpert, Allen Ginsberg, Tim Leary (who was not allowed into Canada), and Paul Krassner,” he concludes. “My issue of Life was on the newsstand at the Toronto airport, where it was minus five degrees outside! No one told us that fame did not automatically mean getting a glut of money. It was sometimes not so easy to pay the rents for our apartment on Avenue A and the Peace Eye Bookstore. Nevertheless, it’s a place of masks, this fame, so when my father visited New York City from Kansas City not long after I was on the cover of Life, I went out in a limousine to pick him up at the airport. He stayed at the 1 Fifth Avenue Hotel and enjoyed himself immensely. I remember there was a party for Jimi Hendrix at a club in Sheridan Square in the West Village, where brilliant photographer Margaret Bourke-White was on hand. She mentioned me being a Life cover, and she pulled down her blouse to show me a tattoo above one of her breasts.”
Friday, February 17 - Saturday, February 18, 1967: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
February 1967: Alexander Hall (?), Princeton University campus, 68 Nassau Street, Princeton, Mercer County, New Jersey
February 1967 (?)
The famous writer George Plimpton phone called Ed Sanders and ask him if he could joined the Fugs! “He wanted to go on the road with The Fugs, perform with the band, and write about itm” confirms Sanders in his autobiography. “Things got pretty wild on the road, and I didn’t want George Plimpton snoozling around. Plus, I was still puzzled over the police informant that George had called me about, who had posed as a guitarist and tried out for The Fugs (from an ad I’d run in the Village Voice!) in the fall of ’65, so I turned down his request.”
Late February 1967
“Inspired by the example of the Diggers, in late February I joined with other psychedelic communards, including Peter Stafford, Linn House, and several others, to form a corporation to establish a group called ‘Jade Companions of the Flowered Dance,,’” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “It was an umbrella group in whose name I was about to turn over operation of the Peace Eye Bookstore to the community. The Jade Companions had membership cards. Thus I followed, in my own way, the San Francisco Diggers’ concept of the Free Store.”
Friday, February 24 - Saturday, February 25, 1967: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Friday, March 3 - Saturday, March 4, 1967: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Wednesday, March 8, 1967: ‘2nd Annual People For Peace Concert,’ Symphony Hall, 301 Massachusetts Avenue, Boston, Suffolk County, Massachusetts
One show, started at 8pm. Also on the bill: Judy Collins, Tom Paxton, The Blues Project, David Blue and The American Patrol, Mike Seeger, The Lords & Ladies, and others.
Thursday, March 9, 1967: ‘Spring Arts Festival,’ Irwin B. Clark Memorial Gymnasium, S.U.N.Y. (State University of Nee York) campus, 345 Main Street, Buffalo, Erie County, New York
“The Fugs played two completely packed concerts at the University of Buffalo gymnasium on March 9,” confirms Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “We were told that the school lost $5 million in endowments after Fugs lyrics were published in the student newspaper. LeMar had been successfully brought to the university by Michael Aldrich and even received funding as an official universitysanctioned organization, with famous writer Leslie Fiedler as its faculty advisor. (This was in distinction to what happened to two other attempts to start LeMar chapters—the first by poet d. a. levy in Cleveland and the second by John Sinclair in Detroit, both of which resulted in harassment by local authorities.)”
Friday, March 10 - Saturday, March 11, 1967: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
March 1967
“Jerry Wexler sent The Fugs to Joel Brodsky’s studio for a photo shoot,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “I had an idea for a cover image: a young model attired in a bikini, posed with her legs jutting upward and widely spread, with the three Fugs standing just behind the legs, holding knives and forks. The title would then be The Fugs Eat It. I decided to allow the Village Voice to run in its March 23 issue this picture from the Joel Brodsky shoot and a story on how The Fugs had completed their new album on Atlantic. It was probably a dumb thing to do. I typed a list of credits before turning the mixed tapes over to Atlantic Records. I worked with composer Gary Elton on a long work called ‘Aphrodite Mass.’ A feature of the ‘Mass’ was my setting, in Greek, of a section of Sappho’s ‘Hymn to Aphrodite,’ plus the only instance in music of the Latin words necesse in via struprare, or, ‘It’s necessary to ball in the streets,’ occurring in the history of Western music. I went to a lecture by Timothy Leary, and thus his exhortation ‘Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out’ became the hook line of the opening song on the Atlantic album.”
Wednesday, March 15 - Thursday, March 16, 1967: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Friday, March 17 - Saturday, March 18, 1967: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Monday, March 20, 1967
Ed Sanders’ trial for obscenity charges dating January 2, 1966, which was scheduled to began today at the New York City Criminal Court Building at 100 Centre Street in Manhattan, was postponed. “I wanted to get as many supporters as possible to come to the trial,” recalls Sanders in his autobiography. “The problem was that it kept getting postponed! It seemed as if the trial would occur on March 26 [sic], so I sent out a press release and mailing to friends and supporters. I listed what some of the ‘evidence’ of smut against me might be. To my chagrin, after my expert witnesses (such as John Ashbery and Kenneth Koch) and a bunch of friends showed up, the trial was postponed.”
Wednesday, March 22 - Thursday, March 23, 1967: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Friday, March 24 - Saturday, March 25, 1967: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Wednesday, March 29 - Thursday, March 30, 1967: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:00pm and 10:00pm.
Friday, March 31 - Saturday, April 1, 1967: ‘An Evening with The Fugs,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
April ?, 1967: Talent Masters Studios, 126 West 42nd Street, Manhattan, New York City, New York
The Fugs completed the recording of their third album.
April ?, 1967
The Fugs added a bass player named Geoff Outlaw. “A young man named Geoff Outlaw was our bass player. Later he appeared in the Arlo Guthrie/Arthur Penn movie Alice’s Restaurant,” confirms Ed Sanders in his autobiobraphy.
THE FUGS #23 (APRIL ?, 1967 - MAY ?, 1967)
1) Ed Sanders
2) Tuli Kupferberg
3) Ken Weaver
4) Allan ‘Jake’ Jacobs
5) Lee Crabtree
6) Geoff Outlaw bass
1) Ed Sanders
2) Tuli Kupferberg
3) Ken Weaver
4) Allan ‘Jake’ Jacobs
5) Lee Crabtree
6) Geoff Outlaw bass
Thursday, April 6, 1967: Community Arts Auditorium, Wayne State University campus, 450 Reuther Mall, Detroit, Wayne County, Michigan
Friday, April 7, 1967: Ann Arbory Armory, 223 East Ann Street, Ann Arbor, Washtenaw County, Michigan
Saturday, April 8, 1967: unknown venue, University of Chicago campus, 5801 South Ellis Avenue, Hyde Park, Chicago, Cook County, Illinois
Sunday, April 9, 1967: ‘The David Susskind Show: Liquor, Sex, Dope: The World Of The Fugs - Part II,’ WNEW (Channel 5) TV Show, New York City, New York (aired date)
Saturday, April 15, 1967: Town Hall, 150 North Broad Street at Race Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
The show, which started at 8:30pm, was produced by two guys from the Record Mart store chain.
Thursday, April 20, 1967
“On April 20 I sent a letter to Jerry Wexler at Atlantic,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “I was feeling good! On top of it! Sailing upward! Triumph for The Fugs was just a few weeks ahead! An album out maybe as soon as the summer solstice of 1967, to join the great albums of the Summer of Love. Wow! ‘Dear Jerry,’ my letter began. This is to acquaint you with the Fugs album which we have been working on for the last few weeks. We have created what we feel to be a balanced package of messages of satire, protest, tenderness and love. The album contains songs in all four categories. We have drawn strength for the album from rock, Indian, electronic and even gospel music, making sure all the while that the album has a literary and measured artistic flavor. .. . We are headed today for Santa Monica and Berkeley and you can be sure I am going to advertise the album at our press conference and at the concerts. I concluded the letter by asking for a meeting in the near future ‘concerning a Fugs single. Maybe,’ I continued, ‘you’d be interested in producing it.’ A Jerry Wexler Fugs single! Just the thought of it was a thrill because of his history of hits such as suggesting ‘The Tennessee Waltz’ to Patti Page in the late 1940s! The Drifters brilliant ‘Money Honey’ in ’53, Ray Charles’s ’54 ‘I’ve Got a Woman,’ and Wilson Pickett’s recent smashes, ‘In the Midnight Hour’ and ‘Mustang Sally.’ The fifty-year-old Wexler, I thought, could have helped morph The Fugs, through a single, into a nationally powerful act in spite of the eros, the antiwar fervor, and our natural tendencies to offend.”
Friday, April 21, 1967: Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, 1855 Main Street, Santa Monica, Los Angeles County, California
Also on the bill: Allen Ginsberg. “Our concert at Santa Monica Civic the night of April 21 was nearly sold out,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “We were told that there were some right-wing nurses picketing the show outside. Eileen Kaufman, the supportive wife of Out There Beat poet Bob Kaufman, threw a party for us in LA after the gig, but we had a late night flight to San Francisco and had to miss it. Dang!”
Saturday, April 22, 1967: 'An Evening With The Fugs,' Berkeley Community Theatre, 1930 Allston Way, Berkeley, Alameda County, California
One show, started at 8:30pm.
Friday, April 7, 1967: Ann Arbory Armory, 223 East Ann Street, Ann Arbor, Washtenaw County, Michigan
Saturday, April 8, 1967: unknown venue, University of Chicago campus, 5801 South Ellis Avenue, Hyde Park, Chicago, Cook County, Illinois
Sunday, April 9, 1967: ‘The David Susskind Show: Liquor, Sex, Dope: The World Of The Fugs - Part II,’ WNEW (Channel 5) TV Show, New York City, New York (aired date)
Saturday, April 15, 1967: Town Hall, 150 North Broad Street at Race Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
The show, which started at 8:30pm, was produced by two guys from the Record Mart store chain.
Thursday, April 20, 1967
“On April 20 I sent a letter to Jerry Wexler at Atlantic,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “I was feeling good! On top of it! Sailing upward! Triumph for The Fugs was just a few weeks ahead! An album out maybe as soon as the summer solstice of 1967, to join the great albums of the Summer of Love. Wow! ‘Dear Jerry,’ my letter began. This is to acquaint you with the Fugs album which we have been working on for the last few weeks. We have created what we feel to be a balanced package of messages of satire, protest, tenderness and love. The album contains songs in all four categories. We have drawn strength for the album from rock, Indian, electronic and even gospel music, making sure all the while that the album has a literary and measured artistic flavor. .. . We are headed today for Santa Monica and Berkeley and you can be sure I am going to advertise the album at our press conference and at the concerts. I concluded the letter by asking for a meeting in the near future ‘concerning a Fugs single. Maybe,’ I continued, ‘you’d be interested in producing it.’ A Jerry Wexler Fugs single! Just the thought of it was a thrill because of his history of hits such as suggesting ‘The Tennessee Waltz’ to Patti Page in the late 1940s! The Drifters brilliant ‘Money Honey’ in ’53, Ray Charles’s ’54 ‘I’ve Got a Woman,’ and Wilson Pickett’s recent smashes, ‘In the Midnight Hour’ and ‘Mustang Sally.’ The fifty-year-old Wexler, I thought, could have helped morph The Fugs, through a single, into a nationally powerful act in spite of the eros, the antiwar fervor, and our natural tendencies to offend.”
Friday, April 21, 1967: Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, 1855 Main Street, Santa Monica, Los Angeles County, California
Also on the bill: Allen Ginsberg. “Our concert at Santa Monica Civic the night of April 21 was nearly sold out,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “We were told that there were some right-wing nurses picketing the show outside. Eileen Kaufman, the supportive wife of Out There Beat poet Bob Kaufman, threw a party for us in LA after the gig, but we had a late night flight to San Francisco and had to miss it. Dang!”
Saturday, April 22, 1967: 'An Evening With The Fugs,' Berkeley Community Theatre, 1930 Allston Way, Berkeley, Alameda County, California
One show, started at 8:30pm.
Monday, April 24, 1967: Panhandle Park, Oak Street at Masonic Avenue, near Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, California
‘The (hippie) Summer of Love Council’ canceled a scheduled Sunday Panhandle concert due to rain. When the rain cleared at 4pm, unidentifield hippie musicians performed an impromptu, unauthorized set, drawing the crowd. By 6pm the riot squad came in and arrested everyone. Monday afternoon the Fugs and Country Joe and The Fish did a free concert in the Panhandle and $180 was raised by passing the hat. “We stayed in San Francisco for a few days, after performing at the Berkeley Community Theater on April 22,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “The Haight-Ashbury, just noodling toward the Summer of Love, was an eye-opener. We did a free concert with Country Joe and the Fish at the Panhandle Park for the Diggers. I’ve often wondered if Charles Manson, just out of jail and living in the area, was there. I went to see the Grateful Dead and, for the first time, a Full Light Show. I’ve wondered if this particular Grateful Dead show was the one in which Manson, tripping on LSD, experienced the Stations of the Cross. I stopped by Janis Joplin’s house. She was excited about a packet of flower seeds Richard Brautigan had given her, with a poem glued to the side. Editor Don Allen drove me out to the bohemian community of Bolinas, veering quite wildly along the Pacific Coast Highway. We were discussing a collection of my poetry for Grove Press.” “She [Janis Joplin] asked me about ESP Records, which was trying to get Big Brother to sign a recording contract. I urged extreme caution in dealing with ESP,” also recalls Sanders about his meeting with the late Queen of rock ‘n’ roll.
Late April 1967
The Fugs’ third album was shelved by Atlantic Records. “After returning from the West Coast concerts, I went to Atlantic Records for a meeting with the owners,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “I played the album for them as they sat around a long table in a conference room. At the end one of them said, ‘Good production job, Ed.’ A couple of days after the meeting Jerry Wexler called me at home on Avenue A and said Atlantic was not going to release the album. Not only that, we were being tossed off the label. It was a brief, stunning call. It looked for several months as if our career among major labels as over. I heard that one of the Ertegun brothers’ spouses had not really dug our beautiful rendition of ‘Coca Cola Douche,’ the idea for which I came up with after reading an article in Newsweek. Nevertheless, getting unfairly tossed off Atlantic after we were encouraged to make whatever album we wanted left us without an album to greet the Summer of Love. It prevented The Fugs from putting out an album in the Glory year of 1967 to join Sgt. Pepper, Big Brother and the Holding Company , Alice’s Restaurant, Procol Harum, Jimi Hendrix’s Are You Experienced, and ‘All You Need Is Love.’ In fact, The Fugs were prevented from putting out a studio album for a whole crucial year. All my plans for living on Art, creating a thriving band that toured and sold records, seemed to crash into the dirty sidewalk outside Peace Eye. In any case my heart in its polka-dotted jacket was all brok’d up.”
May ?, 1967
Lee Crabtree left the Fugs and joined the Holy Modal Rounders.
THE FUGS #24 (MAY ?, 1967 - JULY 1967 (?))
1) Ed Sanders
2) Tuli Kupferberg
3) Ken Weaver
4) Allan ‘Jake’ Jacobs
5) Geoff Outlaw
Friday, May 12, 1967: Stock Pavilion, University of Wisconsin-Madison campus, 1675 Linden Drive, Madison, Dane County, Wisconsin
“It cost $6 on May 12 to take a cab from the Lower East Side to JFK airport for a flight to Madison, Wisconsin, for a gig with Allen Ginsberg,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “That evening with Allen Ginsberg we performed at the University of Wisconsin Stock Pavilion to 1,700 attendees, almost a full house. ‘Judging from the wild applause,’ wrote a reporter for the Capital Times, uproarious laughter and spellbound stares, the audience was an appreciative one. Much to the horror of anyone who expected a big Haight-Ashbury pot party, the audience was not entirely made up of hippies. There was a fair sprinkling of respectable academics, well-coifed sorority girls, and middle-aged housewives. The Fugs, probably the only act in the world who could follow Allen Ginsberg, make the Rolling Stones look like Little Lord Fauntleroys. As the Lower East Side of New York’s gift to folk culture, the six sang such ‘golden gassers’ as ‘I Am, Therefore You Aren’t’ [a number from our fifteenth album with words by St. Thomas Aquinas], ‘Slum Goddess of the Lower East Side,’ and ‘Kill for Peace.’ The last number is a savage satire on our military efforts in Vietnam, and is evidence, if all their other songs were to be forgotten, of the ‘redeeming social importance’ of the Fugs—which elevates them from the level of the raucously obscene. We took part in a be-in, with flowers and burning wands of incense, in Madison before flying onward to Cleveland the next day. While The Fugs were in Madison, I received a call from the Peace Eye Bookstore landlord. He was very disturbed over my turning over the running of the bookstore to the community. There was a guy, he told me, who was giving karate instructions in the back courtyard; plus someone had strung a tightrope in the courtyard, apparently between the buildings, and was conducting a wirewalking workshop! All this had to stop, or I’d have to close Peace Eye. So one chore when I got back off the road was to take the bookstore back from the community. I was especially sad to be forced to toss out Groovy, who was the maître’d of the Peace Eye crash pad and Mattress Meadow. Groovy went forth to a shaky future during the upcoming Summer of Love, where he continued to try helping runaways find crash pads.”
