BIOGRAPHY
The Fugs came together in New York's Lower East Side in late 1964 when poets Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg decided to merge Beat poetry with rock and roll, with Ken Weaver joining on drums. Kupferberg named the group after a euphemism from Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead, and folklorist Harry Smith helped them sign to Folkways Records. Known for comedic, satirical, and explicit lyrics alongside fierce anti-Vietnam War stances, including Sanders' 1967 'Exorcism of the Pentagon,' the band drew notoriety after a 1966 obscenity arrest tied to Sanders' Peace Eye Bookstore. Their track 'Virgin Forest' is cited as one of the earliest psychedelic freak-out recordings. The group disbanded around 1970 but reunited in the mid-1980s, releasing No More Slavery in 1985 and continuing to perform since.