Line #16 Music/TheFugs


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/the_fugs_6480.jpg]]
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3	-> ''We hate war''
4	-> ''We love sex''
5	-> ''Two or threes''
6	-> ''Four or fives''
7	-> ''LSD a dimethylatr''
8	-->--'''We're the Fugs''', from "Virgin Fugs"
9
10	The Fugs were the founders of AlternativeRock as we know it today. Starting off as a bunch of [[Creator/TheBeatGeneration beatnik poets]] and an early example of a GarageRock band they did for their genre what Creator/LennyBruce did to standup comedy: push the boundaries of what could be talked about in public and advocate freedom of speech. In some ways they are more offensive today than it was in its own time, in part due to their own influence on public tastes and all the cult rock bands that followed in their wake. Together with Music/FrankZappa and Music/TheVelvetUnderground the Fugs are seen as the first ''underground rock band'', but [[FollowTheLeader they came before everybody else]].
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12	The Fugs used a deliberately raw, crude recording style, and experimented with various kinds of performance art in their live appearances, pushing the boundaries of both artistic expression and good taste to the breaking point. Much of their work was political and social satire of the most caustic sort. They openly [[MyCountryTisOfTheeThatISting criticized America]]'s involvement in the UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar, but didn't just do it musically, as most counterculture rock bands and protest singers did in their time: they activally marched along during peace protests and caused outrage when conducting an exorcism in front of the Democratic Party Committee in Washington in 1968 and later doing the same in front of the grave of communist witch hunter UsefulNotes/JosephMcCarthy. This was not without risk: they were shadowed by the F.B.I. and received many death threats.
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14	Apart from their ProtestSong material the Fugs also gained notoriety as the first rock band to [[RefugeInAudacity openly sing about taboo subjects such as sex and drugs]] and always in very vulgar language. As a result they remained in the underground and never reached the same level of public acceptance as other counterculture bands of TheSixties did, like Music/TheGratefulDead, Music/TheVelvetUnderground and [[Music/FrankZappa The Mothers of Invention]]. The topicality of their work also makes a lot of their material heavily dated. Still, without them, many of these bands would have not existed and their albums and films, as well as the numerous poetry books of two of their founding members, Ed Sanders and the late Tuli Kupferberg, remain [[CultClassic cult classics]].
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16	'''Discography'''
17	* ''Music/TheFugsFirstAlbum'' (1965)
18	* ''Music/TheFugsSecondAlbum'' (1966)
19	* ''Virgin Fugs'' (1967)
20	* ''Tenderness Junction'' (1968)
21	* ''Music/ItCrawledIntoMyHandHonest'' (1968)
22	* ''The Belle Of Avenue A'' (1969)
23	* ''Golden Filth'' (1970)
24	* ''Refuse To Be Burnt Out'' (1984)
25	* ''Baskets Of Love'' (1984)
26	* ''No More Slavery'' (1985)
27	* ''Star Peace'' (1986)
28	* ''Fugs Live in Woodstock'' (1989)
29	* ''The Real Woodstock Festival'' (1995)
30	* ''The Fugs Final CD'' (2003)
31	* ''Be Free: The Fugs Final (Part 2)'' (2010)
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33	----
34	!!Tropes associated with The Fugs include:
35	* AllMenArePerverts: Several of their songs are very explicit odes to sexual lust, including "Boobs A Lot", "Frenzy" and "Virgin Forest".
36	* AvantGardeMusic: They were the first underground rock band and this is very audible on their first two albums. They were basically self taught musicians, who played in a very chaotic and raunchy style, without caring much about the sound quality. One of the most experimental songs is "Virgin Forest" from ''Music/TheFugsSecondAlbum''.
37	* BuryMeNotOnTheLonePrairie: "Bury Me In An Apple Orchard"
38	--> ''Do not surround me with wreaths of flowers''
39	--> ''Or place upon my body the signs of a fetish''
40	--> ''Or crescent, cross, phallus or sun''
41	--> ''But bury me in an apple orchard''
42	--> ''That I may touch your lips again.''
43	* BuxomBeautyStandard: "Boobs A Lot", an ode to big breasts.