Sunday, May 14, 1967: Strosacker Auditorium, Case Institute of Technology campus, 2125 Adelbert Road, Cleveland, Cuyahoga County, Ohio
“On May 13 [sic] The Fugs and Allen Ginsberg flew to Cleveland from Madison, where we did a benefit reading for d. a. levy and book dealer James Lowell,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “Levy had become one of the nation’s first Pot Martyrs, a Martyr of the Mimeograph Revolution, and a Martyr for the Right to Read Erotic Verse.” “When The Fugs and Ginsberg landed in Cleveland on the day of the concert, straight from our success at the stock pavilion in Madison, I went with Allen Ginsberg, d. a. levy, and about fifty supporters to the basement of Trinity Cathedral,”he continues. “The police were on hand, and we were told that we would be arrested if we read poetry, so we decided to sing. We lifted forth the anthem ‘We Shall Overcome’ and, at Ginsberg’s suggestion, a few rounds of ‘Hare Krishna,’ which we had recorded for the new Fugs album that had just been nixed by Atlantic Records. ‘Who’s in charge here?’ Allen Ginsberg asked of the police in the cathedral’s basement. ‘Nobody’s in charge’ was the response. As I recall, the concert raised about $1,500 for levy’s costs. Levy continued to publish the Marrahwannah Quarterly and began an underground newspaper, the Buddhist Third Class Junkmail Oracle. Decades later when a friend of mine interviewed levy’s prosecutor, he couldn’t even remember the case. On May 14 [sic] we flew back to New York, where it was time to face my own court case.”
Thursday, May 18, 1967: Village Theatre, 105 2nd Avenue at East 6th Street, East Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
“Before my trial began, I met brilliant Russian poet Andrei Voznesensky during his visit to the States for some readings,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “Andrei was staying at the Chelsea Hotel on West Twenty-third Street. One evening Voznesensky came to Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky’s apartment on East Tenth, between Avenues C and D. I stopped by that night, and we were watching a critical documentary on the FBI, on television. ‘You mean,’ exclaimed Voznesensky, his eyes widening with surprise, ‘you can criticize the Secret Police on television!?’ ‘Sure,’ I replied. ‘Fuck them.’ On May 18 Voznesensky took part in an anti–Vietnam War reading at the Village Theater (later the Fillmore East) located on Second Avenue at Sixth Street. I recall how strongly he performed his poetry, standing with his legs apart and reciting from memory. It was a brave thing for him to do, to take a stance against a U.S. war. Others reading that night included Ted Berrigan, John Ashbery, Gil Sorrentino, Sam Abrams, Jerry Rothenberg, Gregory Corso, Paul Blackburn, Joel Oppenheimer, Robert Creeley, Jackson MacLow, and Clayton Eshleman. The Fugs performed at the close of both sets of the performance.”
Monday, May 22, 1967
Ed Sanders’ trial for obscenity charges dating January 2, 1966, finally began today at the New York City Criminal Court Building at 100 Centre Street in Manhattan. “Meanwhile, my own seemingly incessant court appearances for the Peace Eye/F.Y. bust, now going on for almost a year and a half, was dragging onward,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “As the months surged past, I was feeling more and more defiant. I was suffering court appearance after court appearance. I was required to show up at every one, lest I have my bail revoked and risk being jailed. For one of my hearings I arrived dressed all in white—white shirt, white tie, white boots, white suit (with Eyes of Horus painted on the lapels). This sartorial statement in white went by okay with the rather stern and death-aura’d judge named William Ringel. But then for the next hearing I showed up attired entirely in red: new red satin Tom Jones shirt, red jacket, red corduroy pants, red Corfam shoes, and red socks. It was the outfit I had worn during my psilocybin adventure with Weaver and Olson in Gloucester. The judge, again the grouchy guy named Ringel, was not pleased with my spiffy, all-rubicund attire. ‘Young man!’ he practically screamed, ‘this is not a ski lodge! The next time you come to court wearing a proper suit and tie!’ ‘Yes, sir,’ I replied, while mentally telling him to take a walk down Vomit Alley waving a sponge! During the hearings there were several ACLU attorneys who worked on my case. My attorney as we went to trial was Ernst Rosenberger. I was very impressed with him. Ernst, I learned, was very active in the civil rights movement. He’d been a volunteer attorney defending Freedom Riders arrested in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1961, and he was taking part in voting rights cases in the South throughout much of the decade. Later he became a State Supreme Court justice and then an associate justice of the New York Supreme Court Appellate Division. Just a few days after the benefit for d. a. levy and the big antiwar reading at the Village Theater, my trial from the Peace Eye Raid of almost seventeen months previous was about to begin.” “One of our plans was to wait for a correct trio of judges,” he continues. “And so as we went into the hearing at 100 Centre Street on May 22, Rosenberger analyzed the judges and decided we were ready for trial. My judges were William Ringel, Mitchell Sherwin, and Daniel Hoffman. I was not so certain. I was particularly worried about the baleful Ringel, who, at a previous hearing, had ruled against a motion by Rosenberger to suppress the evidence in the case as having been gathered in violation of the Fourth Amendment, that is, with improper search and seizure. I called my expert witnesses from the lobby of the court building. They were two eminent poets, Kenneth Koch and John Ashbery. I located Koch at his tennis court and so he showed up in court with a tennis racket. Both waited in the courtroom during the trial. The prosecutor was Assistant District Attorney John J. Moyna. One indication that we might sail through this nightmare occurred when I heard Moyna, while reading the indictment, pronounce ‘lascivious’ as ‘láhshivous,’ with accent on the first syllable. Another thing that looked good: None of my judges had been on the trio (John Murtagh, Kenneth Phipps, and James Randall Creel) who had convicted Lenny Bruce back in 1964. And so it began. The assistant district attorney had a unique prosecution strategy. He decided that my announcements about certain of my underground films and some satiric advertising I typed and drew into the magazine provided proof I had violated the law regarding obscenity. Satire and reality sometimes reside in the same part of the brain, at least in my prosecutor’s. The only prosecution witness was Sergeant Charles Fetta, who by trial time had been transferred to the 111th Precinct in Bayside, Queens. Moyna elicited from the sergeant the time line of the arrest. Fetta was not asked about looking for Akh-en-Aten’s ‘Hymn to the Sun Disk’ on my testicles.” “Next, Ernst Rosenberger approached me for a private conference,” he concludes. “He had a suggestion. He felt that the ADA and the testimony of Fetta had not really presented much of a case. Rosenberger’s proposed that we rest our case without testimony. I thought about it for a few moments, then agreed. It was a gamble. Rosenberger then addressed the Panel of Three Dour Gents: ‘If Your Honor pleases, at the conclusion of the People’s case, the People having rested, the defendant rests Your honor, and the defendant moves for a judgement of acquittal on the ground that the People have failed to establish his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.’ Then Ringel, for the panel of three, granted the motion to dismiss! Ringel asserted, ‘The motion to dismiss is granted, the Court has a doubt with respect to the proof required under 1141, particularly, Subdivision 1 and in connection with Subdivision 4 with respect to the presumption. This is not to be interpreted as the Court’s condoning or approving the language, and, at least, one of the photographs that appears in the (Jack Smith) exhibit here, they’re a little sophomoric to put it mildly and certainly one of them is—may well be considered pornographic. However, on the question of law, of the violations of the statute as to the distribution and as to ownership of the alleged People’s Exhibit #1 and #2 which are the advertising material, that has not been established. Under all of the circumstances, the motion is granted.’ Ringel wasn’t so kind to Andy Warhol’s Blue Movie two years later, ruling it obscene. But I had had the historic ACLU behind me, with all its strength and genius, plus a prosecution that pronounced lascivious ‘láshivous’ and relied too heavily on the salacious power of the Lady Dickhead Advertising Company. The dismissal was so sudden that instead of twirling and jumping for joy, I just stood there, drained from nineteen months of secret dread and plodding tired into a robotic courtroom so many times. I looked around for Fetta to invite him to the victory party at the Peace Eye Bookstore, but he was already gone. There was a bit more colloquy from the judges, and then I went my way.”
Wednesday, May 24 - Thursday, May 25, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
Friday, May 26 - Saturday, May 27, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, May 28, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
Wednesday, May 31, 1967: Crystal Ballroom, 406 Southwest 14th Avenue at 1332 West Burnside Street, Portland, Multnomah County, Oregon
Also on the bill: Family Tree.
Wednesday, May 31 - Thursday, June 1, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
Friday, June 2 - Saturday, June 3, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, June 4, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
Wednesday, June 7 - Thursday, June 8, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
Friday, June 9 - Saturday, June 10, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, June 11, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
Wednesday, June 14 - Thursday, June 15, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
Friday, June 16 - Saturday, June 17, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, June 18, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
Wednesday, June 21 - Thursday, June 22, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
Friday, June 23 - Saturday, June 24, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, June 25, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
Tuesday, June 27, 1967
Ed Sanders held a party at his Peace Eye Bookstore to celebrate the dismiss of his trial for obscenity charges. “It was time to party,” recalls Ed in his autobiography. “I painted the Peace Eye floors and cleaned up the mess remaining from when I had turned it over to the community and it had thrown away many of the books. I prepared an art show featuring all issues of my magazine and the artwork of friends, including Spain Rodriguez and even Gregory Corso. I sent the invitation to Sergeant Charles Fetta. It was a packed party on a hot summer night, including Allen Ginsberg and many friends. Ernst Rosenberger brought an assistant district attorney (not Moyna) to the celebration. During the celebration some neighborhood kids began to toss firecrackers through the open door. Allen Ginsberg and I went outside to the sidewalk to cool them out. One young man was brandishing a wide-tipped hunting arrow. It was another flashlight into Allen’s personality as he sank to his knees on the sidewalk in front of the wide-eyed youth and made his hands together in the shape of a mudra. The young man raised his arm back high over head, the arrow trembling, and I was very afraid he was going to hurl it into the bard’s neck, but Allen’s calm words at last caused him to put it down to his side. It was another emblem of conduct by a great poet.”
Wednesday, June 28, 1967: ‘Great Bust Tribal Trust - Bread for Heads - A Benefit for the Community Defense Fund,’ Village Theatre, 105 2nd Avenue at East 6th Street, East Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Also on the bill: Allen Ginsberg, Mothers of Invention, Left Banke, Group Image, Bruce Murdoch, Tim Buckley, Northern Lights, Lost Sea Dreamers, Timothy Leary, Joe Frazier, Burton Green, Lights by Pablo and The Third World, Trina’s Tribe, Bob Fass (MC), and many more.
Wednesday, June 28 - Thursday, June 29, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
Friday, June 30 - Saturday, July 1, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
June or July 1967
The Fugs’ third album (actually outtakes from the first album), ‘Virgin Fugs,’ was released in the US. “When the owner of ESP-Disk basically bootlegged a sequence of tunes from the first two Fugs sessions and called it Virgin Fugs, it went against my principles of Apt Artistic Flow—that an artist should be able to select what created items get to be placed before the world,” points out Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “Allen Ginsberg didn’t like the use of ‘Howl’ lines in the song ‘The I Saw the Best Minds of My Generation Rock.’ I didn’t like it. And the bootlegger stole all the income derived. Stole Stole Stole. Because of our being dumped by Atlantic Records, Virgin Fugs became the only Fugs album to appear during the crucial Year of Love.”
Sunday, July 2, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
July 1967 (?)
The Fugs hired a second guitar player named Daniel Kortchmar, aka ‘Danny Kootch’ (b. Saturday, April 6, 1946, New York City, New York), formerly of the Flying Machine with his childhood friend James Taylor. “The Flying Machine was breaking up; I caught one of their final gigs at the Night Owl, and Kootch had talent!,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “Dan Kootch was soon doing great work on guitar and violin. Maybe I should have also tried to hire James Taylor, who was soon off to England.
“It cost $6 on May 12 to take a cab from the Lower East Side to JFK airport for a flight to Madison, Wisconsin, for a gig with Allen Ginsberg,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “That evening with Allen Ginsberg we performed at the University of Wisconsin Stock Pavilion to 1,700 attendees, almost a full house. ‘Judging from the wild applause,’ wrote a reporter for the Capital Times, uproarious laughter and spellbound stares, the audience was an appreciative one. Much to the horror of anyone who expected a big Haight-Ashbury pot party, the audience was not entirely made up of hippies. There was a fair sprinkling of respectable academics, well-coifed sorority girls, and middle-aged housewives. The Fugs, probably the only act in the world who could follow Allen Ginsberg, make the Rolling Stones look like Little Lord Fauntleroys. As the Lower East Side of New York’s gift to folk culture, the six sang such ‘golden gassers’ as ‘I Am, Therefore You Aren’t’ [a number from our fifteenth album with words by St. Thomas Aquinas], ‘Slum Goddess of the Lower East Side,’ and ‘Kill for Peace.’ The last number is a savage satire on our military efforts in Vietnam, and is evidence, if all their other songs were to be forgotten, of the ‘redeeming social importance’ of the Fugs—which elevates them from the level of the raucously obscene. We took part in a be-in, with flowers and burning wands of incense, in Madison before flying onward to Cleveland the next day. While The Fugs were in Madison, I received a call from the Peace Eye Bookstore landlord. He was very disturbed over my turning over the running of the bookstore to the community. There was a guy, he told me, who was giving karate instructions in the back courtyard; plus someone had strung a tightrope in the courtyard, apparently between the buildings, and was conducting a wirewalking workshop! All this had to stop, or I’d have to close Peace Eye. So one chore when I got back off the road was to take the bookstore back from the community. I was especially sad to be forced to toss out Groovy, who was the maître’d of the Peace Eye crash pad and Mattress Meadow. Groovy went forth to a shaky future during the upcoming Summer of Love, where he continued to try helping runaways find crash pads.”
Sunday, May 14, 1967: Strosacker Auditorium, Case Institute of Technology campus, 2125 Adelbert Road, Cleveland, Cuyahoga County, Ohio
“On May 13 [sic] The Fugs and Allen Ginsberg flew to Cleveland from Madison, where we did a benefit reading for d. a. levy and book dealer James Lowell,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “Levy had become one of the nation’s first Pot Martyrs, a Martyr of the Mimeograph Revolution, and a Martyr for the Right to Read Erotic Verse.” “When The Fugs and Ginsberg landed in Cleveland on the day of the concert, straight from our success at the stock pavilion in Madison, I went with Allen Ginsberg, d. a. levy, and about fifty supporters to the basement of Trinity Cathedral,”he continues. “The police were on hand, and we were told that we would be arrested if we read poetry, so we decided to sing. We lifted forth the anthem ‘We Shall Overcome’ and, at Ginsberg’s suggestion, a few rounds of ‘Hare Krishna,’ which we had recorded for the new Fugs album that had just been nixed by Atlantic Records. ‘Who’s in charge here?’ Allen Ginsberg asked of the police in the cathedral’s basement. ‘Nobody’s in charge’ was the response. As I recall, the concert raised about $1,500 for levy’s costs. Levy continued to publish the Marrahwannah Quarterly and began an underground newspaper, the Buddhist Third Class Junkmail Oracle. Decades later when a friend of mine interviewed levy’s prosecutor, he couldn’t even remember the case. On May 14 [sic] we flew back to New York, where it was time to face my own court case.”
Thursday, May 18, 1967: Village Theatre, 105 2nd Avenue at East 6th Street, East Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
“Before my trial began, I met brilliant Russian poet Andrei Voznesensky during his visit to the States for some readings,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “Andrei was staying at the Chelsea Hotel on West Twenty-third Street. One evening Voznesensky came to Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky’s apartment on East Tenth, between Avenues C and D. I stopped by that night, and we were watching a critical documentary on the FBI, on television. ‘You mean,’ exclaimed Voznesensky, his eyes widening with surprise, ‘you can criticize the Secret Police on television!?’ ‘Sure,’ I replied. ‘Fuck them.’ On May 18 Voznesensky took part in an anti–Vietnam War reading at the Village Theater (later the Fillmore East) located on Second Avenue at Sixth Street. I recall how strongly he performed his poetry, standing with his legs apart and reciting from memory. It was a brave thing for him to do, to take a stance against a U.S. war. Others reading that night included Ted Berrigan, John Ashbery, Gil Sorrentino, Sam Abrams, Jerry Rothenberg, Gregory Corso, Paul Blackburn, Joel Oppenheimer, Robert Creeley, Jackson MacLow, and Clayton Eshleman. The Fugs performed at the close of both sets of the performance.”
