May 2009

The Fugs: "Greatest Hits 1984-2004" (Fugs)
Grade: A MINUS

Here's more inspiring evidence of a hippie's progress than anything Joni Mitchell or Mickey Hart will ever again devise. An accomplished folk-rock band fronted by Woodstock-based activist Ed Sanders with sardonic history alerts from Manhattan-based anarchist-comedian Tuli Kupferberg, the Fugs Mark II still joke-check their ribald heyday, and on the live tracks you can hear their tiny fan base eat up every laugh line. But with the support of those fans, Sanders is onto bigger things. Free of bitterness and regret, savvier than he ever was about the ins and outs of make-love-not-war, and a poet above all, his motto is "refuse to be burnt out." Googly-eyed neotribalists who consider "psychedelic" a meaningful term owe it to themselves and their parents to consider the musical teachings of Allen Ginsberg's great inheritor.

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(Image: The Fugs/Fug Records)