MORE Junkie Lovelies

Rip It Up, Issue 9, 1 March 1978, Page 4

MORE Junkie Lovelies

William Dart

Everybody knows what Norman Mailer meant when he used the word “fug” in The Naked and the Dead. Of course he wouldn’t have to use that word if he had written his novel in the 1970 s but then again his characters probably would have gone on to far more kinky things than this by the Age of Aquarius. Anyway this is all something of a longwinded intro to the Fugs who were Reprise’s reisdent group of shockers before Zappa came along. The group, which consisted of the basic trio of Tuli Kupferberg, Ed Sanders and Ken Weaver, were very much part of the mid-sixties New York underground scene the post-Beat generation. Their E.S.P. material never saw light of day here, but nearly all their Reprise catalogue did Tenderness Junction, It Crawled into My Hand, Honest and The Belle of Avenue A. It is almost impossible to describe the Fugs’ characteristic melange of Rabelaisian obscenities, literary erudition, and hard-core country-and-western. All these albums are worth looking for although It Crawled is probably the best. Their last album Golden Filth, recorded live at the Fillmore East, never made it here, probably because of the extremely racy spoken intros to all the songs.

Another strange Reprise release was Mort Shuman’s first album My Death. Now here’s a man with a healthy ‘pop’ credential (remember “Save the Last Dance for Me" well, he co-wrote it). However My Death was something of a change of pace. Inside a cover of hirsute butch Mort we have nineteenth century obstetrics texts read to the music of Handel, orgasms to the Clementi Piano Sonatina, and lots of Brel and Brecht (trendy thespians take note!)

Another ’pop’ man who has done some amazing work is the great Van Dyke Parks. Like Randy Newman, VD did lots of work with groups like Harper’s Bizarre “Come into the Sunshine’’ and “The Debutante's Ball’’ are probably his best known tunes. His initial Warner's album, Song Cycle was the floptra of all time money-wise, Warners ended up offering copies at a cent each, and it was five years later before VD was able to record his Discovers America album, a fabulous and funky calypso-ish* treat with the hand of Lowell George all over the place. Parks’ version of Little Feat’s “Sailing Shoes” is quite magical. Incidentally, I suspect our local companies just threw up their hands in desperation when Parks’ third album Clang of the Yankee Reaper was released in late 1975 it certainly never made it here. The more we delve into this, it appears that the music world is indeed a Jekyll and Hyde business with writers paying their dues with journeyman projects so that they can eventually do their own thing'. Jimmy Webb is such a man, although he managed to do some tremendously interesting ‘con-

cept’ albums with late sixties people Richard Harris’ A Tramp Shining or The Yard Went on Forever, Thelma Houston’s Sunshower or the Fifth Dimension’s The Magic Garden which is a lovely lovely album. Webb’s solo career has had its ups and downs too, and his first album is still his best. Words and Music appeared in the early seventies and was such a notorious bad-seller in New Zild that H.M.V. were scared off Jimmy Webb for a while. In Words and Music Webb played most of the instruments himself, and wrote some of his sharpest lyrics as well as one of his loveliest sofigs in “P.F. Sloan”. And the deliberately stringy sound acts as a healthy corrective to his usual romantic tendencies. Space is running out so here are some odd left-overs: Geoff and Maria Muldaur’s Pottery Pie (Reprise) still surfaces occasionally, and you should also look out for Geoff’s first solo album Is Having a Wonderful time (Warners) before that vanishes forever. The Muldaurs were long-time residents in the Jim Kweskin Band, and Kweskin’s Garden of Joy (Reprise) is a fine example of their work. In fact, after listening to Garden of Joy and Pottery Pie one can see where Maria Muldaur gets the formula for her solo albums from.

Now what about putting pen to paper and giving us details of some of those favourite records that you are sure not enough people know about? Could make for a lively letters column.