Monday, May 22, 1967
Ed Sanders’ trial for obscenity charges dating January 2, 1966, finally began today at the New York City Criminal Court Building at 100 Centre Street in Manhattan. “Meanwhile, my own seemingly incessant court appearances for the Peace Eye/F.Y. bust, now going on for almost a year and a half, was dragging onward,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “As the months surged past, I was feeling more and more defiant. I was suffering court appearance after court appearance. I was required to show up at every one, lest I have my bail revoked and risk being jailed. For one of my hearings I arrived dressed all in white—white shirt, white tie, white boots, white suit (with Eyes of Horus painted on the lapels). This sartorial statement in white went by okay with the rather stern and death-aura’d judge named William Ringel. But then for the next hearing I showed up attired entirely in red: new red satin Tom Jones shirt, red jacket, red corduroy pants, red Corfam shoes, and red socks. It was the outfit I had worn during my psilocybin adventure with Weaver and Olson in Gloucester. The judge, again the grouchy guy named Ringel, was not pleased with my spiffy, all-rubicund attire. ‘Young man!’ he practically screamed, ‘this is not a ski lodge! The next time you come to court wearing a proper suit and tie!’ ‘Yes, sir,’ I replied, while mentally telling him to take a walk down Vomit Alley waving a sponge! During the hearings there were several ACLU attorneys who worked on my case. My attorney as we went to trial was Ernst Rosenberger. I was very impressed with him. Ernst, I learned, was very active in the civil rights movement. He’d been a volunteer attorney defending Freedom Riders arrested in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1961, and he was taking part in voting rights cases in the South throughout much of the decade. Later he became a State Supreme Court justice and then an associate justice of the New York Supreme Court Appellate Division. Just a few days after the benefit for d. a. levy and the big antiwar reading at the Village Theater, my trial from the Peace Eye Raid of almost seventeen months previous was about to begin.” “One of our plans was to wait for a correct trio of judges,” he continues. “And so as we went into the hearing at 100 Centre Street on May 22, Rosenberger analyzed the judges and decided we were ready for trial. My judges were William Ringel, Mitchell Sherwin, and Daniel Hoffman. I was not so certain. I was particularly worried about the baleful Ringel, who, at a previous hearing, had ruled against a motion by Rosenberger to suppress the evidence in the case as having been gathered in violation of the Fourth Amendment, that is, with improper search and seizure. I called my expert witnesses from the lobby of the court building. They were two eminent poets, Kenneth Koch and John Ashbery. I located Koch at his tennis court and so he showed up in court with a tennis racket. Both waited in the courtroom during the trial. The prosecutor was Assistant District Attorney John J. Moyna. One indication that we might sail through this nightmare occurred when I heard Moyna, while reading the indictment, pronounce ‘lascivious’ as ‘láhshivous,’ with accent on the first syllable. Another thing that looked good: None of my judges had been on the trio (John Murtagh, Kenneth Phipps, and James Randall Creel) who had convicted Lenny Bruce back in 1964. And so it began. The assistant district attorney had a unique prosecution strategy. He decided that my announcements about certain of my underground films and some satiric advertising I typed and drew into the magazine provided proof I had violated the law regarding obscenity. Satire and reality sometimes reside in the same part of the brain, at least in my prosecutor’s. The only prosecution witness was Sergeant Charles Fetta, who by trial time had been transferred to the 111th Precinct in Bayside, Queens. Moyna elicited from the sergeant the time line of the arrest. Fetta was not asked about looking for Akh-en-Aten’s ‘Hymn to the Sun Disk’ on my testicles.” “Next, Ernst Rosenberger approached me for a private conference,” he concludes. “He had a suggestion. He felt that the ADA and the testimony of Fetta had not really presented much of a case. Rosenberger’s proposed that we rest our case without testimony. I thought about it for a few moments, then agreed. It was a gamble. Rosenberger then addressed the Panel of Three Dour Gents: ‘If Your Honor pleases, at the conclusion of the People’s case, the People having rested, the defendant rests Your honor, and the defendant moves for a judgement of acquittal on the ground that the People have failed to establish his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.’ Then Ringel, for the panel of three, granted the motion to dismiss! Ringel asserted, ‘The motion to dismiss is granted, the Court has a doubt with respect to the proof required under 1141, particularly, Subdivision 1 and in connection with Subdivision 4 with respect to the presumption. This is not to be interpreted as the Court’s condoning or approving the language, and, at least, one of the photographs that appears in the (Jack Smith) exhibit here, they’re a little sophomoric to put it mildly and certainly one of them is—may well be considered pornographic. However, on the question of law, of the violations of the statute as to the distribution and as to ownership of the alleged People’s Exhibit #1 and #2 which are the advertising material, that has not been established. Under all of the circumstances, the motion is granted.’ Ringel wasn’t so kind to Andy Warhol’s Blue Movie two years later, ruling it obscene. But I had had the historic ACLU behind me, with all its strength and genius, plus a prosecution that pronounced lascivious ‘láshivous’ and relied too heavily on the salacious power of the Lady Dickhead Advertising Company. The dismissal was so sudden that instead of twirling and jumping for joy, I just stood there, drained from nineteen months of secret dread and plodding tired into a robotic courtroom so many times. I looked around for Fetta to invite him to the victory party at the Peace Eye Bookstore, but he was already gone. There was a bit more colloquy from the judges, and then I went my way.”
Wednesday, May 24 - Thursday, May 25, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
Friday, May 26 - Saturday, May 27, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, May 28, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
Wednesday, May 31, 1967: Crystal Ballroom, 406 Southwest 14th Avenue at 1332 West Burnside Street, Portland, Multnomah County, Oregon
Also on the bill: Family Tree.
Wednesday, May 31 - Thursday, June 1, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
Friday, June 2 - Saturday, June 3, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, June 4, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
Wednesday, June 7 - Thursday, June 8, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
Friday, June 9 - Saturday, June 10, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, June 11, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
Wednesday, June 14 - Thursday, June 15, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
Friday, June 16 - Saturday, June 17, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, June 18, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
Wednesday, June 21 - Thursday, June 22, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
Friday, June 23 - Saturday, June 24, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, June 25, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
Tuesday, June 27, 1967
Ed Sanders held a party at his Peace Eye Bookstore to celebrate the dismiss of his trial for obscenity charges. “It was time to party,” recalls Ed in his autobiography. “I painted the Peace Eye floors and cleaned up the mess remaining from when I had turned it over to the community and it had thrown away many of the books. I prepared an art show featuring all issues of my magazine and the artwork of friends, including Spain Rodriguez and even Gregory Corso. I sent the invitation to Sergeant Charles Fetta. It was a packed party on a hot summer night, including Allen Ginsberg and many friends. Ernst Rosenberger brought an assistant district attorney (not Moyna) to the celebration. During the celebration some neighborhood kids began to toss firecrackers through the open door. Allen Ginsberg and I went outside to the sidewalk to cool them out. One young man was brandishing a wide-tipped hunting arrow. It was another flashlight into Allen’s personality as he sank to his knees on the sidewalk in front of the wide-eyed youth and made his hands together in the shape of a mudra. The young man raised his arm back high over head, the arrow trembling, and I was very afraid he was going to hurl it into the bard’s neck, but Allen’s calm words at last caused him to put it down to his side. It was another emblem of conduct by a great poet.”
Wednesday, June 28, 1967: ‘Great Bust Tribal Trust - Bread for Heads - A Benefit for the Community Defense Fund,’ Village Theatre, 105 2nd Avenue at East 6th Street, East Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Also on the bill: Allen Ginsberg, Mothers of Invention, Left Banke, Group Image, Bruce Murdoch, Tim Buckley, Northern Lights, Lost Sea Dreamers, Timothy Leary, Joe Frazier, Burton Green, Lights by Pablo and The Third World, Trina’s Tribe, Bob Fass (MC), and many more.
Wednesday, June 28 - Thursday, June 29, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
Friday, June 30 - Saturday, July 1, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
June or July 1967
The Fugs’ third album (actually outtakes from the first album), ‘Virgin Fugs,’ was released in the US. “When the owner of ESP-Disk basically bootlegged a sequence of tunes from the first two Fugs sessions and called it Virgin Fugs, it went against my principles of Apt Artistic Flow—that an artist should be able to select what created items get to be placed before the world,” points out Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “Allen Ginsberg didn’t like the use of ‘Howl’ lines in the song ‘The I Saw the Best Minds of My Generation Rock.’ I didn’t like it. And the bootlegger stole all the income derived. Stole Stole Stole. Because of our being dumped by Atlantic Records, Virgin Fugs became the only Fugs album to appear during the crucial Year of Love.”
Sunday, July 2, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
July 1967 (?)
The Fugs hired a second guitar player named Daniel Kortchmar, aka ‘Danny Kootch’ (b. Saturday, April 6, 1946, New York City, New York), formerly of the Flying Machine with his childhood friend James Taylor. “The Flying Machine was breaking up; I caught one of their final gigs at the Night Owl, and Kootch had talent!,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “Dan Kootch was soon doing great work on guitar and violin. Maybe I should have also tried to hire James Taylor, who was soon off to England.
THE FUGS #25 (JULY 1967 (?) - SEPTEMBER 1967 (?))
1) Ed Sanders
2) Tuli Kupferberg
3) Ken Weaver
4) Geoff Outlaw
5) Allan ‘Jake’ Jacobs
6) Danny ‘Kootch’ Kortchmar guitar, vocals, organ, electric violin, percussion
Wednesday, July 5 - Thursday, July 6, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
Friday, July 7 - Saturday, July 8, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, July 9, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
Wednesday, July 12 - Thursday, July 13, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
Friday, July 14 - Saturday, July 15, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, July 16, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
Monday, July 17 - Monday, July 24, 1967: Back Bay Theatre, 209 Massachusetts Avenue, Boston, Suffolk County, Massachusetts
“The Fugs took the week of July 17–24 from the Players Theatre to perform at the Back Bay Theater in Boston,” confirms Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “It was an exhilarating week until it came time to receive our final $2,000 due ($2,000 had been paid in advance) at the end of the engagement. When our managers asked for the money, they were greeted with ‘How’d you like your legs broken?’ After the week in Boston we returned to the Players Theatre. Country Joe and the Fish came to town at the end of July. Joe wanted a place to rehearse, so I turned over The Fugs set at the Players Theatre for the band, as it prepared for a week’s run, August 1–6, at the Cafe Au Go Go.”
Wednesday, August 2 - Thursday, August 3, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
Friday, August 4 - Saturday, August 5, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, August 6, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
Wednesday, August 9 - Thursday, August 10, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
Friday, August 11 - Saturday, August 12, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, August 13, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
Wednesday, August 16, 1967: ‘The Community Breast - T.E.A.T. (To Each All Things) Benefit For The Community,’ Village Theatre, 105 2nd Avenue at East 6th Street, East Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
One show, started at 8:00pm. Also on the bill: Paul Krassner, Bob Fass, Hugh Romney, Walter Bowart, Judy Collins, Tiny Tim, Richie Havens, Pearls Before Swine, Peter Walker, The Others. “The Community Breast concert at the Village Theater on Second Avenue on August 16 raised $1,000 for a Lower East Side version of the Digger’s San Francisco Free Store,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “The Fugs performed, as did Tiny Tim, Judy Collins, Richie Havens, Paul Krassner, Hugh Romney (soon to become Wavy Gravy), and Timothy Leary’s sitarist, Peter Walker. The money raised indeed went to the establishment of a free store, set up on East Tenth, just around the corner from the offices of the East Village Other.”
Wednesday, August 16 - Thursday, August 17, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
Friday, August 18 - Saturday, August 19, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, August 20, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
Tuesday, August 22, 1967: Tompkins Square Park, E 10th Street, Alphabet City, East Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
A free outdoor concert which started at 8:30pm and was presented by the Lower East Side Civic Improvement Association (LES-CIA).
Wednesday, August 23 - Thursday, August 24, 1967: Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
Friday, August 25 - Saturday, August 26, 1967: Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, August 27, 1967: Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
Wednesday, August 30 - Thursday, August 31, 1967: Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
Friday, September 1, 1967
The Fugs signed a new recording contract with Reprise Records. “Thanks to the outreach of our managers, Charles Rothschild and Peter Edmiston, The Fugs had offers that summer from two prestigious record labels: Elektra Records, home of The Doors, and Reprise, home of Jimi Hendrix,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “I was, for the first time in months, feeling as if a giant minus sign WAS NOT following me around in my polka dot sports jacket. The manager of Janis Joplin, Bob Dylan, Richie Havens, and Peter, Paul and Mary—Albert Grossman—recommended signing with Jac Holzman’s record label, Elektra. I met with Paul Rothschild, producer of The Doors and later Janis Joplin. He’d liked ‘Morning Morning’ on the second album and suggested I give him the songs we had already written and recorded—some demos, plus the Atlantic material—to listen to. Instead I decided to go with Reprise. I felt it was a better, more liberal fit for a controversial band with raw material. The contract was signed on September 1. As Tom Clark once noted, I ran a tight ship, and I wanted control of the production. Unfortunately our managers demanded to sign their own production deal with Reprise, so that The Fugs (Tuli, myself, and Ken) signed with our managers’ production company. Unlike earlier, when Gene Brooks, Allen Ginsberg’s brother, advised us on our original management contract with Charles Rothschild and Peter Edmiston, I did not get an attorney. I still don’t know to this day what sort of contract was signed with Reprise, nor have I ever seen a royalty statement.”
Friday, September 1 - Saturday, September 2, 1967: Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, September 3, 1967: Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
September 1967 (?)
Allan ‘Jake’ Jacobs left the Fugs and went to form a folk rock duo called Bunky and Jake.
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
Friday, July 7 - Saturday, July 8, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, July 9, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
Wednesday, July 12 - Thursday, July 13, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
Friday, July 14 - Saturday, July 15, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, July 16, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
Monday, July 17 - Monday, July 24, 1967: Back Bay Theatre, 209 Massachusetts Avenue, Boston, Suffolk County, Massachusetts
“The Fugs took the week of July 17–24 from the Players Theatre to perform at the Back Bay Theater in Boston,” confirms Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “It was an exhilarating week until it came time to receive our final $2,000 due ($2,000 had been paid in advance) at the end of the engagement. When our managers asked for the money, they were greeted with ‘How’d you like your legs broken?’ After the week in Boston we returned to the Players Theatre. Country Joe and the Fish came to town at the end of July. Joe wanted a place to rehearse, so I turned over The Fugs set at the Players Theatre for the band, as it prepared for a week’s run, August 1–6, at the Cafe Au Go Go.”
Wednesday, August 2 - Thursday, August 3, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
Friday, August 4 - Saturday, August 5, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, August 6, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
Wednesday, August 9 - Thursday, August 10, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
Friday, August 11 - Saturday, August 12, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, August 13, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
Wednesday, August 16, 1967: ‘The Community Breast - T.E.A.T. (To Each All Things) Benefit For The Community,’ Village Theatre, 105 2nd Avenue at East 6th Street, East Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
One show, started at 8:00pm. Also on the bill: Paul Krassner, Bob Fass, Hugh Romney, Walter Bowart, Judy Collins, Tiny Tim, Richie Havens, Pearls Before Swine, Peter Walker, The Others. “The Community Breast concert at the Village Theater on Second Avenue on August 16 raised $1,000 for a Lower East Side version of the Digger’s San Francisco Free Store,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “The Fugs performed, as did Tiny Tim, Judy Collins, Richie Havens, Paul Krassner, Hugh Romney (soon to become Wavy Gravy), and Timothy Leary’s sitarist, Peter Walker. The money raised indeed went to the establishment of a free store, set up on East Tenth, just around the corner from the offices of the East Village Other.”
Wednesday, August 16 - Thursday, August 17, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
Friday, August 18 - Saturday, August 19, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, August 20, 1967: ‘The Fugs Are Back,’ Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
Tuesday, August 22, 1967: Tompkins Square Park, E 10th Street, Alphabet City, East Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
A free outdoor concert which started at 8:30pm and was presented by the Lower East Side Civic Improvement Association (LES-CIA).
Wednesday, August 23 - Thursday, August 24, 1967: Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
Friday, August 25 - Saturday, August 26, 1967: Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, August 27, 1967: Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
Wednesday, August 30 - Thursday, August 31, 1967: Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
Friday, September 1, 1967
The Fugs signed a new recording contract with Reprise Records. “Thanks to the outreach of our managers, Charles Rothschild and Peter Edmiston, The Fugs had offers that summer from two prestigious record labels: Elektra Records, home of The Doors, and Reprise, home of Jimi Hendrix,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “I was, for the first time in months, feeling as if a giant minus sign WAS NOT following me around in my polka dot sports jacket. The manager of Janis Joplin, Bob Dylan, Richie Havens, and Peter, Paul and Mary—Albert Grossman—recommended signing with Jac Holzman’s record label, Elektra. I met with Paul Rothschild, producer of The Doors and later Janis Joplin. He’d liked ‘Morning Morning’ on the second album and suggested I give him the songs we had already written and recorded—some demos, plus the Atlantic material—to listen to. Instead I decided to go with Reprise. I felt it was a better, more liberal fit for a controversial band with raw material. The contract was signed on September 1. As Tom Clark once noted, I ran a tight ship, and I wanted control of the production. Unfortunately our managers demanded to sign their own production deal with Reprise, so that The Fugs (Tuli, myself, and Ken) signed with our managers’ production company. Unlike earlier, when Gene Brooks, Allen Ginsberg’s brother, advised us on our original management contract with Charles Rothschild and Peter Edmiston, I did not get an attorney. I still don’t know to this day what sort of contract was signed with Reprise, nor have I ever seen a royalty statement.”
Friday, September 1 - Saturday, September 2, 1967: Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, September 3, 1967: Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
September 1967 (?)
Allan ‘Jake’ Jacobs left the Fugs and went to form a folk rock duo called Bunky and Jake.
