Sanders, Edward; Kupferberg, Tuli et al.

The FUGS' Song Book! (From the 2014 Detroit Artists Workshop "Work Box")

Detroit, MI: Detroit Artists Workshop, 2014. First Edition Thus. Stapled Wrappers. “The FUGS are an emanation or hallucination of the culture of the Lower East Side. They write all their own songs, puking them out of a personal history that includes the transistor radio, lots of grass, group gropes, 1000’s of hours of poetry, reading it, writing it, & listening; peace-freaking, Chuck Berry concerts in heaven, & scholarship in various esoteric fields of knowledge. The FUGS have written approximately 60 songs to date, of which there are printed 26 in this volume, the sperm of the freak-spew, so to speak. Many of their songs deal with interpersonal relationships in the new marijuana group-grope psychedelic tenderness society” (from Introduction, titled “Notes on the Fugs!”). “TOTAL ASSAULT ON THE CULTURE!” meant different things to different people in the Mimeograph-Revolutionary atmosphere of the early-mid 1960s. While doubling as a motif and motto for the author (or co-author) of the knee-slapping, Zappa-esque blues, rags, and ballads that populate THE FUGS’ SONGBOOK, the phrase originates with the epochal William S. Burroughs (1914-1997)—& his maximally invaluable friend-&-collaborator, Brion Gysin (1916-1986). When it came to “Total Assault on the Culture,” B&G favored a tactical approach. Meaning, there were particular tools—methods and magicks, if you will—whose prospective utility determined their use. Burroughs and Gysin—the 5-Star Generals of the 101st Cut-Up Division—did not perfume a perception of their enemies with joyful, raucous laughter: however, Ed Sanders (b. 1939) did precisely that. He mobilized satire in a manner constitutively unlike any other writer describable as “Beat.” One could, however reasonably credit Burroughs with influencing Sanders’ development and calculus. For Ed energetically lifted the motto for The Fuck You Press, the Peace Eye Bookstore—and really his countercultural “project,” writ large—directly from Burroughs, as earlier enumerated. In January, 1964 Sanders’ Fuck You Press published the immortal WSB routine, “Roosevelt After Inauguration,”—and one can lace together these biographical particulars and suggest the development of Sanders’ satirical prose line is linked, parentally to that outlaid by Burroughs. This would be a mistake, however: and not because it places too much stress on Burroughs’ patrimonial imprint upon a young and impressionable Sanders. It would be a critical disservice to the darkly comic and aggressively absurd in Burroughs: and the approach philosophically enumerated by Burroughs (during his and Gysin’s time at the Beat Hotel, for example) is really all one needs in the way of contrast to flesh this thought out. You will never find mention of a “psychedelic tenderness society” in the writings of Burroughs, nor locate anything approximating an endorsement of things like “cunt-hunger” and “peace-freaking.” In THE FUGS, Sanders found his dispositional equal: a man that ‘gave as few fucks as he did’ with regard to literary taboos—a historically-troubled, though perceptibly brilliant man entirely untroubled by matters of style: Tuli Kupferberg, who Allen Ginsberg once called “the world’s oldest hippie.” Ed & Tuli’s mutually severe commitments to social libertarianism and pacifism (to an anti-war future, writ large) predictably gelled. These foundational and synonymous aspects served their creative partnership well; and the flair and flavor of ‘a Fugian worldview’ is the atomic establishment of their ‘third mind,’—which the both of them ran with. These freak-blues, psych-spurts, and Akashic rags fall most gently on ears previously readied by Zappa,—and whatever is ‘lacking’ in the way of balladeer detachment, solemnity and smoke is made-up for by way of the group’s pedigree, & later attested to (by their transformation from outlaw Folk group to acid-comic heroes of an increasingly colorized countercultural: Lenny Bruces by the stage-full for the ‘even-more blitzed.’ Literary journal in stapled wrappers: First Edition Thus ("This edition of THE FUGS SONGBOOK appears on the 50th anniversary of the Detroit Artists Workshop and is reprinted with permission by Ed Sanders. 200 copies were printed by the DAW and MOCAD, Nov. 2014"), per colophon. From the collection of Robin Eichele (b. 1941), noted Mimeograph Revolutionary & co-founder (with John Sinclair) of the Detroit Artists’ Workshop. In very fine condition with only minute shelf-wear to fine-edges & corners of front, back covers & spine-edge; lone ink smudge to topmost fine-edge of front cover at center-middle; low-visibility exhibits of light rubbing variously present at same; otherwise clean. A well-kept, albeit more recent relic-addition from the Eichele collection. Very Fine. [Item #6716]

Price: $50.00