My fondness is to be sucked off by ring-tailed fruit bats

December 21, 2006 6:12 AM

YouTubeFugFilter: The Fugs in Sweden in 1968 (Part 1) (Part 2). Plus: The Fugs from the movie Chappaqua.
posted by Astro Zombie (14 comments total)

Fugeddaboudit.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 6:27 AM on December 21, 2006

Back in the day when talk of "homosexual aardvarks" wouldn't fly on American TV! I think the Fugs are one of those bands I like better on paper rather than actually playing their records, but they pushed the radical envelope beyond it just being a fashion accessory, so they'll always have my respect.

Is their a full documentary on them yet? Based on these clips, I'd love to see a full look at their career.
posted by Slack-a-gogo at 6:33 AM on December 21, 2006

God, I love those guys. Most people have never heard of them, but so much of what came after bears their mark.

*cranks up 'I Couldn't Get High' on iPod*
posted by jonmc at 6:39 AM on December 21, 2006

Thanks for the trip back to the pointless part of my parents' youth. Nice link, in all seriousness, many people probably weren't tortured with this when they were kids, and could use the exposure to the raw cultural experience of the snuffed rebellion of the '60s. Almost as important and representative to the era, and certainly more well-remembered than the late, great Phil Ochs.
Again, thanks for the link!
posted by eparchos at 6:58 AM on December 21, 2006

I like Phil Ochs' music a lot. But what I always remember most when his name comes up is that on his live album where he went electric and played some Buddy Holly numbers, some of the folkies in the audience actually booed and this was in like 1970 or something. Weird.
posted by jonmc at 7:04 AM on December 21, 2006

Phil Ochs did some weird stuff.... note his name appearing at the end of the film in the end of that there Fugs video. Surprised the heck out of me!
But don't forget the "folkies" of the time getting all mad when Dylan appeared with an electric guitar in 1965 at Newport, traditional haunt of serious folk-revolutionaries of the time such as... hmmm... Phil Ochs.
posted by eparchos at 7:20 AM on December 21, 2006

I know, eparchos. It was myopic enough booing Dylan in '65, but booing Ochs for the same thing in the seventies? You have to assume that even the most purist folkie had figured out that they were in the dustbin of history at that point.
posted by jonmc at 7:23 AM on December 21, 2006

I'd think that five or ten years is hardly enough to kill as fervent an ideology as the folk-revolutionaries in the 1960s had, and the battle between the "stoner hippies" that we all remember and the "idealogue hippies" who started the movement was well beyond full swing by the time Ochs offed himself.
Besides, as greek-tragedy as Ochs' life was, his flaw wasn't so much "going electric" as it was "going pop star" in the mid-70's when he was a well-regarded revolutionary FOLK singer. One can, however, forgive him the mistake of trying to "go electric" at Carnegie Hall ten years after Dylan failed at Newport.
posted by eparchos at 7:36 AM on December 21, 2006

Oh, hell yes! The Fugs!

I haven't listened to them since I went to church on a regular basis. Seriously.

Getting back into their stuff again these days, minus the ecclesiastical context. Found a copy of 'Tenderness Junction' at the Princeton Record Exchange a few weeks ago and remembered all of a sudden how much these guys really did make the Sex Pistols later look like incompetent corporate stooges by comparison.

Bastard offspring of hippies, yippies, beats, and punks - we need a little more of this kind of adventurous spirit today.
posted by objet at 11:20 AM on December 21, 2006

Love the Fugs, thanks.
posted by stinkycheese at 1:09 PM on December 21, 2006

Fun Fug fact: the band got their name from Norman Mailer's using it instead of "fuck" in The Naked and the Dead (at his publisher's request), which prompted Tallulah Bankhead to call Mailer "the young man that doesn't know how to spell 'fuck.'"
The line is sometimes attributed to Dorothy Parker.
posted by kirkaracha at 2:24 PM on December 21, 2006

Monday nothing, Tusday nothing, Wednesday and Thursday nothing.........
posted by flummox at 4:56 PM on December 21, 2006

Astral Perversions:

My fondness is to be sucked off by ring-tailed fruit bats while engaging in oral erotic relationships with homosexual aardvarks in bathtubs full of lukewarm jello in late-night motel plate jobs, slurp circles, and jello orgies.

Ring tailed fruit bats [while engaging in oral erotic relationships with homosexual aardvarks in bathtubs full of lukewarm jello in late-night motel plate jobs] being the only thing to give me an erection.
posted by zach4000 at 10:38 PM on December 22, 2006

It's the ring-tailed lemurs you have to watch out for.
posted by homunculus at 11:18 PM on December 22, 2006