THE FUGS #26 (SEPTEMBER 1967 (?) - LATE OCTOBER 1967)
1) Ed Sanders
2) Tuli Kupferberg
3) Ken Weaver
4) Geoff Outlaw
5) Danny ‘Kootch’ Kortchmar
1) Ed Sanders
2) Tuli Kupferberg
3) Ken Weaver
4) Geoff Outlaw
5) Danny ‘Kootch’ Kortchmar
Late Summer - Fall 1967
“I began talking with Barbara Rubin about a movie on The Fugs,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “We had discussed such a project as far back as ’65 when she took me to the Café Bizarre on West Third to see a throbbing new act called the Velvet Underground. She teamed up with Shirley Clarke, a bright force in the avantgarde movie world. Clarke had won an Oscar in 1963 for her documentary on Robert Frost. In 1962 she’d filmed the Living Theater’s production of Jack Gelber’s The Connection. She was a cofounder, with Jonas Mekas, of the Film-Makers’ Cooperative. For a few months in late summer and fall we worked very hard on The Fugs movie project. There was a party at Shirley Clarke’s place at the Chelsea. Her friend Archie Shepp was there. Weaver and I practically begged him not to sign with ESP Records. It worked, and Shepp was saved. Weaver wrote pages of ideas, and Tuli and I did, too. My idea was to begin filming in war-tense Saigon; my thought was to have a chamber orchestra playing when our plane landed, a ‘salute to mortar and small arms fire.’ In my archive is a typed page listing ‘possible titles for Fugs movie’ as follows: ‘The Golden Door, Eagle Shit, Eagle, Aluminum Sphinx, Electric Forest, Arbitrary Madness, Oxen of the Sun, America Bongo; Unh! Unh! Ahh! Vampire Ass, Grail Gobble, Winnow’d in Fate’s Tray, No Reality; Bend Over, Earthling! All Is Skush, Blob Tissue, Mystery at Cabin Island, On-ward, Forward March! Hemorrhaging Frog, Gobble Gobble, Primal Substance, Moon Brain, It’s Eating Me! Useless Passion, and Hemisphere Gimme.’ All wonderful movie titles from the fall of 1967, and now I pass them on to all filmmakers to use.” “Meanwhile, I worked with Tuli and Ken on a film script,” he continues. “I was interested in somehow linking it to the Eleusinian Mysteries, those ancient myths about the goddess Demeter and her search for her daughter, Persephone, seized and taken to the underground by the god Ploutos. I intently studied C. Kerényi’s very scholarly Eleusis—Archetypal Image of Mother and Daughter and George Mylonas’s equally scholarly Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries. Both books rekindled my thirst for scholarly pursuits. We also had brainstorm sessions on western themes. Shirley Clarke tried to raise money. We met with potential money source Dan Selznick at Shirley’s pad at the Chelsea. For almost any film project there’s a treatment prepared. I assigned myself to come up with a one-page treatment, starring William Burroughs, LeRoi Jones (prior to becoming Amiri Baraka), Allen Ginsberg, and, of course, The Fugs. I liked the idea of presenting a new religion called ‘Rodney.’ For his part Weaver brought in ideas of adding western themes, so for a while our film had the general title of Badass. Finally we had around 150 pages of ideas, scene descriptions, songs, vignettes, and the like. What I needed were a few weeks of calm in our groovy marble-fireplaced floor-through on Avenue A to type a final version. But that was not to be. We were wiggling in the space-time continuum, and the continuum was itself wiggling in wild whirls and moiré patterns of Bacchus and the ole Beatnik sense of Gone!”
Wednesday, September 6 - Thursday, September 7, 1967: Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
Friday, September 8 - Saturday, September 9, 1967: Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, September 10, 1967: Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
Wednesday, September 13 - Thursday, September 14, 1967: Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
Friday, September 15 - Saturday, September 16, 1967: Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, September 17, 1967: Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
Monday, September 25, 1967
“I asked my friend famous fashion photographer Richard Avedon to design the album package for Tenderness Junction and to take pictures of Tuli, Ken, and me for the cover,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “He agreed, and we went to his studio for a photo session. He assigned the actual album design to a guy named Marvin Israel.” Actually the photos taken that day weren’t used for the album and Richard Avedon did a second shooting with the Fugs a couple of months later or so.
“I began talking with Barbara Rubin about a movie on The Fugs,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “We had discussed such a project as far back as ’65 when she took me to the Café Bizarre on West Third to see a throbbing new act called the Velvet Underground. She teamed up with Shirley Clarke, a bright force in the avantgarde movie world. Clarke had won an Oscar in 1963 for her documentary on Robert Frost. In 1962 she’d filmed the Living Theater’s production of Jack Gelber’s The Connection. She was a cofounder, with Jonas Mekas, of the Film-Makers’ Cooperative. For a few months in late summer and fall we worked very hard on The Fugs movie project. There was a party at Shirley Clarke’s place at the Chelsea. Her friend Archie Shepp was there. Weaver and I practically begged him not to sign with ESP Records. It worked, and Shepp was saved. Weaver wrote pages of ideas, and Tuli and I did, too. My idea was to begin filming in war-tense Saigon; my thought was to have a chamber orchestra playing when our plane landed, a ‘salute to mortar and small arms fire.’ In my archive is a typed page listing ‘possible titles for Fugs movie’ as follows: ‘The Golden Door, Eagle Shit, Eagle, Aluminum Sphinx, Electric Forest, Arbitrary Madness, Oxen of the Sun, America Bongo; Unh! Unh! Ahh! Vampire Ass, Grail Gobble, Winnow’d in Fate’s Tray, No Reality; Bend Over, Earthling! All Is Skush, Blob Tissue, Mystery at Cabin Island, On-ward, Forward March! Hemorrhaging Frog, Gobble Gobble, Primal Substance, Moon Brain, It’s Eating Me! Useless Passion, and Hemisphere Gimme.’ All wonderful movie titles from the fall of 1967, and now I pass them on to all filmmakers to use.” “Meanwhile, I worked with Tuli and Ken on a film script,” he continues. “I was interested in somehow linking it to the Eleusinian Mysteries, those ancient myths about the goddess Demeter and her search for her daughter, Persephone, seized and taken to the underground by the god Ploutos. I intently studied C. Kerényi’s very scholarly Eleusis—Archetypal Image of Mother and Daughter and George Mylonas’s equally scholarly Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries. Both books rekindled my thirst for scholarly pursuits. We also had brainstorm sessions on western themes. Shirley Clarke tried to raise money. We met with potential money source Dan Selznick at Shirley’s pad at the Chelsea. For almost any film project there’s a treatment prepared. I assigned myself to come up with a one-page treatment, starring William Burroughs, LeRoi Jones (prior to becoming Amiri Baraka), Allen Ginsberg, and, of course, The Fugs. I liked the idea of presenting a new religion called ‘Rodney.’ For his part Weaver brought in ideas of adding western themes, so for a while our film had the general title of Badass. Finally we had around 150 pages of ideas, scene descriptions, songs, vignettes, and the like. What I needed were a few weeks of calm in our groovy marble-fireplaced floor-through on Avenue A to type a final version. But that was not to be. We were wiggling in the space-time continuum, and the continuum was itself wiggling in wild whirls and moiré patterns of Bacchus and the ole Beatnik sense of Gone!”
Wednesday, September 6 - Thursday, September 7, 1967: Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
Friday, September 8 - Saturday, September 9, 1967: Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, September 10, 1967: Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
Wednesday, September 13 - Thursday, September 14, 1967: Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
Friday, September 15 - Saturday, September 16, 1967: Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, September 17, 1967: Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
Monday, September 25, 1967
“I asked my friend famous fashion photographer Richard Avedon to design the album package for Tenderness Junction and to take pictures of Tuli, Ken, and me for the cover,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “He agreed, and we went to his studio for a photo session. He assigned the actual album design to a guy named Marvin Israel.” Actually the photos taken that day weren’t used for the album and Richard Avedon did a second shooting with the Fugs a couple of months later or so.
Friday, October 6 - Saturday, October 7, 1967: Northland Mummp, inside a converted quonset hut outside the Northland Shopping Center, just north of 8 Mile Road, between Northwestern Highway & Greenfield Road, Southfield, Oakland County, Michigan
Also on the bill: S.B.F. (6), Jagged Edge (7).
Sunday, October 15, 1967: ‘October Breakout,’ Village Theatre, 105 2nd Avenue at East 6th Street, East Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows, 3:00pm and 8:00pm, produced by Topic Magazine and United Jazz Workshops. Also on the bill (3:00pm show): Phil Ochs, Eric Andersen, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Paul Krassner, Archie Shepp Quartet, Jeremy & The Satyrs, Barbara Dane, Matt Jones, Burton Greene, and Bob Fass (MC). Also on the bill (8:00pm show): Richie Havens, Charlie Mingus, The Fugs, Tim Rose, Moondog & Strings, Paul Krassner, Joe Frazier, Paul Knopf, Bill Fredrick, Elaine White, and Bob Fass (MC).
Friday, October 20 - Saturday, October 21, 1967: Ambassador Theatre, 2454 18th Street and Columbia Road NW, Washington D.C.
“The Fugs flew down to Washington on Friday, October 20, to perform at a psychedelic theater Friday and Saturday evenings,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “Shirley Clarke and Barbara Rubin filmed the arrival of our plane at the airport.” By the way, Tuli Kupferberg missed the Saturday night show because he was among those hundreds who were arrested during ‘The Exorcism and Levitation of the Pentagon’ earlier that day.
Saturday, October 21, 1967: ‘The Exorcism and Levitation of the Pentagon - The Pentagon Is Rising,’ flatbed truck, The Pentagon parking lot, Richmond Highway / VA 110 at I-395, Arlington County, Virginia
“[Shirley] Clarke also filmed the Exorcism. She was on the flatbed truck parked in the Pentagon parking lot, where we chanted, ‘Out, Demons, Out!,’” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “Fellow filmmaker and magician Kenneth Anger set up a magic ritual underneath the flatbed truck.” “There were at least 200,000 demonstrators who marched across the Memorial Bridge from the Lincoln Memorial, as well as a flatbed truck containing a generator, a sound system, The Fugs, and a group of San Francisco Diggers (including Michael Bowen), plus filmmakers Shirley Clark, Barbara Rubin, and Miriam Sanders (magician/filmmaker Kenneth Anger also was there) to exorcise the Pentagon,” he continues. “Anger claimed he had buried something magical inside the Pentagon days previous. Tuli Kupferberg and I had paid for, out of our earnings that weekend from The Fugs’ appearance at a psychedelic venue in DC, the rental of the flatbed truck, the generator, and the microphones and speakers through which to intone our Exorcism ritual. We positioned ourselves on the edge of a parking lot a few hundred feet from our target, while tens of thousands of marchers walked past, and I intoned a singsong litany of Exorcism after which we all began to chant, ‘Out, Demons, Out!’ over and over for about fifteen minutes. Rubin and Clarke filmed the chanting, while Anger positioned himself beneath the truck and performed his own ritual of exorcism. It was quite an afternoon. (Thanks to Bob Fass of WBAIFM in New York City, a tape of our Exorcism survived [we put a good part of it on Tenderness Junction].) Up near the Pentagon itself the 200,000 assembled and 250 were arrested, including Norman Mailer and Dave Dellinger. I stood up at the microphone on the flatbed truck at the Pentagon and began to chant: In the name of the Amulets of Touching, Seeing, Groping, Hearing and Loving we call upon the powers of the Cosmos to protect our ceremonies. In the name of Zeus, in the name of Anubis, God of the Dead, in the name of all those killed for causes they do not comprehend—in the names of the lives of the dead soldiers in Vietnam who were killed because of a Bad Karma, in the name of Sea-borne Aphrodite, in the name of the Magna Mater Deum Idea, in the name of Dionysus, Zagreus, Jesus, Iao Sabaoth, Yahweh the Unnameable, the Quintessential Finality, the Zoroastrian Fire, in the name of Hermes, in the name of the Beak of Thoth, in the name of the Scarab, in the name of the Tyrone Power Pound-Cake Society in the Sky, in the name of Ra, Osiris, Horus, Nephthys, Isis, Harpocrates, in the name of the mouth of the Ouroboros, we call upon the Spirits to Raise the Pentagon from its Destiny and Preserve it. In the naaaaame—in all the names! Out, Demons, out! Out, Demons, out! Demon out! Out, Demons, out! Out, Demons, out! Out, Demons, out! Out, Demons, out! Out, Demons, out! Out, Demons, out! Out, Demons, out! Out, Demons, out! Out, Demons, out! Out, Demons, out! Out, Demons, out! Out, Demons, out! Out! Out! Out! Out! Out! Out, Demons, out! For the first time in the history of the Pentagon, there will be a grope-in within a hundred feet of this place. Seminal Culmination in the spirit of Peace and Brotherhood. A real Grope for Peace. All of you who want to protect this rite of love may form a circle of protection around the lovers. Circle of Protection! These are the Magic Eyes of Victory! Victory for Peace. Money made the Pentagon, melt it! Money made the Pentagon. . . . In the name of the generative powers of Priapus, in the name of Ourouriouth Iao Sabaoth Ereschi-gal, we call upon the malevolent Demons of the Pentagon to rid themselves of the Cancerous Tumorous War-Death. . . . Every Pentagon general lying alone at night with a tortured psyche—Out Demons, out! Out Demons, out! Out, Demons, out! Out, Demons, out! Out, Demons, out! Out, Deeeeemoooon! Out, Deeeeeemooon! Out, Demons, out! Out, Demons, out! Out, Demons, out! Out, Demons, out! Out, Demons, out! Out, Demons, out! In the name of the Most Sacred of Names, Out, Demons, out! Out, Demons, out! Out, Demons, out! I spotted Kenneth Anger. He was being hissily dismissive of Shirley Clarke, who was filming the Exorcism. ‘Our magic is stronger than yours, Kenneth,’ I chanted at him through the microphone. A reporter for Newsweek peered under the flatbed truck, where Anger was burning a sacred card surrounded, it looked like, by a pentagonshaped angularity of pieces of wood. He, too, received a hiss from Anger. After the conclusion of the Exhortation and Levitation of the Pentagon, we walked over to the big demonstration. Some of us were carrying the daisies we’d purchased for the flyover and daisy tossdown that had been thwarted at the airport. Soldiers with fixed bayonets stood in rows guarding the entrance to the Pentagon, and a few of us stuck the ends of the daisies into the rifle barrels of the nervous young troops. Tuli missed the show at the Ambassador Theater that night in DC because he was among those hundreds who were arrested. It was at this demonstration, I’ve read, that an upset Lyndon Johnson first heard the kids chant, ‘Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?’ It was a famous thing we did, and people praised us for our audacity, yet the Vietnam War went on for another seven years. So much for ‘Out, Demons, Out!’ I sometimes tell interviewers that, yes, we DID elevate the Pentagon from its pediments, but we neglected to rotate it, and so the war continued.”
Late October 1967
Geoff Outlaw left the Fugs and was replaced on bass by Charles Larkey, and then the band added another guitarist named Ken Pine. “I adjusted the band that fall,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography, “adding a young bass player from New Jersey, Charles Larkey, who had been in the Myddle Class, a band managed by writer Al Aronowitz. Also joining The Fugs was a brilliant guitarist named Ken Pine, also from New Jersey, who had been a member of The Ragamuffins, a band led by singer/songwriter Tom Pacheco. It was a lineup that played well together—very well.”
THE FUGS #27 (LATE OCTOBER 1967 - FEBRUARY 1968)
1) Ed Sanders
2) Tuli Kupferberg
3) Ken Weaver
4) Danny ‘Kootch’ Kortchmar
5) Charles ‘Charlie’ Larkey bass
6) Kenneth ‘Ken’ Pine vocals, organ, guitar, mouth harp, oscillator
+
8) Allan ‘Jake’ Jacobs (as guest on January 22-28, 1968)
1) Ed Sanders
2) Tuli Kupferberg
3) Ken Weaver
4) Danny ‘Kootch’ Kortchmar
5) Charles ‘Charlie’ Larkey bass
6) Kenneth ‘Ken’ Pine vocals, organ, guitar, mouth harp, oscillator
+
8) Allan ‘Jake’ Jacobs (as guest on January 22-28, 1968)
November 1967 (?): Impact Sound Studios, 225 West 65th Street, Upper West Side, Manhattan, New York City, New York
The Fugs recorded their fourth album ‘Tenderness Junction.’ “I insisted that we record again under the creative graces of Richard Alderson,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “I decided to record all future music projects, if at all possible, with Alderson. He had the touch and the skills to bring out the best in a session. We began recording what would be Tenderness Junction in the late fall, and we more or less kept recording constantly with Alderson, through It Crawled into My Hand, Honest, until the early fall of 1968. We did some research on why we had been thrown off Atlantic, and we were told by Albert Grossman that Warner Brothers was negotiating to purchase Atlantic and the pooh-bahs at Atlantic were afraid having The Fugs aboard would lower the selling price. Learning that, we surged forward and opened negotiations with Warner Brothers, and Reprise signed us! Heh Heh Heh. There was a slight consolation in being signed by the company that was purchasing the company that had tossed us. Mo Ostin, the goodwilled president of Reprise Records, told me that before Reprise could sign The Fugs, he played the Atlantic album tape to label founder Frank Sinatra. He, to our lasting gratitude, okayed the deal! He said, ‘I guess you know what you’re doing.’ New York, New York! At last we were back on a major label, although our managers insisted we re-record the entire abandoned Atlantic album, so the final four months of’67 were a whirl.” “I turned to ultracreative Richard Alderson to save The Fugs’ recording career from careening down into atonal masochism, angst, metaphysical distress, and failure,” also recalls Sanders. “As I indicated, our managers wanted me to record the entire album over—something about threats from the earlier engineer, Huston, to sue over production rights. I resisted redoing the album entirely new but compromised. I added and subtracted. I kept ‘Aphrodite Mass,’ ‘Knock Knock,’ ‘Hare Krishna,’ ‘Wet Dream,’ ‘Dover Beach,’ and ‘Fingers of the Sun.’ And I added a bunch of new material, such as ‘War Song,’ which we created in the studio, to make the Reprise album substantially different from the Atlantic one. The great Bob Fass of WBAI gave us a copy of ‘Exorcising the Evil Spirits from the Pentagon,’ to which we overdubbed chants of ‘Out, demons, out.’ In addition we added Tuli’s excellent tune, ‘The Garden Is Open,’ [with Danny Kootch on violin] while taking out ‘Coca Cola Douche,’ ‘Carpe Diem,’ and ‘Nameless Voices Crying for Kindness.’ It was a good album. Too bad it couldn’t have come out in the spring of 1967.” “Kootch sang for me a tune called ‘Steamroller’ and suggested we place it on what would be called Tenderness Junction,” continues Sanders. “It was the following set of lyrics that turned me off to the tune: Now, I’m a napalm bomb, baby / Just guaranteed to blow your mind / Yeah, I’m a napalm bomb for you, baby / Oh, guaranteed, just guaranteed to blow your mind. I was a bit horrified, knowing too well what napalm was doing to the scorched backs of Vietnamese villagers fleeing their villages, so I gently turned it down, without really explaining to Kootch. Just over a year later Kootch’s coplayer in the Flying Machine, James Taylor, put ‘Steamroller’ on his megaselling album Sweet Baby James.” “We had lost a crucial year; we should have had an album out in the Year of Love to join Sgt. Pepper, Light My Fire, Somebody to Love, and all the other melodies of be-in,” concludes Sanders. “Our second album had made it onto the charts, and there was no reason the next album couldn’t have done so if it had come out, say, a few weeks after I was on the cover of Life magazine. It was the year in which we were the hottest. In rock-and-rock chronology it was about ten years! I wanted to do a great album. I felt we had it in us. And so almost immediately we started work on the album that would become It Crawled into My Hand, Honest.”
