Greatest Hits

The Fugs never had anything close to a hit in the normal sense, and would probably have been horrified if they had. Formed in the 1960s by poets Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg as an electric folk and jug band with one hell of an agenda, the Fugs turned inept playing and satirical poetry into something resembling a street theater rock concert. Goofy and endearing, but dead serious about political and cultural change, the Fugs had developed into fairly decent musicians by the time their first incarnation ended in the late1970s. The Fugs reformed in the mid-’80s, and released three albums, most of which were drawn from live shows done in Copenhagen. This disc collects a subjective “best-of” from those shows, and it reveals a professional band that still has a laser-guided sense of humor, and a wonderful, almost wistful, approach to what is probably best termed “folk-rock.” Among the highlights are Kupferberg’s gentle “Morning Morning,” and two songs by Sanders, the ornate and sweet-sounding “No More Slavery,” and the poignant “You Can’t Go Into the Same River Twice.” – Steve Leggett