The Fugs - The First Album (1966)

A loping, ridiculous, and scabrous release, the Fugs' debut mashed everything from folk and beat poetry to rock and rhythm & blues - all with a casual disregard for sounding note perfect, though not without definite goals in mind. Actually compiled from two separate sessions originally done for Folkways Records, and with slightly different lineups as a result, it's a short but utterly worthy release that pushed any number of 1964-era buttons at once (and could still tick off plenty of people).

Sanders produced the sessions in collaboration with the legendary Harry Smith, who was able to sneak the collective onto Folkways' accounts by describing them as a "jug band," and it's not a far-off description. A number of songs sound like calm-enough folk-boom fare, at least on casual listening, though often with odd extra touches like weirdly muffled drums or out of nowhere whistles and chimes. Others, meanwhile, are just out there -- thus, the details of the perfect "Supergirl." Then there's "Boobs a Lot," the post-toke/acid lament "I Couldn't Get High," and the pie-in-the-face to acceptable standards of the time, "Slum Goddess."

Throughout it all, the Fugs sound like they're having a perfectly fun time; the feeling is loose, ragged, but right, and while things may be sloppy around the edges, often that's totally intentional. Certainly little else could explain the random jamming and rhythmic chanting/shouting on "Swinburne Stomp."

The album was originally released in 1965 as The Village Fugs Sing Ballads of Contemporary Protest, Point of Views, and General Dissatisfaction on Folkways Records before the band signed up with ESP-Disk, who released the album under its own label with a new name in 1966

Tracklist:

1. "Slum Goddess" (Ken Weaver) – 1:58
2. "Ah, Sunflower, Weary of Time" (William Blake, Ed Sanders) – 2:15
3. "Supergirl" (Tuli Kupferberg) – 2:18
4. "Swinburne Stomp" (Sanders, A.C. Swinburne) – 2:50
5. "I Couldn't Get High" (Weaver) – 2:06
6. "How Sweet I Roamed" (Blake, Sanders) – 2:11
7. "Carpe Diem" (Kupferberg) – 5:07
8. "I Feel Like Homemade Shit" (Sanders) – 2:18
9. "Boobs a Lot" (Steve Weber) – 2:12
10. "Nothing" (Kupferberg) – 4:18

The Fugs - The First Album (1966)
(320 kbps, cover art included)