Friday, November 3 - Saturday, November 4, 1967: La Cave, 10615 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, Cuyahoga County, Ohio
“It was our first visit back to d. a. levy’s home city since the benefit for him, with Allen Ginsberg, back in May,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “Le Cave [sic] was packed; every table was filled. levy attended one of the concerts. Backstage at Le Cave [sic] Ken Weaver offered a reporter covering the gig for a local newspaper a hit on his rum and coke. ‘Have some,’ he said. ‘Drink it in remembrance of me.’ The reporter lifted the glass to his lips, and, as he reported, everybody in the back room cheered. ‘You’ve just consumed 2000 micrograms of LSD,’ Weaver informed me. Fugs co-founder Ed Sanders didn’t offer much help when I asked him, in desperation, how an acid-user could avoid having a ‘bad trip.’ ‘My advice is always carry in your billfold polaroid pictures of those with whom you copulate.’ Before I could establish to my satisfaction whether or not these psychedelic song-wailers had really impregnated my mind with a hallucinogenic, they ran off to begin their second set. The reporter sat and listened to our singing. He noted: A thousand colors began to flash. The music sounded distorted. My skin was getting wet and clammy. Then I caught sight of someone manipulating switches in a light booth, discovered that I was sitting on a beer-soaked chair, and that the music—that god-awful wild music—was SUPPOSED to be that way. As an electric guitar squealed and groaned at the hands of a musical sadist, d. a. levy appeared out of nowhere and nudged me in the arm. ‘Great, huh?’ he said, nodding his approval. I nodded back. Who needs LSD, I thought, when you’ve got the Fugs? No doubt we felt it hilarious to josh and kid the reporter about LSD in his rum and coke. I wouldn’t think it so funny at a gig at the same club in 1968 when bikers actually did spike my backstage drink with STP.”
November 1967: unknown venue, Cornell University campus, Ithaca, Tompkins County, New York
“The following week [after La Cave] we did a gig at Cornell University in Ithaca,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography.
Friday, November 24 - Saturday, November 25, 1967: Grande Ballroom, 8952 Grand River at Beverly, 1 Block South of Joy Road, Detroit, Wayne County, Michigan
Also on the bill: Gang (24), Ashmollyan Quintet (24), MC-5 (25). These shows were presented by ‘Uncle Russ’ Gibb.
Sunday, November 26, 1967: ‘John Sinclair Defense Fund Benefit,’ Grande Ballroom, 8952 Grand River at Beverly, 1 Block South of Joy Road, Detroit, Wayne County, Michigan
Also on the bill: MC-5, Billy C. & The Sunshine. One show, from 6:00pm to 10:00pm.
December 1967: Crystal Ballroom, 406 Southwest 14th Avenue at 1332 West Burnside Street, Portland, Multnomah County, Oregon
Thursday, December 21, 1967: Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
Friday, December 22 - Saturday, December 23, 1967: Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, December 24, 1967: Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
Thursday, December 28, 1967: Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm.
Friday, December 29 - Saturday, December 30, 1967: Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Three shows a day, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, and 12 midnight.
Sunday, December 31, 1967: Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Two shows a day, 8:30pm and 10:30pm. “We recorded the final two nights [December 30-31], thanks to Richard Alderson, who brought in and set up recording equipment,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “We did our final performance at the Players Theatre on New Year’s Eve and closed a run of a year and a half (with time off for touring) and around seven hundred performances.”
December 1967 (?)
“As good as the current Fugs lineup was, Frank Zappa suggested we add to our lineup a young woman he’d dubbed Uncle Meat,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “He said she was very talented. She not only was performing with the Mothers of Invention at the Garrick Theater on Bleecker Street that year but also Frank Zappa let her open for them, performing her own songs accompanied by the piano. Her real name was Sandy Hurwitz. I met her and thought seriously about adding her to the band, but in my mind the current lineup was very strong, so I decided against it. That decision may have been a mistake; it would have been good to get a woman’s fine voice into the mix and to open up the variety of song themes for The Fugs.”
January 1968
The Fugs’ fourth album, ‘Tenderness Junction,’ was released in the US. “Eminent New York Times music critic Robert Shelton listened to Tenderness Junction,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography, “comparing it to the extremely successful Hair, which had opened back in late October [1967] at the Public Theater: We are predictably entering a new era in which the challenging cynicism that American youth had exercised toward all Establishment products and life-styles will be turned toward the popular-culture scene. When that day arrives, ‘Hair’ will get trimmed and The Fugs will be philosopher-kings. The musical show has simply borrowed the external trappings of The Fugs’ super-hippie outrages at convention and dull normality and turned it into a commercially acceptable cliché of musical and social inconsequence. The work of The Fugs is by no means of an even consistency. Heaven help the protest poets if they ever do get to be polished. But their latest album, Tenderness Junction (Reprise 6280), is their most musical work yet. After some false starts on Broadside and ESP, The Fugs are ready here to do battle in the commercial marketplace with their anticommercial rants, their satirical slashes that draw blood, their Lenny Bruce–isms that hit
the conventional middle-class right between its myopic, suburban eyes. The contrasts and comparisons between ‘Hair’ and The Fugs could make a long article but this is a record column merely calling attention to the sextet’s hymnology to an American cultural revolution on its best album yet.”
Early 1968
“I had an excellent idea early in 1968!,” exclaims Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “We’d record a Fugs single during a group parachute jump from a plane. Richard Alderson would join us, holding a tape recorder, which would be connected to me, Ken, and Tuli, each outfitted with broadcast mikes. We’d be in communication with Alderson by means of headphones. He’d count it off, and then we’d record! Tuli balked, so another good idea hit the basket.”
Saturday, January 20, 1968: Psychedelic Supermarket, 590 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, Suffolk County, Massachusetts
“It’s a place long since gone; it’s now, I’m told, a biomedical research facility for Boston University—in a way, it was a research facility in early ’68 also,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography.
Monday, January 22 - Saturday, January 27, 1968: The New Penelope, 378 Sherbrooke Street West, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
“I asked Jake Jacobs to rejoin us for the gigs,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “He had a beautiful voice. Few things are as thrilling as singing with another person whose voice interweaves with yours to form that mantram-seed cloth so cherished by the Muses of Singing. The Fugs drove to farmland outside Montreal in their psychedelic garb, rented snowmobiles, and raced crazily through the Montreal snow, howling and growling, in long curving arcs, for a couple of hours of peace.”
Sunday, January 28, 1968: The Trauma, 2121 Arch Street near Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Their former singer and guitarist Allan ‘Jake’ Jacobs played as guest with the Fugs tonight. “The place was so packed with half-clothed bodies we could barely get on stage,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography.
Friday, February 2 - Saturday, February 3, 1968: Family Dog, 1601 West Evans Street, Denver, Colorado (The Fugs cancelled)
The show was presented by Chet Helms’ Family Dog. Also on the bill: Leopold Fuchs. The Fugs cancelled both shows.
Saturday, February 3, 1968: Avalon Ballroom, 1268 Sutter Street at Van Ness Street, Polk Gulch, San Francisco, California
One show, from 9:00pm to 2:00am, presented by Chet Helms’ Family Dog. Also on the bill: The Sons Of Champlin (filled in for the 13th Floor Elevators), Mad River. Lights by Diogenes Lantern Works.
Early February 1968: ‘The Les Crane Show,’ TV Show, Los Angeles, California
“While The Fugs were in California, we appeared on the Les Crane television show,” confirms Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “Phil Ochs was in the audience, and we became friends, with many capers together over the years.”
Friday, February 9 - Saturday, February 10, 1968: Eagles Auditorium, 1416 Seventh Avenue at Union Street, Seattle, King County, Washington
Sunday, February 11, 1968: Earl Warren Show Grounds, 3400 Calle Real, Santa Barbara, California
Also on the bill: Eric Burdon and The Animals, Eire Apparent. Lights by Omega’s Eye. The show was promoted by Jim Salzer and 1907 people were in attendance. The Fugs were paid $1,500 for the gig, while Burdon and Eire Apparent were paid $3,000 total. “It was the first time I’d had my shirt torn off by fans. It wasn’t pleasant, youthful fingers grabbing the skin of my arms and back,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography.
February 1968
Danny Kootch left The Fugs and moved to Los Angeles to join the Clear Light (and later The City with Carole King). “Right around the time of the Avalon gigs our brilliant guitarist and violinist, Danny Kootch, master of the just-invented wah wah pedal, announced he was leaving The Fugs!,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “It was another huge hole to fill. He told me he was going to join a newly forming LA-based band, The City. Our bass player, Charlie Larkey, also announced he was leaving, though he would stay on through our upcoming Scandinavian tour in the spring. Kootch and Larkey were set to form a group with none other than famous songwriter Carole King!” Anyway, the Fugs replaced Kootch with a 2nd drummer named Bob Mason. “Before he left to join Carole King’s new group, Dan Kootch had strongly urged me to hire a second drummer, as Frank Zappa had done for the Mothers of Invention,” also recalls Sanders. “This created considerable dissension with our original percussionist, Ken Weaver, though it freed him to come frontstage more often to sing and perform his famous routines.”
THE FUGS #28 (FEBRUARY 1968 - JUNE ?, 1968)
1) Ed Sanders
2) Tuli Kupferberg
3) Ken Weaver
4) Charlie Larkey
5) Ken Pine
6) Bob Mason drums
Monday, February 19, 1968: Cinderella Ballroom, 2215 South Oneida Street, Appleton, Outagamie County, Wisconsin
“I took part in a panel discussion on the New Journalism at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire in late ’67,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “On hand to discuss the new techniques of presenting information were Jack Newfield, Richard Goldstein, Ellen Willis, Robert Christgau, and Paul Krassner. I told Newfield that The Fugs were going to give a concert in a few weeks in Appleton, Wisconsin, the hometown of Senator Joseph McCarthy, the famous right-wing Red-baiting politician who had wrecked careers through falsehoods. He was buried there. Jack Newfield suggested that we exorcise McCarthy’s grave. I thought it was a great idea and made preparations. Allen Ginsberg was also going to perform at the same venue in Appleton, and he agreed to help in the Exorcism. Our concert February 19 with Ginsberg was held at the Cindarella (sic) Ballroom in Appleton. It went smoothly, except at the intermission an officer with the local sheriff’s department came up to me backstage. He wasn’t happy. He said, ‘I don’t care what you sing, but if you jack off that microphone one more time, I’m going to arrest you.’”
Tuesday, February 20, 1968: ‘The exorcism of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s grave,’ St. Mary Cemetery, 2121 West Prospect Avenue, Appleton, Outagamie County, Wisconsin
“That night, and early in the morning, I prepared the Exorcism,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “A serious one, because if my hero Allen Ginsberg actually thought he could lecture the ghost (or the summoned apparition) of the Redbaiting senator for his homophobia, who was I not to pour all my energy into the project? So I actually wrote out a ceremony of Exorcism and Summoning. The next morning The Fugs and Ginsberg, plus maybe fifty to seventy-five friends, gathered at Senator McCarthy’s grave on a chilly winter hillock and performed the Exorcism, which enraged right-wing commentators. I chanted a singsong conjuration of deities and power words, similar to what I had done at the Pentagon Exorcism. With Allen commenting on the Great Red-baiter’s homophobia, he led forth with an invocation to bisexual Greek and Indian gods. We tried to be dignified and respectful.” “Allen recited a Hebrew prayer and an invocation to Shiva, and we recited the Prajnaparamita Sutra,” continues Sanders. “Then the entire crowd sang, ‘My Country ‘Tis of Thee’ and a few minutes of ‘Hare Krishna,’ after which I chanted the final words of Plato’s Republic in Greek. A young woman agreed to array herself atop the senator’s stone as an offering. We asked those present at the Exorcism to place a gift on McCarthy’s stone. I looked back as we left and saw a very interesting visual gestalt atop the granite: a bottle of Midol, a ticket to the movie The War Game, a Spring Mobilization Against the War leaflet, a stick of English Leather cologne, one stuffed parrot, one candy bar, a ChapStick, one dozen red roses, one dozen white geraniums, one dozen yellow geraniums, one ‘Get Fugged’ button, some coins, sugar wafers, coat buttons, and two seeds of marijuana. ‘So long, Joe,’ Tuli said as we walked down the hill. Right-wing radio man Paul Harvey growled enormously about the Exorcism on his show, just as right-wing columnist Jim Bishop had railed against the Marijuana Newsletter from Peace Eye two years previous. These right-wing guys are always railing, wailing, and trailing after our scents.
Saturday, February 24, 1968: The Factory, 315 West Gorham Street, downtown Madison, Dane County, Wisconsin
Tuesday, February 27, 1968: outside the front gates, S.U.N.Y. (State University of New York) campus, 100 Nicolls Road, Stony Brook, Long Island, New York
“We were barely off the road and back on the Lower East Side when we were called to perform at dawn outside the front gates of the State University of New York at Stony Brook, out on Long Island,” recalld Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “It was a protest, sponsored by the just-founded Yippies, against a dawn raid by the police a few weeks previous to arrest marijuana smokers in the Stony Brook dorms. So we set up our amps and microphones in the chilly dawn of February 27 and sang. Also performing were Country Joe and the Fish, the Pageant Players, and a group called Soft White Underbelly. The Daily News ran a picture of me from the demonstration, in my chilly long gray coat, and our guitarist, Ken Pine, while the New York Post noted that “Timothy Leary predicts that 100,000 dancing, joyous yippies will swarm over Chicago’s airports so the Presidential plane cannot land at convention time.”
February - April 1968 (?): Impact Sound Studios, 225 West 65th Street, Upper West Side, Manhattan, New York City, New York
The Fugs recorded their fifth album, It Crawled into My Hand, Honest. “We were going to call it Rapture of the Deep, but finally settled on It Crawled into My Hand, Honest,” recalls Ed Sanders. “I worked very closely with Richard Alderson in producing it,” also recalls Sanders in his autobiography. “It cost a fortune in 1960s money, around $25,000, with weeks and weeks of recording at Impact Studios on West Sixty-fifth (soon to be torn down to make the Lincoln Center parking garage). I created a lengthy ‘Magic Rite,’ which we recorded. Ken Weaver wrote ‘Aztec Hymn,’ which we also recorded. And I worked with jazz composer Burton Greene on another long work, ‘Beautyway,’ based on a Navajo ceremony. We also recorded a song about poet William Blake walking naked with his wife, Catherine, while reading Milton’s Paradise Lost in their garden in 1793. None of these tunes would wind up on the album.” “Alderson brought us great singer and arranger Bob Dorough, who sang and arranged various tunes for It Crawled, such as ‘Marijuana,’ ‘Johnny Pissoff Meets the Red Angel,’ ‘Ramses the 2nd Is Dead, My Love,’ and ‘Life Is Strange,’” he continues. “Alderson also brought aboard Warren Smith to arrange “When the Mode of the Music Changes.’” “For back-up harmonies, we used some fine singers who had worked as Harry Belafonte's harmonists,” concludes Sanders. “You can hear them, say, on ‘Wide, Wide River,’ and ‘When the Mode of the Music Changes,’”
Wednesday, March 6, 1968: ‘Spock’s Flocks Rock - Peace Music - War Resistors Benefit,’ Anderson Theatre, 66 2nd Avenue, b/w East 3rd and 4th Street, East Village, Lower Manhattan, New York City, New York
One show, started at 8:00pm. Also on the bill: Country Joe and The Fish, Rhinoceros, Bob Fass, Paul Krassner. Lights by Pablo. “I wrote a new song for the concert, a country and western satire titled ‘I Cried When I Came in Your Best Friend’s Mouth,’” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “I could hear the gasps from the front rows of the Anderson Theater as we sailed through the tune. It was the only ditty in the history of The Fugs that any band member objected to, so I dropped it from the repertoire. A young rock photographer named Elliot Landy was just beginning his career. One of his first concerts was The Fugs/Country Joe gig at the Anderson. This Landy photo of The Fugs on the Anderson Theater stage captured marvelously the grooviness of the stage ambience during those times.”
