The Fugs – It Crawled Into My Hand, Honest

A wonderfully irreverent slice of the counterculture 'Beat-to-Hippie' movement happening in New York City in the mid to late '60s. "It Crawled Into My Hand, Honest" is an amusing series of musical observations presented in thinly veiled euphemisms and the sex and drug-culture reference points of the time. The band took their name from Mailer's acclaimed wartime novel 'The Naked And The Dead', in which the publishers suggested he use "Fug" in place of "Fuck". This is a reissue of the album which followed "The Fugs First Album" [an uncensored reissue of "The Village Fugs..."], "The Fugs" and "Tenderness Junction". A release of outtakes from the 1st album exists as "Virgin Fugs".

The band was founded by Ed Sanders, author and publisher of Lower East Side's 'Peace Eye Bookstore' (launched with accompaniment by "The Holy Modal Rounders", Warhol art and "Fuck You - A Magazine Of The Arts"), along with Brooklyn College graduate and social activist Tuli Kupferberg. Kupferberg, on vocals, notably had an epiphany after an unsuccessful jump from the Manhattan Bridge - an event adapted in Ginsberg's 'Howl'. The Kuperberg-written fourth track on side two "When the Mode Of Music Changes" echoes some of the influences of Plato's 'The Republic' - also found on "The Deviants" seminal 1967 UK album "Ptooff!" - whilst the complexities of Haiku poetry are applied to teenage pregnancy in "National Haiku Contest". The band's drummer, Ken Weaver, became a translator of Russian for the CIA and later wrote the 'Texas Crude' guide to slang with Robert Crumb, who's cartoon art and 'Mr Natural' adorned much '60's work - such as the excellent Big Brother/Joplin "Cheap Thrills" album. After a number of line-up changes it was these three, Sanders, Kupferberg & Weaver, who remained at the core of "The Fugs". An album by the band, on Atlantic, was rejected by Jerry Wexler after completion (tracks later released on CD as a partial compilation with "The Fugs" as "The Fugs Second Album"). Mo Ostin at Reprise, where Zappa was an acceptable flavor, welcomed them and, after a spring tour in '68 with "Pete Green's Fleetwood Mac" and "Ten Years After", the band released "Tenderness..." followed by "It Crawled..." in a highly productive year.

With Ken Pine and Danny 'Kootch' Kortchmar on guitars and Charles Larkey on bass this album's 19 tracks reflect much of the band's work in the Greenwich Village scene, from Bleecker Street to The Players Theater, where Hendrix once jammed in the basement. For those exploring criss-cross references to the likes of Belafonte, Pélieu, Verlaine, Beach, Burroughs, Lebel, Hendrix, Zappa and the inhabitants of 'The Village' network, this is a fine vinyl reissue archive of political surrealism, costumed satire and memories from those days when 'the mood of music' changed a teenage outlook and 'the authorities' became 'concerned'...