the FUGS • the FUGS (ESP-DISK, 1966)

We are a country of heathens...well, we always were...but now we have become the something worse; clucking our tongue at the sight of genitalia, and jerking off with a free hand. How did we become so joyless? Wasn't there a period of general hilarity only some 30 odd years ago?

One of those relics is the second album by The Fugs. Titled simply the FUGS the advancement from the first record is evident. Losing the Holy Modal Rounders Ed Sanders, Tuli Kupferberg and Ken Weaver were now becoming, with the aid of some ESPdisk's better side men a formidable entity, one that was not afraid to show it's collective intelligentsia coated in pure greasy teenage pimple cream. Songs about Group Gropes and Doin' Allright ("I get more pussy than a Spade") sit along the political aggression of Kill For Peace, and the gentile sadness of Morning Morning. This song shows the same direction that The Velvets would take a year later with Sunday Morning, but where Reed's poetry is based on simple street wise rhyming schemes, Sanders and Kupferberg use the meter of classical Greek poetry. Both band came from the fertile cesspool that was the Lower East Side in the 1960's. Some how even though they were locals, they couldn't have any more been from two different worlds. The Velvets being sexually ambivalent with an scoring of violence, and the Fugs goofy (with out being hippy dippy) and decidedly straight.

Lyrically a reference point that modern readers can use is the (loathsome) Bloodhound Gang. But thank God that the Fugs had a brain. One that could point out the hypocrisy of "normal" society and the lurid mind that the Counter Culture would swear they left behind.

The last track gives a glimpse at what would be the pinnacle of the Fugs recording carrier; "It crawled into my hand, honest", done for Reprise in 1968. Virgin Forrest is a Naked Lunchesque suite of seemingly random yet interconnected routines. Sound effects give way to Ovidian proclamations of sex. Before you can get worked up from the command to Aphrodite to take the penis, Tarzan breaks the mood explaining basic fucking to a noisy jungle, in appreciation come a chorus of turkey squawks. At some point the Photo Falling, Word Falling, Breakthrough In The Grey Room is quoted and the mind is clearly destroyed. In requiem delicate melody is rolled in, and logically a rousing hymn of Death Stay Thy Phantoms closes the cut up. Proving once and for all this world is hilarious, but man, it has to be taken seriously...

Fleshing out the CD reissue on Fugs Records are two live tracks recorded in 1967 and three from the aborted album for Atlantic. The live tracks are so-so and are nice to have for historic value. The same could not be said for the unreleased material, beside the reworking of Carpe Diem from the first record, and the embryonic take of Wide Wide River, is the unreleased Nameless Voices Crying For Kindness that's amazing in it's deceptiveness.

It's practically a discourse on the self, it's place in the universe, and purpose. To keep things from getting too dry, there's some references to fucking and it's all scored to a Doors back beat...Socrates enters the Hollywood Bowl stage, behind him the band, dressed in paisley togas tune up...he leans over the lip of the stage zeroing in on a honeydew of a teenybopper asking the nubile girl seated in the front row "How are ya? Where'd yah go to skewll? Do you know where the seat of man's soul is located ?" She faints dead away, her mind and pussy wet...both moist with ideas and possibilities...

Please click on the review title for selected track: Kill For Peace

Created by Bruce Haack • The Electric Lucifer (Columbia, 1970)

There are some holly grails a mere mention will send an obsessive nut packing his bag, to mythic plateaus where it's said in hushed whisper there are man eating trees. Or under the ground, looking for tombs, only to be rewarded with finding a room strewn with junk and artifact alike. Such is the makeup of this doctor, but my objects are to be found not in the Artic deserts but flea markets, combing through crates that smell of stale basement and forgotten purchases.