Saturday, March 16, 1968: Alumnae Hall, Pembroke College campus, 194 Meeting Street, Providence, Rhode Island
Friday, March 29 - Saturday, March 30, 1968: Grande Ballroom, 8952 Grand River at Beverly, 1 Block South of Joy Road, Detroit, Wayne County, Michigan
Also on the bill: Sly and The Family Stone (29-30), MC-5 (29), The Psychedelic Stooges (30). These shows were presented by ‘Uncle Russ’ Gibb. “There was an opening act I’d never heard of, Sly and the Family Stone, who performed just before The Fugs,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “ Sly and the Family Stone proceeded to arouse the audience to incredibly high ecstasy, leaving everyone limp. It was a Blowout by Sly so that when The Fugs went on, it was impossible for us to rouse the audience back to the Sly Frenzy. I vowed to try never to get caught in the ‘Blown away by Sly’ mode ever again.”
Friday, April 5, 1968: ‘Arts Festival,’ Wilson Auditorium, University of Cincinnati campus, Clifton Avenue, Cincinnati, Hamilton Country, Ohio
“For a city that later persecuted photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, there was a glut of fun in Cincinnati,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “For instance, a party in our motel where a Fug (not I!) frolicked with a fan, after which they watched a Mexican vampire movie while his toe was moving gently in and out of the entrance of Venus.”
Saturday, April 6, 1968: Family Dog, 1601 West Evans Street, Denver, Colorado
Unauthorised use of the Family Dog logo, not a Chet Helms’ Family Dog promoted show.
Friday, April 12 - Sunday, April 14, 1968: Avalon Ballroom, 1268 Sutter Street at Van Ness Street, Polk Gulch, San Francisco, California
Those shows were presented by Chet Helms’ Family Dog. Also on the bill: Ace of Cups, Allmen Joy. “We stayed in San Francisco until April 17, with a few extra days to party,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “My mentor Charles Olson was in town for two weeks (he had a gig to experiment with other poets in the new medium of video) and staying with editor/ publisher Don Allen on the pullout sofa in his apartment on Jones Street. One morning I visited Janis Joplin. I told her the great poet Charles Olson was in town and would she like to meet him? I thought maybe Olson could write some songs for her, and, well, both were single and maybe there could be some eros between bard and blues. We went to a restaurant in Chinatown, and because Don Allen was the famous editor of New American Poets and the Evergreen Review, the party was paid for by Grove Press! Afterward we crowded into a booth at Gino and Carlo’s in North Beach. Olson was talking about Sutter’s Mill, and the word ‘Donner Party’ entered the quick flow of his words. Around then Janis went to the back to shoot pool, and my plans for a blues/bard romance were racked up on the green.”
Friday, April 19 - Saturday, April 20, 1968: The Cheetah, 1 Navy Street, Santa Monica (actually just over the line in Venice Beach), Los Angeles County, California
Also on the bill: Collectors, Genesis. “On April 17 The Fugs flew to Los Angeles and stayed once again at Sandy Koufax’s Tropicana at 8585 Santa Monica Boulevard, just a few blocksfrom the Troubador bar,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “During our two weeks in LA jukeboxes everywhere were singing out with the seething/soothing of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Suzanne.’ We performed on April 19 and 20 at the Cheetah, a place built on piers at the beach in Venice. It was like playing Coney Island. There seemed to be a glut of bikers backstage, some of them Straight Satans, who lived nearby. I had no idea that a couple of them would become involved in the Manson family at the Spahn Movie Ranch.”
April ??, 1968
“I used to take a cab over the powdered granite hills and down into the San Fernando Valley to Burbank to visit Warner/Reprise, The Fugs’ recording label,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “Fresh in my mind was all the work we did trying to do a film with Shirley Clarke and Barbara Rubin. And, of course, my career as an underground filmster even though my footage had been stolen by the police. I’d talked with people at Reprise about a movie idea I had starring Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. They’d be marooned together on a Mississippi riverboat in a flood. They’d be romantically involved, as they say, and they’d sing together. It was a good idea. Just the concept of Janis and Jimi singing together, even their harmonies woven together or maybe in call and response with Jimi’s genius guitar, would have been a marvel. I could hear her voice and his guitar and voice make hieroglyphics in my Egyptian-sensitive mind. At the Warner Brothers complex I was introduced to Ted Ashley of the Ashley Famous Agency. I ran down my idea of a Hendrix/Joplin riverboat film project. I got a call when The Fugs returned to New York. The agency wanted to sponsor it! I’d get my own office and secretary, but I’d have to move to LA. I probably should have done it, but, well, I was working hard on the new album at Alderson’s studio, plus I’d just reopened Peace Eye on Avenue A, so I reluctantly turned the offer down.”
April ??, 1968
“We had a memorable photo shoot for our album cover at the Warner Brothers movie lot in Burbank,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “We had our pick of costumes from the Warner Brothers wardrobe department. We ordered anything we wanted from movies we’d seen. Larkey, for example, perhaps under the influence of Carole King, ordered the attire of a nineteenthcentury Viennese fop. Weaver was transformed into a horn-headed ninth-century berserker. Ronald Reagan was then the right-wing governor of California (and we would have sneered and bet big money in the spring of ’68 that he’d never be president), so I ordered Reagan’s old Gipper #32 football uniform from the Knute Rockne Story, a tuxedo from a Fred Astaire–Ginger Rogers movie, and an Errol Flynn D’Artagnon Renaissance puff-sleeved outfit with a sword. We went to some Warner Brothers sets. The place where the TV series F Troop was shot, with its famous falling tower, and the sets of Camelot, and, I think, the Alamo (the Mission church on the back cover of the album). Reprise supplied some limber-limbed damosels, who frolicked with us for the session, clad in scantness and breasts exposed in the F Troop air.”
Friday, April 26 - Saturday, April 28, 1968: The Kaleidoscope, 6230 Sunset Boulevard, downtown Hollywood, Los Angeles County, California
“We learned that the week of April 22 had been designated ‘D for Decency Week’ in Los Angeles by the LA County Board of Supervisors,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “We noted a groovy ‘Stamp Out Smut’ poster. We couldn’t let that pass by without some fun. We selected a supervisor named Warren Dorn for our focus. He had been particularly vehement against erotic literature. We were scheduled to play a large psychedelic club, with a rotating stage, called the Kaleidoscope the weekend of April 26–27. The press release from the Kaleidoscope was headlined: ‘FUGS PERFORM MAGIC RITE FOR WARREN DORN DURING DECENCY WEEK . . . The Fugs will lead a gathering of gropers, chanters, lovers and toe freaks in a magic ceremony to be performed in a 1938 Dodge, the back seat of which is an important symbol of the American sexual revolution. In the parking lot of the Kaleidoscope, where they are currently engaged, the Fugs will declare National Back Seat Boogie Week and will conduct a magic rite to sensually refreshen and testicularly juvenate Supervisor Warren Dorn.’” “The club had rented a searchlight the night of our rite, which beamed white tunnels of psychedelic allure up toward Aquarius,” he continues. “There was an anarcho-bacchic Goof Strut parade into the parking lot of the club behind a mint-condition ’38 Dodge (similar to a Kienholz work at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art). A woman volunteer in a green gown lay supine in the backseat holding a carrot, waiting to erotomotivate into the dreams and mind of Dorn and ball him. It had a kind of pizzazz—the visual of the woman in rustling green through the backseat window as we spread a line of cornmeal around the Dodge. Just as at the Pentagon and Senator McCarthy’s grave, I tried to give the rite my finest singsong C chord, chanting such sizzling lines as ‘I exorcise the circle in the name of the Divine Toe’ and The green-gowned deva then sucklicked the carrot in oneirophalloerotic mimesis as she was ‘telechanted’ into Dorn’s Decency Week dreams. Arise ! Arise! Eye of Horus! Arise Toe Freaks! Arise! Sir Francis Dashwood! Arise Tyrone Power! Arise! Arise! Spirits of heaven! Arise William Blake! Afterward I lead the crowd in a few minutes of ‘Ommmm,’ and then we sang ‘My Country ’Tis of Thee’ before retiring to the Tropicana to party. I was getting very tired of exorcisms and did no more after the carrot-licking woman in the green dress.” “Jim Morrison was backstage one night in his snakeskin pants, swigging from a Jim Beam bottle,” also recalls Sanders. “He was a bit too wasted to ask him to sing in Chicago. I had gone to Frank Zappa, and others including Janis, to try to get them to sing at the Festival of Life during the upcoming Democratic Convention in Chicago in August.” “Janis [Joplin] came to one of the gigs [probably April 28] and later visited one of The Fugs at the Tropicana,” he concludes. “At 2:00 AM she decided to take a swim. She was topless, and at first the place was desolate, but then, in minutes, the poolsides came awake! As if it were daytime, a dog walker arrived and stood by the bougainvillea near the pool. People were holding drinks and chatting with vigor. The front desk rang my room, ‘Mr. Sanders, I’m sorry, but The Fugs will have to leave if Miss Joplin continues to swim barebreasted.’”
Friday, May 3, 1968: Crystal Ballroom, 406 Southwest 14th Avenue at 1332 West Burnside Street, Portland, Multnomah County, Oregon
Also on the bill: Kaleidoscope. Lights by Dr P.H. Martin's Magic Medicine Show.
Saturday, May 4, 1968: The Lemon Tree, 3202 Jasper Road, 2 miles east of Springfield, Lane County, Oregon
Also on the bill: Kaleidoscope, Hammond Typewriter (canceled). “We played at a club called the Lemon Tree, located next to a beaver pond,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “Before the performance I walked out to water’s edge, where I experienced a great transmission of Peace. I had to go back in my mind to the lakes of my Missouri youth or to Elvis Presley’s rendition of ‘Peace in the Valley,’ which helped me through the grief from my mother’s death in ’57, to find such consolation as I had during those moments. The beaver pond by the Lemon Tree was the best time for me in ’68.”
Monday, May 6, 1968
“The Fugs, accompanied by my wife, Miriam, went on a tour of Sweden and Denmark, May 6–13, where we performed with the bands Ten Years After and Fleetwood Mac,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “Fleetwood, which later filled hockey arenas, was our opening act. Monday, May 6, we did a tour-opening press conference at Jazz House, Montmartre in Copenhagen.”
Tuesday, May 7, 1968: ‘Ekstra Bladet Poll Koncert,’ Falkoner Centret, 9 Falkoner Allé DK-2000, Frederiksberg, Copenhagen, Denmark
Two shows. Also on the bill: Fleetwood Mac, Ten Years After, The Nice. “At the end of the shows the audience rhythmically clapped. I was so inexperienced that I didn’t realize people were clapping for encores!,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography.
Wednesday, May 8, 1968
“Wednesday, May 8, there was another Fugs press conference, this time in Gothenberg,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “Then, that night, a concert that was shocking to me was given by Bill Haley and the Comets at the big city auditorium. The crowd chanted, ‘Ve want Beill Haley! Ve want Beill Haley!’ I was amazed that Haley performed almost the SAME SET as when I had seen him at the Municipal Auditorium as a junior in high school in Kansas City in 1956! Rudy got up on his standup bass and rode it during ‘Rudy’s Rock,’ just as he had in KC!”
Thursday, May 9, 1968: Konserthallen, Liseberg Amusement Park, Gothenburg, Sweden
Two shows. Also on the bill: Fleetwood Mac, Ten Years After, The Nice.
Friday, May 10, 1968: ‘SWiiiSh - Underground: The Fugs,’ TV Show, Stockholm, Sweden
The Fugs talk and perform exclusively on this TV special aired on Swedish television on July 14, 1968. Later that day the band had a public meeting with American Draft resisters.
Friday, May 10, 1968: Folkets Hus, Kongresshallen, Stockholm, Sweden
Two shows, 7:00pm and 9:30pm. Also on the bill: Fleetwood Mac, Ten Years After, The Nice.
Saturday, May 11, 1968: unknown venue, Umeå University campus, Umeå, Västerbotten County, Sweden
Sunday, May 12, 1968: Studenterforeningen, Strandboulevarden 32, Copenhagen, Denmark
Monday, May 13, 1968
That day, before the below mentioned gig at the university, the Fugs visited a famous pornographic art show in Lund.
Monday, May 13, 1968: unknown venue, Lund University campus, Lund, Scania, Sweden
Two shows. “One tune from this [Scandinavian] tour, ‘The Swedish Nada,’ from our concert in Lund, is included on Fugs Live from the '60s,” recalls Ed Sanders.
Tuesday, May 14, 1968
The Fugs boarded their SAS flight back to the United States.
May ??, 1968: Impact Sound Studios, 225 West 65th Street, Upper West Side, Manhattan, New York City, New York
“Right away [after the Scandinavian tour] I leaped back into sessions for the album,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “As usual I was making long lists of possible album titles. It got down to where the title was either Rapture of the Deep (Miriam’s idea) or It Crawled into My Hand, Honest. Producing the album was getting expensive. I didn’t like a number of the tunes we had recorded back in the early part of the year, and I had shifted directions toward more of a concept album. I wanted one whole side to run as a single flow without separations between numbers.”
Friday, May 31 - Saturday, June 1, 1968: Fillmore East, 105 2nd Avenue at East 6th Street, East Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Those shows were promoted by Bill Graham. Also on the bill: Moby Grape, Gary Burton Quartet. “I decided to record the gigs for a live album,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography, “so we hired Warren Smith to conduct an ensemble consisting of the regular Fugs (Weaver, Wolf [actually Larkey], Pine, Mason, Sanders, Kupferberg), with additional musicians, all of whom were conducted by Warren Smith. He was brilliantly arranging ‘When the Mode of the Music Changes’ and other pieces on the soon-to-be-released album. A few months later I carefully went through all the takes and selected the following flow of live tunes: Slum Goddess 3:10 Coca Cola Douche 2:50 How Sweet I Roamed 3:21 I Couldn’t Get High 4:08 Saran Wrap 3:45 I Want to Know 2:39 Homemade 5:18 Nothing 4:54 Supergirl 2:42. We recorded live at the Fillmore East, May 31 and June 1 : Ed Sanders: Vocals, routines Ken Weaver: Drums, vocals Tuli Kupferberg: Vocals, skits Kenny Pine: Lead guitar, vocals Bob Mason: Drums Charles Larkey: Bass Richard Tee: Organ Howard Johnson: Tuba, saxophone Carl Lynch: Guitar Julius Watkins: French horn Producer: Ed Sanders Orchestra leader: Warren Smith”
June ?, 1968
Charlie Larkey left the Fugs and moved to Los Angeles to join a newly formed band called The City with his former bandmate Danny Kortchmar and Carole King. The Fugs replaced him with a new bass player named Bill Wolf, “who brought us excellent playing, plus a fine harmony voice,” points out Ed Sanders in his autobiography.
THE FUGS #29 (JUNE ?, 1968 - APRIL 1969)
1) Ed Sanders
2) Tuli Kupferberg
3) Ken Weaver
4) Ken Pine
5) Bob Mason
6) Bill Wolf vocals, bass
Monday, June 10 - Sunday, June 16, 1968: Impact Sound Studios, 225 West 65th Street, Upper West Side, Manhattan, New York City, New York
The Fugs continued the recording of their fifth album, It Crawled into My Hand, Honest. “I wanted the second side of the record to be like a long collage,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “I was working with composer Burton Green on a long piece, with words, called ‘Beautyway,’ named after a Navajo ceremonial. We were recording the song, but it did not wind up on the album. I abandoned the long, complicated ‘Magic Rite’ that we had recorded early in the year because I was getting disgusted with the fake shortcuts promised by Mageia that substituted for real change. (I finally used a short snippet of it on the record—the ‘Irene (Peace)’ section at the end of side two.) And I also gave up a tune called ‘The Vision of William Blake’s Garden’ (a version of which can be heard on our CD Fugs Live from the Sixties, from our spring ’69 concert at Rice University). We’d planned to use Olson’s mantram ‘Plann’d in Creation / Arouse the Nation / Blood is the food of those gone Mad!’ as a chanted preamble to ‘The Vision.’”
July - Sunday, August 4, 1968: Impact Sound Studios, 225 West 65th Street, Upper West Side, Manhattan, New York City, New York
The Fugs ended the recording of their fifth album, It Crawled into My Hand, Honest. “On July 7 I took a bus from New York City to Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, where I was picked up by well-known composer Bo Dorough and went with him to his rural spread in Mt. Bethel,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “I brought with me my autoharp so that I could play some tunes I wanted him to arrange and perform on for the new Fugs album. Dorough back in ’62 had written a famous tune with Miles Davis called ‘Blue Xmas.’ Richard Alderson had recommended him. Dorough had coproduced an album by Spanky and Our Gang at Impact Sound in ’67. Dorough also had a remarkable singing voice, which reminded me of when I was a kid in Missouri and saw Hoagy Carmichael sing ‘Buttermilk Skies’ on television. Dorough prepared lead sheets and oversaw the recording of Tuli’s marvelous tune ‘Life Is Strange’ and my ‘Johnny Pissoff Meets the Red Angel.’ I also had the idea to combine a poem Tuli had written that listed a good number of different names for hashish/marijuana with a kind of Gregorian chant on the word ‘marijuana.’ Dorough jumped aboard this project with gusto. Dorough sang lead while performing a magnificent piano part on ‘Life Is Strange,’ and he did harmonies on ‘Johnny Pissoff.’ On ‘Marijuana’ Dorough outdid himself, leaving behind a deathless track.” “By late July/early August I was desperate to finish It Crawled into My Hand, Honest before the Chicago convention (because I thought I might be jailed, or worse) and before our upcoming European tour,” added Sanders. “I also was writing the liner notes and designing the foldout album.”