44	* CallAndResponseSong: "Dirty Old Man" has the protagonist shout out his lines, while the band repeats them back.
45	* CelebrityCameo: Tuli Kupferberg has a memorable moment in ''Film/WRMysteriesOfTheOrganism'' where he walks around dressed up as as soldier, sexually stroking his gun as the soundtrack plays "Kill For Peace".
46	* DirtyOldMan:
47	** "Dirty Old Man" about a dope selling old pervert.
48	** "Septuagenarian in Love", a parody of "Teenager in Love" where the singer is an elderly man lamenting the lust he feels for a younger woman.
49	* EverybodyMustGetStoned: "I Couldn't Get High," later covered by the staunchly pro-marijuana reggae rock band Slightly Stoopid.
50	* EvilLaugh: The dirty old man cackles out an evil laugh halfway "Dirty Old Man".
51	* GarageRock: Their early recordings were very low-budget, making them sound close to other rock bands from the mid-1960s who recorded in such bad audio quality circumstances.
52	* TheImmodestOrgasm: "Group Grope" has an interlude where the singer moans and sighs, accompanied by a young woman.
53	* IntentionallyAwkwardTitle: Having a name that sounded so much like "the fucks" largely barred them from getting air on commercial radio (the fact that the word 'fug' was actually invented by Creator/NormanMailer as a less offensive substitute for the word 'fuck' probably affected this as well).
54	** Also ''Music/ItCrawledIntoMyHandHonest''
55	* IntercourseWithYou: Parodied with "Wet Dream", in the form of a doo-wop teenage love song.
56	* MyCountryTisOfTheeThatISting: The Fugs sang pointed satirical songs against the US Government and the UsefulNotes/VietnamWar. This didn't make them very popular with certain people. The F.B.I. shadowed them and Ed Sanders was threatened with death calls, forcing him to take his phone number out of the phone book.
57	* PrecisionFStrike: They were the first rock group to openly swear and use vulgar language.
58	* ProtestSong: "Kill for Peace", though much of their repertoire falls into this category.
59	* PsychedelicRock: They made some pretty trippy songs where they sang poems and praised sex, drugs and peace.
60	* RedScare: The band once held a devil exorcism by the grave of UsefulNotes/JosephMcCarthy.
61	* RefugeInAudacity: They were the first rock band to openly sing about sex, drugs and politics.
62	* {{Satire}}: They satirized pretty much 1960s politics and society while they were experiencing it themselves.
63	* ShoutOut:
64	** As the band was founded by published poets, several songs are based on poems. These include "[[Creator/WilliamBlake Ah, Sunflower]]" and "[[Literature/Howl1955 I Saw the Best Minds of My Generation Rock]]".
65	** "C.I.A. Man" in featured in ''Film/BurnAfterReading''.
66	* StockSoundEffects: "Kill For Peace" has sound effects of gunfire mixed in.
67	* StrawNihilist: "Nothing" lists everything that means "nothing", but actually does it in an amusing way. So it can be TheAntiNihilist as well.
68	* TakeThat: The title of the EP ''Thrown Off Atlantic'' is a reference to the contract dispute with the publisher of their first album, Atlantic Records. Some later releases of ''The Fug's First Album'' include a track consisting of a recording of the initial contract signing party for the album, under the title "In the Middle of Their First Recording Session the Fugs Sign the Worst Contract Since Leadbelly's" (a reference to the way {{Blues}} legend Huddy 'Music/LeadBelly' Ledbetter was forced to sign over all rights to his songs for a pittance).
69	* TimeMarchesOn: This band is about as TheSixties as you can get. Direct references to politics, society,counterculture, Creator/TheBeatGeneration, UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar,... The good side is that it makes their music a time capsule of that era. The bad side is that it also made a lot of their stuff dated, one of the reasons why they have faded away in rock history a bit, despite being in many ways the inventors of AlternativeRock.
70	* UnusualEuphemism: The band name was taken from a euphemism for "fuck" from ''Literature/TheNakedAndTheDead'' by Creator/NormanMailer.

Context Music / TheFugs