It was at a then local flea market where under the broiling summer heat of 1988 I stumbled across this oddity. Sandwiched between Boston Pops and Eagles records was this Milton Glaser like cover. It showed Jesus as green skinned Imp, his sides flanked by mock demons. The title alone was worth more than a passing curiosity: The Electric Lucifer"...At that point of the late 80's most older people were tossing out the contents of their youth. Beside the endless stream of CSN&Y, Derrick and the Dominoes and the like, Switched On style records were showing up. I had been burned enough times that I was getting wary of records that featured the Moog. Checking the back cover and it's nearly impenetrable liner notes, I discovered no cover songs. Good sign number 1. From what I could make out from the liner notes, the album was attempting to paint Lucifer as his first incarnation - The Light Bearer. Fortuitous omen number 2.

The tipping factor? It was a white label promo cover, with boxes suggesting to DJ's what tracks to play...and none of them has been checked...

As I wrote earlier, I'm not a fan of Switched On LP's. For the most part they become a listening affair punctuated with observations along the lines of "Look! The lead line in Winchester Cathedral is being played with multi timbre", or "so that's not a bass"? I prefer electronic records where something new is being tried, and that's exactly what I got.

Straight off the bat with the first cut of the album opens with this carnival spook house song, clownishly cavorting in. The singing voice vocodered to almost unrecognizably. Images of Betty Boop trapped in a haunted Bakelite radio, besieged by demonic cathodes.

From here the LP straddles the fence of serious electronics and a children's record. Infectious melodies are broken up by blasts of heavy echo and sine waves. And why wouldn't this all sound like a Freak Out for the Sesame Street set? Unknown to me at the time, Haack made a living doing children's records. Years later those LP's were reissued and they have the same quality as Electric Lucifer. The main message is think for your self, rebel from constraints, do your own thing. All the things Anton LeVey suggested, even with the same Sunday Funnies take on the Horned One.

My then room mate (I have mentioned him before, he's the one who got the hot foot while sleeping) came in to my room wide eyed and smiling. "What is this"?! It fell out of the realm of what I knew, I didn't know. At that point in history, ESPdisk sides while somewhat obscure were pretty easy to obtain, and concurrently Nonesuch electronic records had elements of adopting some rock music but never came close to this. This was pop music for a brightly colored Will To Power future. The room mate and I marveled at the cover with it's promo slick, could this really have been released on a major label?

As the LP played on, a uncredited male voice doing his best Jim Morrison psychedelic croon, adding another layer of accessibility. I guess Satan was really trying his best to convert the teeny boppers...

Like most records of the late 60's and early 70's, the Vietnam war had to be addressed. Used as a template for art, here it's simply called "War". Perhaps the heaviest track, it starts as a break neck Walter Carlos fugue, and then for further comedic affect the focus shifts to a lopsided military march, punctuated with machine gun fire. Eventually the Musique Concret is stopped short. A child intones "I don't wanna play any more", then fades out as a mournful dirge / lullaby.

Even with the Switched on Bach move used in the above track, there really isn't any reference point for what your hearing. Just like Trout Mask Replica is of it's time but from an alternate universe, Electric Lucifer has that same feel. At one point a track called Super Nova condenses A Rainbow In Curved Air to five minutes, but even then it seems like it's coming from left field.

With such an auspicious introduction to the mainstream what could follow? Haack had already been a guest on quiz shows, debuting his latest home made Synths that plays a persons electro magnetic aura to the delight of the studio audiences. He'd composed pop songs for Theresa Brewer, did music for commercials, and incidental music for theater. The world with it's newly turned on ears would fall at his feet...no...he sunk back into undeserved obscurity.

Bruce died in 1988 (ironically the year I found this, one of my favorite records). In between the year of The Electric Lucifer and his death, to pay the bills he made more children's records, along with two more parts to Electric Lucifer. The history is a little sketchy as to where the second part (called Book Two) released posthumously a few years back falls. There seems to have been two Book Two.

By now, the children's records have a harsher edge to them, and the Book Two is down right bitter and angry. The cartoon music is still the bedrock, but the words are now from the point of a leering Pit Boss.