Thursday, July 25 - Saturday, July 27, 1968: Psychedelic Supermarket, 590 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, Suffolk County, Massachusetts
Tuesday, July 30 - Thursday, August 1, 1968: La Cave, 10615 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, Cuyahoga County, Ohio
“During the mornings of July 31 and August 1 I flew back to New York to mix the album at Alderson’s studio and then flew back later in the day to the gig in Cleveland,” also recalls Sanders. “On Wednesday, July 31, I went to Ivanhoe drafting supplies to get a drafting board and t-square, which I carried back on the plane to cut and paste the inner foldout sleeve of It Crawled. I also drew an ink glyph to use in the liner notes.” “Bard d. a. levy came to one of the gigs in Cleveland,” concludes Sanders. “I tried to interest him in coming to Chicago. (He was one I’d asked to send a mantram to chant in the streets.) He’d been publishing the Buddhist Third Class Junkmail Oracle, a mix of his brilliant collages, his poems, and the usual look of a tabloid underground paper. He’d just printed his August issue, in which he announced he was giving the publication up because of no financial support from the community.”
Friday, August 2 - Sunday, August 4, 1968: Electric Theatre, 4812 North Clark Avenue, Chicago, Cook County, Illinois
“From Cleveland we flew to Chicago to play a psychedelic auditorium called the Electric Factory [sic],” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “I rushed back to New York City to do the final sequencing for the album, and then, at last, it was done! The mixed master reels and the boards containing the design were airmailed to Reprise Records in Burbank.”
Tuesday, August 13, 1968: ‘Free Fugs In Park,’ Tompkins Square Park, E 10th Street, Alphabet City, East Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
A free outdoor concert. “It was our annual concert in the park,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “We had a new tune, which we performed with straw hats and canes and delivered in a kind of Al Jolson watery-mouthed vocal, ‘Up Against the Wall, Motherfucker’ (borrowed from a famous Amiri Baraka poem). The tune also satirized the group called the Motherfuckers, whose leaflets I’d often printed gratis at Peace Eye, whose logo on their publications was UAW/MF. A young man named David Peel was in the audience. I don’t know for sure, but soon he was singing a song with a similar title, and it helped make him famous on an album for Elektra, later that very year, Have a Marijuana. Later Peel approached me to ask if he could put a medley of Fugs tunes on a recording or in his act. Didn’t say yes, didn’t say no. I wanted to hear first what he came up with.”
Friday, August 16 - Saturday, August 17, 1968: The Bank, 19840 South Hamilton Avenue, Torrance, Los Angeles County, California
Also on the bill: Mt. Rushmore. One show each day, started at 8:30pm. “The Fugs were in California during the several weeks leading to the Chicago demonstrations,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “The cab from LAX to the Tropicana Motel on Santa Monica Boulevard in those days cost $7.30. The Fugs played Friday and Saturday, August 15 and 16, at the Bank in nearby Torrance, California. It was one of the few times I performed barefoot. I was continuing my experiments in rinsing my Puritan heritage out of me by being the first performer on Warner/Reprise to dance barefoot. I did this during ‘Kill for Peace,’ wearing gold-flecked toenail polish, which Miriam had graciously painted on just before I got on the plane.”
Friday, August 23 - Sunday, August 25, 1968: The Cheetah, 1 Navy Street, Santa Monica (actually just over the line in Venice Beach), Los Angeles County, California (cancelled)
Also on the bill: Things To Come, The Zoo.
Early September 1968
The Fugs’ fifth album, ‘It Crawled into My Hand, Honest,’ was released in the US.
Monday, September 9 - Saturday, September 14, 1968: New Penelope Club, 378 Sherbrooke Street West, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
One show at 9:15pm from Monday to Thursday, and two shows at 8:30pm and 10:00pm on Friday and Saturday. “We flew to Montreal to play a week at a club called New Penelope,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “We also brought the Yippie candidate for president Pigasus, to the U.S. Embassy in Montreal, accompanied by a television crew from Canadian Broadcasting. I put out a press release at the time.”
Sunday, September 29, 1968: ‘Internationale Essener Songtage,’ Grugahalle, Messept. 2, Essen, West Germany
Also on the bill: Peter Brotzkmann, Cuby and The Blizzards, Family, Guru Guru Groove, Alexis Korner and his Blues Group, Kick Formation, David Peel, Tangerine Dream. Lights by Leisure Society. “And so Miriam and I and The Fugs flew to Europe for the second time this year, first to the Essen Song Festival, September 25–29, with Frank Zappa and the Mothers and many others,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “Once again we held a press conference with Pigasus, this one in the central square of Essen. The Fugs did a concert or two, appeared on a political panel, and then did what we hungered to do: tried to sneak into Czechoslovakia. We rented a car and drove toward Czechoslovakia—Ken Weaver, Miriam, myself, and Peter Edmiston, of Edmiston-Rothschild Management. We couldn’t go through East Germany, so we drove southwest into Bavaria to the Czech border. In a restaurant in Bavaria I wrote much of a song called ‘Jimmy Joe the Hippybilly Boy’ which I later recorded for my solo album Sanders Truckstop. It was potato-harvesting season, and we spotted big carts of potatoes in distant fields right at the border. We heard that at harvest farmworkers cross back and forth across the border along farm roads, so we thought we might be able to sneak along a potato lane, then streak to Prague. We had some vague concept of shooting an album cover lying down in front of the Soviet tanks and visiting the house of Franz Kafka, whose texts seemed keys to quelling the fear at the end of an endless year. We tried going in by one of the paved roads. Border guards were stopping even the milk trucks. While we waited, Miriam walked out into a field to pick some small light yellow wild violas next to the border guard. We pressed some little blue harebells, clover, and a few violas in a poetry book. The harebell-viola glyph is still resting in a bound copy of my book Peace Eye. Then we drove along the potato wagon border looking for a guardless path to Czechoslovakia. We thought we had found one. A few more yards and we’d have been on the way to Prague, but then we spotted a single guard with a machine gun hanging down his back off a shoulder strap. ‘Halten sie!’ he shouted, holding out his weapon, and then gave forth a stream of German ending with ‘demonstrazionen.’ Miriam was asleep beneath a blanket in our rented BMW, and the guard, when he pulled away the blanket, thought we were trying to smuggle her in! Thus came to closure our search for an album cover with Soviet tanks, and we drove back to Essen.”
Monday, September 30 , 1968
“On Monday, September 30, The Fugs flew to England for television and some concerts. That day we had a press reception at the Arts Laboratory on Drury Lane,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography.
Tuesday, October 1, 1968: ‘24 Hours,’ BBC-1 TV Show, Lime Grove Studios, Lime Grove Street, Shepherd’s Bush, London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, Greater London, England
The Fugs appeared on 24 Hours, a 30-minute, long-running, late evening, daily news magazine programme hosted by Cliff Michelmore and that aired live on BBC-1 at 9:55pm. “Before filming, I received a note that the BBC producer was fairly eager to discuss our ‘programme content,’” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography.
Friday, October 4, 1968: ‘How It Is,’ BBC-1 TV Show, Lime Grove Studios, Lime Grove Street, Shepherd’s Bush, London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, Greater London, England
The show was hosted by Angela Huth, Richard Neville, Tony Palmer, and John Peel. The show was aired live every Friday on BBC-1 from 6:00pm to 6:40pm. Also appeared on this episode: The Spinners, Tim Buckley.
Friday, October 4, 1968: Middle Earth, Roundhouse, 100 Chalk Farm Road, London Borough of Camden, Greater London
Also on the bill: Spooky Tooth, Radha Krishna Temple. One show, from 10:30pm ‘till dawn. “It was the last time I saw poet Harry Fainlight, who came to the gig,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “The next day we rented a double-decker bus for a trip to Stonehenge. We packed it full of friends and were ready to head for that remarkable circle of stones, but there was a bit of a delay because a poet friend, Michael Horowitz, had a toothache, so we took the bus to his dentist until Michael was repaired.”
Sunday, October 6, 1968: Massey Hall, 178 Victoria Street, Garden District, downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada
“We flew back to New York and then almost at once to Toronto for an October 7 [sic] concert at Massey Hall, one of the best Fugs concerts of ’68, but I’ve never seen a tape of it in the bootleg catalogs,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “We were guests at the Rochdale Commune. It was the last time in the ’60s that I wasn’t unhappy or dissatisfied after a Fugs gig.”
Friday, November 29 - Saturday, November 30, 1968: Kaleidoscope, 4445 Main Street, Manayunk, Northwest Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Also on the bill: Mandrake Memorial. “The Fugs played the Kaleidoscope Theater at 4445 Main Street in Philadelphia for $2,700
on November 29–30. The place was outfitted with hundreds of sofas upon which the audience toked and erotically disported during our gig,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography.
Thursday, December 26 - Friday, December 27, 1968: La Cave, 10615 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, Cuyahoga County, Ohio
“Some bikers came backstage at Le Cave and spiked our drinks, maybe with STP,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “Whatever it was, it was another one of those Ultimate Spinach trips, which I had to experience in an orange-and-green-hued Howard Johnson motel. I called Miriam to have her talk me down from the spinach.”
Saturday, December 28, 1968: Aragon Ballroom, 1106 Lawrence Avenue, Chicago, Cook County, Illinois
Also on the bill: Wilson Pickett, Baby Huey and The Babysitters. “Things didn’t turn out as well for our bass player, who was almost paralyzed the next day when we had to take the train to Chicago because a snowstorm had closed the airport,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “At the Chicago gig we told him just to hold his bass and not to try to play. (A few days later he was hauled in at JFK, trying to get back to London, convinced he was Paul McCartney! He had a beautiful voice, and he soon returned from the Visionary Other and stayed with us for the remaining months of the 1960s Fugs.) Our gig in Chicago was at the Aragon Ballroom with Wilson Pickett! We couldn’t wait to hear him sing his hits ‘In the Midnight Hour’ and ‘Mustang Sally.’ Unfortunately Pickett was kept by the snow from coming to Chicago, and The Fugs, one of our players in a stupor, faced a rather upset audience, whose members not only were told the lead act wasn’t there, but also they weren’t getting their money back. It was in this context that when I called Mayor Richard Daley a motherfucker, the restless crowd of 5,000 didn’t take it well. A woman directly in front of me tossed a container of Coca-Cola in my face, and we fled to our hotel, the fancy Astor Towers, to party.”
Monday, December 30, 1968: Grande Ballroom, 8952 Grand River at Beverly, 1 Block South of Joy Road, Detroit, Wayne County, Michigan
Also on the bill: Popcorn Blizzard. The show were presented by ‘Uncle Russ’ Gibb.
January (?) - April 1969: Apostolic Studios, 53 E 10th Street, East Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
The Fugs recorded their sixth album, The Belle of Avenue A. “Our longtime producer, Richard Alderson, who had coproduced Tenderness Junction and It Crawled into My Hand, Honest (our Reprise albums), had gone off to study Mayan music in the Yucatan and had closed his studio,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “Frank Zappa had been doing sessions at Apostolic Studio on East Tenth Street, which was outfitted by its owner, John Townley, with the scene’s first twelve-track recording equipment. Townley had been in the Night Owl house band, the Magicians, with future Fug Jake Jacobs. Our engineer at Apostolic was David Baker, a veteran of the civil rights movement who had done field recording in the South during Freedom Summer in 1964. I ran an ad in the Village Voice looking for a guitarist to help me work up songs. A young man named Dan Hamburg answered, and we began a fruitful collaboration, starting with The Belle of Avenue A for The Fugs and then my solo albums for Reprise, Sanders Truckstop, and Beer Cans on the Moon. Hamburg had just been fired as a caseworker at a foster care agency ‘because,’ as he later told me, ‘I was complaining about how I thought that too many ‘difficult’ kids in my caseload were being summarily diagnosed with ‘schizophrenia-undifferentiated type,’ ejected from foster homes, and warehoused in Creedmore State Hospital, where they were zombified with thorazine and stellazine.’ Later Hamburg spent thirtyone years teaching in New York’s inner-city junior high schools. But in 1969 he was all creativity and élan, and he helped us immensely. Hamburg played guitar on Tuli’s ‘Bum’s Song’ and on my tunes ‘The Belle of Avenue A,’ ‘Queen of the Nile,’ and ‘Yodeling Yippie.’ The Fugs performing ensemble—Ken Pine on guitar, Bob Mason on drums, and Bill Wolf on bass—recorded Weaver’s two tunes, ‘Dust Devil’ and ‘Four Minutes to Twelve’; ‘Chicago’ by Country Joe McDonald and myself; ‘Mr. Mack’; and Tuli’s ‘Flower Children’ and ‘Children of the Dream.’” “For much of 1969 I kept recording at Apostolic Studio, with outstanding engineer David Baker,” contniues Sanders. “I mixed and sequenced Golden Filth, The Fugs live at the Fillmore East, which we had recorded the weekend before RFK’s assassination. I also recorded Lionel Goldbart’s album God Loves Rock and Roll there and my own solo album Sanders Truckstop. Later in the year I turned Allen Ginsberg onto Apostolic, where he recorded his album of his musical settings of William Blake poems.”
Wednesday, January 8, 1969: ‘New York Free Press New Year’s Benefit,’ Fillmore East, 105 2nd Avenue at East 6th Street, East Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
One show, started at 8:30pm. Also on the bill: Norman Mailer, Charlie Mingus Jams with Jeremy Steig and David Amram, Nico, Insect Trust (or Silver Apples), John Hammond. Lights by Joshua Light Show. “I was the master of ceremonies,” points out Ed Sanders. “When it came time to introduce Charles Mingus, I shouted into the microphone, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, Charlie Mingus!’ Big applause. He didn’t come on. I trotted off stage to find out why. He was glowering and sulky. He said, ‘Young man, you go back out there and introduce me as CHARLES! Mingus.’ Yes, sir. So I went back before the microphone, and said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, our next performer is CHARLES Mingus.’
Friday, February 7, 1969: Stanley Theatre, 237 7th Street, Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania
Also on the bill: Velvet Underground, Grateful Dead. “We used the Grateful Dead’s sound system, and I was determined that the words to Fugs tunes be heard, so I kissed the microphone very closely,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “There was a party at the Grateful Dead’s various rooms at the hotel afterward, although after a few initial elevators full of partyers, the hotel called a halt to further fans.”
Thursday, February 20, 1969: Rice Memorial Center, Rice University campus, 6100 Main Street, Houston, Harris County, Texas
“Luckily for us, the concert was recorded fairly well, and we have used various tunes from that reel-to-reel tape on several Fugs compilations,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “I included five tunes from this concert, including the never-before-released ‘Homage to Catherine and William Blake,’ in the Ace Records release, Fugs Live from the '60s,” also recalls Sanders.
Friday, February 21 - Saturday, February 22, 1969: Vulcan Gas Company, 316 Congress Avenue, Austin, Travis County, Texas
Also on the bill: Shiva’s Headband. “The gigs at the Vulcan Gas Works in Austin were the last shows of the 1960s Fugs,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “There wouldn’t be another one for over fifteen years. Ahh, I was so weary of it!”
The Fugs continued the recording of their fifth album, It Crawled into My Hand, Honest. “I wanted the second side of the record to be like a long collage,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “I was working with composer Burton Green on a long piece, with words, called ‘Beautyway,’ named after a Navajo ceremonial. We were recording the song, but it did not wind up on the album. I abandoned the long, complicated ‘Magic Rite’ that we had recorded early in the year because I was getting disgusted with the fake shortcuts promised by Mageia that substituted for real change. (I finally used a short snippet of it on the record—the ‘Irene (Peace)’ section at the end of side two.) And I also gave up a tune called ‘The Vision of William Blake’s Garden’ (a version of which can be heard on our CD Fugs Live from the Sixties, from our spring ’69 concert at Rice University). We’d planned to use Olson’s mantram ‘Plann’d in Creation / Arouse the Nation / Blood is the food of those gone Mad!’ as a chanted preamble to ‘The Vision.’”
July - Sunday, August 4, 1968: Impact Sound Studios, 225 West 65th Street, Upper West Side, Manhattan, New York City, New York
The Fugs ended the recording of their fifth album, It Crawled into My Hand, Honest. “On July 7 I took a bus from New York City to Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, where I was picked up by well-known composer Bo Dorough and went with him to his rural spread in Mt. Bethel,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “I brought with me my autoharp so that I could play some tunes I wanted him to arrange and perform on for the new Fugs album. Dorough back in ’62 had written a famous tune with Miles Davis called ‘Blue Xmas.’ Richard Alderson had recommended him. Dorough had coproduced an album by Spanky and Our Gang at Impact Sound in ’67. Dorough also had a remarkable singing voice, which reminded me of when I was a kid in Missouri and saw Hoagy Carmichael sing ‘Buttermilk Skies’ on television. Dorough prepared lead sheets and oversaw the recording of Tuli’s marvelous tune ‘Life Is Strange’ and my ‘Johnny Pissoff Meets the Red Angel.’ I also had the idea to combine a poem Tuli had written that listed a good number of different names for hashish/marijuana with a kind of Gregorian chant on the word ‘marijuana.’ Dorough jumped aboard this project with gusto. Dorough sang lead while performing a magnificent piano part on ‘Life Is Strange,’ and he did harmonies on ‘Johnny Pissoff.’ On ‘Marijuana’ Dorough outdid himself, leaving behind a deathless track.” “By late July/early August I was desperate to finish It Crawled into My Hand, Honest before the Chicago convention (because I thought I might be jailed, or worse) and before our upcoming European tour,” added Sanders. “I also was writing the liner notes and designing the foldout album.”
