In 1948, Norman Mailer's highly acclaimed first novel The Naked And The Dead was published. A sign of the times, running throughout the work, was the author's use of the word "fug", instead of the more obvious expletive. That he dared use a euphemism so close to what he probably would liked to have said, was certainly one sign of the times. That no big publishing house would have touched the book without the compromise is another (even though in every other way the book is a hard-nosed realistic look at World War II). By the time Beat writers Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg formed their own band in the mid 60s, the name they chose - The Fugs - still seemed totally appropriate to the times. The sexual and political revolutions were only just beginning to flower - a lot about those spheres of personal and social life remained unsaid and unacted upon. The Fugs threw their boundless energy into breaking down barriers, being as outrageously outspoken as they could and, a keynote change of the new decade....having fun in the process! Ed Sanders was born August 17, 1939 in Kansas City. After dropping out of university, he hitchhiked to New York and became a part of the Beat Generation. In 1962, he opened the Peace Eye Bookstore on East 10th Street in the Village and started publishing the journal Fuck You: A Magazine Of The Arts. This period is evocatively recaptured in Ed's satiric memoirs of late 50s/early 60s New York City - Tales Of Beatnik Glory (published 1975, and again 1990 with additional material) - which is currently being made into a movie starring William Dafoe. Ed's other main claim to fame is as author of The Family, the classic text on the Manson family murders.Tuli Kupferberg was born September 28th, 1923 in New York. He spent more than 30 years as a Greenwich Village publisher and poet. His magazine Birth, though it only ran for 3 issues, was an important publication, acting as a forum for other writers such as Alien Ginsberg and LeRoi Jones. He also published the magazine Yeah and was anthologised in tracts such as The Beat Scene.In 1964, these two highly individual artists came together in The Fugs and the music of that group remains the single, most vital link between the earlier Beat movement and the (then coming) hippie age. Ed describes the band's early days: "We began to meet afternoons at Peace Eye to rehearse. These were strange rituals of shouted poetry, euphemistic multi-moans and testosterone-addled crooning, and oddly the store began to fill with listeners". The band added Texan Ken Weaver and the "out there" duo of Steve Weber and Peter Stampfel (better known as The Holy Modal Rounders) and cut their first album with Harry Smith producing (Harry was the guy who in 1952 had also produced the 3-box set Anthology Of American Folk Music for Folkways and effectively provided the source material for the folk and blues revivals in the USA). The album came out on Broadside and was then reissued on ESP-Disk as The Village Fugs. It contains such classics as Slum Goddess From The Lower East Side and the world-weary, nihilistic, name-checking mantra of Nothing among its 10 anarchic sides. For this CD release, an extra 11 tracks have been added, some taken from additional studio tracks, some "live" performances from the Peace Eye Bookstore or the Bridge Theatre and one from The Tuli Tapes. Among the newly discovered gems are the Fugs anthem We're The Fugs (featuring their first hesitant steps to a recording) and a catchy little title called In The Middle Of Their First Recording Session The Fugs Sign The Worst Contract Since Leadbelly's.......'Nuff said that Ace have reissued5 Fugs albums - 3 drawing on their earliest ESP material , their 2 re-formed 80s Fugs albums for New Rose and a1994 issue of their own 'woodstock festival'!