And perhaps rightfully so...Reagan and Bush I were invoking the other end of the dark forces; strength without a hint of compassion. Children's minds in school were not being engaged, but merely numbed with repetition. The smart ones to the office, the dumb ones to the front lines, and the odd? Marginalized...

The Omni Group has reissued Electric Lucifer with a alternate tale of the opening track, and half hour interview with Haack on Canadian Radio promoting the LP. Here he goes on at length for his love for rock music, especially The Beatles and The Moody Blues.

Do your mind and soul a favor and go by this CD. Perhaps it'll remind you of a time when evil meant just rebellion, and good was not an excuse for a totalitarian movement.

Please click on the review title for selected track: Program Me

Sun Ra And His Solararkestra • Other Planes Of There (Saturn, 1965, 1966, or 1967)

Is that the past I am viewing from the spaceships porthole? The inhabitants of the planet we have landed on are upright crab-men. Clothed in Neanderthal loin cloths, they are armed with laser shooting spears...you'll forgive me, I was looking through some old photos I had taken...wonderful times the 1990's...

There are places in the galaxy where the primitive and modern rest side by side. How often have I heard the drunken party guest mutter "Ape with a microwave", only to be reassured by the host that it was just a general observation. I shouldn't take it personally...

Sun Ra understood these contradictions. Listening to the title track of Other Planes of There ones ear has to quickly reassemble it's inner calendar. While the album as a whole is a study in contrast, it's the opening that embodies the concept.

Opening with a blast of dark chords , not unlike modern 20Th century classical, quickly it shifts to lopsided jazz consisting of sharp piano chords and reeds. Meandering in this mode for a while we are gradually taken to some sort of ancient Melody. Oboe painting a picture of the Serengeti. Not content to stay too long there, Ra's piano starts rumbling low end notes bringing us back to modern times. Content to shift from focus to focus, like most Ra compositions it ends when he's run out of notes.

Side two uses the same floor plan, only breaking the focus up into separate pieces. Quietly skittering in on sparse snare drums, tapping out a rhythm that seems more like a lead line, Sound Spectra/Spec Sket is then married to hunting call horns bathed in reverb. From there the maelstrom of side one resumes.

Next comes the tack Sketch. Duping the listener with what would seem like a normal swing style played by the piano, it's John Gilmore's sax that ups the oddball factor. What is the more Fortian moment here? The presentation of swing as a primitive movement, or Gilmore solo that sounds like he's playing along to a radio broadcast heard through the wall of the next room? The sonic slight of hand is the reverb. Used a cloaking device, it starts to muddy the sax to the point where the treatment becomes an instrument in it's self. Then jarringly shut off, the sax appears almost out of nowhere.

Sandwiched between the Sketch and the mammoth album closer Spiral Galaxy, is the aptly titled Pleasure. Languidly drifting in a sea of bowed bass and light piano, we are given another example of a sax solo that plays around the tune rather than join in.

By albums end, Spiral Galaxy show us that the tempo of the Heavens can be marked in 3/4 time. An ancient sounding military precision is kept here, framing a fussy sounding woodwind section - not unlike a tornado visible on the horizon. Jabs of shrill oboe crackling over piano.

Reverb is heavily placed on the woodwind segments, only to be quickly withdrawn for the other instruments to come through. All the while the 3/4 is being kept, but with small additional beats, shifting the focus. Just as it seems that it's winding down, some new squall of sound arises and your off again. Eventually it does end, but not in grotesque crescendo but with the tapping of some percussion. You've arrived safely back to the present time. Ra and Arkestra have taken you through various time shifts, and you barely moved an inch.

Like most Sun Ra recordings, it's a little hard to pin down the where and whens. While this session was recorded in 1964/65, it may not have seen print until 1966, or 1967. By then Ra had moved the Arkestra further in to space, employing the Moog as his main instrument. So a piano based record seems even further antiquated.

Please click on the review title for selected track: Sound Spectra / Spec Sket