Thursday, July 25 - Saturday, July 27, 1968: Psychedelic Supermarket, 590 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, Suffolk County, Massachusetts
Tuesday, July 30 - Thursday, August 1, 1968: La Cave, 10615 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, Cuyahoga County, Ohio
“During the mornings of July 31 and August 1 I flew back to New York to mix the album at Alderson’s studio and then flew back later in the day to the gig in Cleveland,” also recalls Sanders. “On Wednesday, July 31, I went to Ivanhoe drafting supplies to get a drafting board and t-square, which I carried back on the plane to cut and paste the inner foldout sleeve of It Crawled. I also drew an ink glyph to use in the liner notes.” “Bard d. a. levy came to one of the gigs in Cleveland,” concludes Sanders. “I tried to interest him in coming to Chicago. (He was one I’d asked to send a mantram to chant in the streets.) He’d been publishing the Buddhist Third Class Junkmail Oracle, a mix of his brilliant collages, his poems, and the usual look of a tabloid underground paper. He’d just printed his August issue, in which he announced he was giving the publication up because of no financial support from the community.”
Friday, August 2 - Sunday, August 4, 1968: Electric Theatre, 4812 North Clark Avenue, Chicago, Cook County, Illinois
“From Cleveland we flew to Chicago to play a psychedelic auditorium called the Electric Factory [sic],” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “I rushed back to New York City to do the final sequencing for the album, and then, at last, it was done! The mixed master reels and the boards containing the design were airmailed to Reprise Records in Burbank.”
Tuesday, August 13, 1968: ‘Free Fugs In Park,’ Tompkins Square Park, E 10th Street, Alphabet City, East Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
A free outdoor concert. “It was our annual concert in the park,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “We had a new tune, which we performed with straw hats and canes and delivered in a kind of Al Jolson watery-mouthed vocal, ‘Up Against the Wall, Motherfucker’ (borrowed from a famous Amiri Baraka poem). The tune also satirized the group called the Motherfuckers, whose leaflets I’d often printed gratis at Peace Eye, whose logo on their publications was UAW/MF. A young man named David Peel was in the audience. I don’t know for sure, but soon he was singing a song with a similar title, and it helped make him famous on an album for Elektra, later that very year, Have a Marijuana. Later Peel approached me to ask if he could put a medley of Fugs tunes on a recording or in his act. Didn’t say yes, didn’t say no. I wanted to hear first what he came up with.”
Friday, August 16 - Saturday, August 17, 1968: The Bank, 19840 South Hamilton Avenue, Torrance, Los Angeles County, California
Also on the bill: Mt. Rushmore. One show each day, started at 8:30pm. “The Fugs were in California during the several weeks leading to the Chicago demonstrations,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “The cab from LAX to the Tropicana Motel on Santa Monica Boulevard in those days cost $7.30. The Fugs played Friday and Saturday, August 15 and 16, at the Bank in nearby Torrance, California. It was one of the few times I performed barefoot. I was continuing my experiments in rinsing my Puritan heritage out of me by being the first performer on Warner/Reprise to dance barefoot. I did this during ‘Kill for Peace,’ wearing gold-flecked toenail polish, which Miriam had graciously painted on just before I got on the plane.”
Friday, August 23 - Sunday, August 25, 1968: The Cheetah, 1 Navy Street, Santa Monica (actually just over the line in Venice Beach), Los Angeles County, California (cancelled)
Also on the bill: Things To Come, The Zoo.
Early September 1968
The Fugs’ fifth album, ‘It Crawled into My Hand, Honest,’ was released in the US.
Monday, September 9 - Saturday, September 14, 1968: New Penelope Club, 378 Sherbrooke Street West, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
One show at 9:15pm from Monday to Thursday, and two shows at 8:30pm and 10:00pm on Friday and Saturday. “We flew to Montreal to play a week at a club called New Penelope,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “We also brought the Yippie candidate for president Pigasus, to the U.S. Embassy in Montreal, accompanied by a television crew from Canadian Broadcasting. I put out a press release at the time.”
Sunday, September 29, 1968: ‘Internationale Essener Songtage,’ Grugahalle, Messept. 2, Essen, West Germany
Also on the bill: Peter Brotzkmann, Cuby and The Blizzards, Family, Guru Guru Groove, Alexis Korner and his Blues Group, Kick Formation, David Peel, Tangerine Dream. Lights by Leisure Society. “And so Miriam and I and The Fugs flew to Europe for the second time this year, first to the Essen Song Festival, September 25–29, with Frank Zappa and the Mothers and many others,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “Once again we held a press conference with Pigasus, this one in the central square of Essen. The Fugs did a concert or two, appeared on a political panel, and then did what we hungered to do: tried to sneak into Czechoslovakia. We rented a car and drove toward Czechoslovakia—Ken Weaver, Miriam, myself, and Peter Edmiston, of Edmiston-Rothschild Management. We couldn’t go through East Germany, so we drove southwest into Bavaria to the Czech border. In a restaurant in Bavaria I wrote much of a song called ‘Jimmy Joe the Hippybilly Boy’ which I later recorded for my solo album Sanders Truckstop. It was potato-harvesting season, and we spotted big carts of potatoes in distant fields right at the border. We heard that at harvest farmworkers cross back and forth across the border along farm roads, so we thought we might be able to sneak along a potato lane, then streak to Prague. We had some vague concept of shooting an album cover lying down in front of the Soviet tanks and visiting the house of Franz Kafka, whose texts seemed keys to quelling the fear at the end of an endless year. We tried going in by one of the paved roads. Border guards were stopping even the milk trucks. While we waited, Miriam walked out into a field to pick some small light yellow wild violas next to the border guard. We pressed some little blue harebells, clover, and a few violas in a poetry book. The harebell-viola glyph is still resting in a bound copy of my book Peace Eye. Then we drove along the potato wagon border looking for a guardless path to Czechoslovakia. We thought we had found one. A few more yards and we’d have been on the way to Prague, but then we spotted a single guard with a machine gun hanging down his back off a shoulder strap. ‘Halten sie!’ he shouted, holding out his weapon, and then gave forth a stream of German ending with ‘demonstrazionen.’ Miriam was asleep beneath a blanket in our rented BMW, and the guard, when he pulled away the blanket, thought we were trying to smuggle her in! Thus came to closure our search for an album cover with Soviet tanks, and we drove back to Essen.”
Monday, September 30 , 1968
“On Monday, September 30, The Fugs flew to England for television and some concerts. That day we had a press reception at the Arts Laboratory on Drury Lane,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography.
Tuesday, October 1, 1968: ‘24 Hours,’ BBC-1 TV Show, Lime Grove Studios, Lime Grove Street, Shepherd’s Bush, London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, Greater London, England
The Fugs appeared on 24 Hours, a 30-minute, long-running, late evening, daily news magazine programme hosted by Cliff Michelmore and that aired live on BBC-1 at 9:55pm. “Before filming, I received a note that the BBC producer was fairly eager to discuss our ‘programme content,’” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography.
Friday, October 4, 1968: ‘How It Is,’ BBC-1 TV Show, Lime Grove Studios, Lime Grove Street, Shepherd’s Bush, London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, Greater London, England
The show was hosted by Angela Huth, Richard Neville, Tony Palmer, and John Peel. The show was aired live every Friday on BBC-1 from 6:00pm to 6:40pm. Also appeared on this episode: The Spinners, Tim Buckley.
Friday, October 4, 1968: Middle Earth, Roundhouse, 100 Chalk Farm Road, London Borough of Camden, Greater London
Also on the bill: Spooky Tooth, Radha Krishna Temple. One show, from 10:30pm ‘till dawn. “It was the last time I saw poet Harry Fainlight, who came to the gig,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “The next day we rented a double-decker bus for a trip to Stonehenge. We packed it full of friends and were ready to head for that remarkable circle of stones, but there was a bit of a delay because a poet friend, Michael Horowitz, had a toothache, so we took the bus to his dentist until Michael was repaired.”
Sunday, October 6, 1968: Massey Hall, 178 Victoria Street, Garden District, downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada
“We flew back to New York and then almost at once to Toronto for an October 7 [sic] concert at Massey Hall, one of the best Fugs concerts of ’68, but I’ve never seen a tape of it in the bootleg catalogs,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “We were guests at the Rochdale Commune. It was the last time in the ’60s that I wasn’t unhappy or dissatisfied after a Fugs gig.”
Friday, November 29 - Saturday, November 30, 1968: Kaleidoscope, 4445 Main Street, Manayunk, Northwest Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Also on the bill: Mandrake Memorial. “The Fugs played the Kaleidoscope Theater at 4445 Main Street in Philadelphia for $2,700
on November 29–30. The place was outfitted with hundreds of sofas upon which the audience toked and erotically disported during our gig,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography.
Thursday, December 26 - Friday, December 27, 1968: La Cave, 10615 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, Cuyahoga County, Ohio
“Some bikers came backstage at Le Cave and spiked our drinks, maybe with STP,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “Whatever it was, it was another one of those Ultimate Spinach trips, which I had to experience in an orange-and-green-hued Howard Johnson motel. I called Miriam to have her talk me down from the spinach.”
Saturday, December 28, 1968: Aragon Ballroom, 1106 Lawrence Avenue, Chicago, Cook County, Illinois
Also on the bill: Wilson Pickett, Baby Huey and The Babysitters. “Things didn’t turn out as well for our bass player, who was almost paralyzed the next day when we had to take the train to Chicago because a snowstorm had closed the airport,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “At the Chicago gig we told him just to hold his bass and not to try to play. (A few days later he was hauled in at JFK, trying to get back to London, convinced he was Paul McCartney! He had a beautiful voice, and he soon returned from the Visionary Other and stayed with us for the remaining months of the 1960s Fugs.) Our gig in Chicago was at the Aragon Ballroom with Wilson Pickett! We couldn’t wait to hear him sing his hits ‘In the Midnight Hour’ and ‘Mustang Sally.’ Unfortunately Pickett was kept by the snow from coming to Chicago, and The Fugs, one of our players in a stupor, faced a rather upset audience, whose members not only were told the lead act wasn’t there, but also they weren’t getting their money back. It was in this context that when I called Mayor Richard Daley a motherfucker, the restless crowd of 5,000 didn’t take it well. A woman directly in front of me tossed a container of Coca-Cola in my face, and we fled to our hotel, the fancy Astor Towers, to party.”
Monday, December 30, 1968: Grande Ballroom, 8952 Grand River at Beverly, 1 Block South of Joy Road, Detroit, Wayne County, Michigan
Also on the bill: Popcorn Blizzard. The show were presented by ‘Uncle Russ’ Gibb.
January (?) - April 1969: Apostolic Studios, 53 E 10th Street, East Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
The Fugs recorded their sixth album, The Belle of Avenue A. “Our longtime producer, Richard Alderson, who had coproduced Tenderness Junction and It Crawled into My Hand, Honest (our Reprise albums), had gone off to study Mayan music in the Yucatan and had closed his studio,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “Frank Zappa had been doing sessions at Apostolic Studio on East Tenth Street, which was outfitted by its owner, John Townley, with the scene’s first twelve-track recording equipment. Townley had been in the Night Owl house band, the Magicians, with future Fug Jake Jacobs. Our engineer at Apostolic was David Baker, a veteran of the civil rights movement who had done field recording in the South during Freedom Summer in 1964. I ran an ad in the Village Voice looking for a guitarist to help me work up songs. A young man named Dan Hamburg answered, and we began a fruitful collaboration, starting with The Belle of Avenue A for The Fugs and then my solo albums for Reprise, Sanders Truckstop, and Beer Cans on the Moon. Hamburg had just been fired as a caseworker at a foster care agency ‘because,’ as he later told me, ‘I was complaining about how I thought that too many ‘difficult’ kids in my caseload were being summarily diagnosed with ‘schizophrenia-undifferentiated type,’ ejected from foster homes, and warehoused in Creedmore State Hospital, where they were zombified with thorazine and stellazine.’ Later Hamburg spent thirtyone years teaching in New York’s inner-city junior high schools. But in 1969 he was all creativity and élan, and he helped us immensely. Hamburg played guitar on Tuli’s ‘Bum’s Song’ and on my tunes ‘The Belle of Avenue A,’ ‘Queen of the Nile,’ and ‘Yodeling Yippie.’ The Fugs performing ensemble—Ken Pine on guitar, Bob Mason on drums, and Bill Wolf on bass—recorded Weaver’s two tunes, ‘Dust Devil’ and ‘Four Minutes to Twelve’; ‘Chicago’ by Country Joe McDonald and myself; ‘Mr. Mack’; and Tuli’s ‘Flower Children’ and ‘Children of the Dream.’” “For much of 1969 I kept recording at Apostolic Studio, with outstanding engineer David Baker,” contniues Sanders. “I mixed and sequenced Golden Filth, The Fugs live at the Fillmore East, which we had recorded the weekend before RFK’s assassination. I also recorded Lionel Goldbart’s album God Loves Rock and Roll there and my own solo album Sanders Truckstop. Later in the year I turned Allen Ginsberg onto Apostolic, where he recorded his album of his musical settings of William Blake poems.”
Wednesday, January 8, 1969: ‘New York Free Press New Year’s Benefit,’ Fillmore East, 105 2nd Avenue at East 6th Street, East Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York
One show, started at 8:30pm. Also on the bill: Norman Mailer, Charlie Mingus Jams with Jeremy Steig and David Amram, Nico, Insect Trust (or Silver Apples), John Hammond. Lights by Joshua Light Show. “I was the master of ceremonies,” points out Ed Sanders. “When it came time to introduce Charles Mingus, I shouted into the microphone, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, Charlie Mingus!’ Big applause. He didn’t come on. I trotted off stage to find out why. He was glowering and sulky. He said, ‘Young man, you go back out there and introduce me as CHARLES! Mingus.’ Yes, sir. So I went back before the microphone, and said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, our next performer is CHARLES Mingus.’
Friday, February 7, 1969: Stanley Theatre, 237 7th Street, Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania
Also on the bill: Velvet Underground, Grateful Dead. “We used the Grateful Dead’s sound system, and I was determined that the words to Fugs tunes be heard, so I kissed the microphone very closely,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “There was a party at the Grateful Dead’s various rooms at the hotel afterward, although after a few initial elevators full of partyers, the hotel called a halt to further fans.”
Thursday, February 20, 1969: Rice Memorial Center, Rice University campus, 6100 Main Street, Houston, Harris County, Texas
“Luckily for us, the concert was recorded fairly well, and we have used various tunes from that reel-to-reel tape on several Fugs compilations,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “I included five tunes from this concert, including the never-before-released ‘Homage to Catherine and William Blake,’ in the Ace Records release, Fugs Live from the '60s,” also recalls Sanders.
Friday, February 21 - Saturday, February 22, 1969: Vulcan Gas Company, 316 Congress Avenue, Austin, Travis County, Texas
Also on the bill: Shiva’s Headband. “The gigs at the Vulcan Gas Works in Austin were the last shows of the 1960s Fugs,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “There wouldn’t be another one for over fifteen years. Ahh, I was so weary of it!”
April 1969
The Fugs finished the recording of their album The Belle of Avenue A and then disbanded. “I decided to break up The Fugs,” recalls Ed Sanders in his autobiography. “Part of me just wanted to write poetry and be a regular ole Beatnik. Running a rock band was a fifteen-hour-a-day job. Each morning after I woke up, the first thing I thought about was how to promote The Fugs, maybe flesh out a press release for the day, call up our managers to see what gigs were being lined up. It was a lot of worry and stress and not as satisfying as it once had been. I also had an opportunity, as an official Reprise Records producer, to produce my own album. I thought of doing a satirical ‘Out-There’ electro-punk country-andwestern album, with elements of proto-environmentalism. My plan to keep the Peace Eye Bookstore open paid off because it had kept up its popularity and was a steady source of income.” “My formal duties as a Fug were over,” also added Sanders. “It had not been an easy time. We were very, very controversial. We were always on the verge of getting arrested. We had bomb threats. We were picketed by rightwingers. Someone sent me a fake bomb in the mail. Someone called once and said he was going to bomb, first me, then Frank Zappa. We were investigated by the FBI, by the Post Office, by the New York District Attorney’s Office. We were often encouraged not to try to perform again at the same venue. We were tossed off a major label. All of this took bites out of our spirit. I was getting weary—four years had seemed like forty and I felt as if I’d awakened inside a Samuel Beckett novel. Running a rock band is a quick and hasty thing, and however much long-term planning gets done, improper and impolite decisions are sometimes made—and they haunt a bandleader into midlife and beyond. And so The Fugs of the 1960s were no more, and I put a few boxes of live concert tapes into my archives and did not pay attention to them for twenty-five years.” By the way, Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg reformed the Fugs in 1984 with new musicians but that’s another story…
September 1969
The Fugs’ (posthumous) sixth album, ‘The Belle of Avenue A,’ was released in the US.
July 1970
The Fugs’ (posthumous) seventh album, ‘Golden Filth,’ was released in the US. The album was recorded live at the Fillmore East in New York City on May 31 and June 1, 1968.
