The Fugs

Enter the Fugs, Greenwich Village folk-rock preacher-lovers who have sprung full grown and screaming from Allen Ginsberg's beard. Champions of moral disarmament, they sing out for the people who, according to Ginsberg's liner notes on their second album, "make love with their eyes open, maybe smoke pot & maybe take LSD & look inside their heads to find the Self-God Walt Whitman prophesied for America."

That's one side--the good guys in polka dots and paisley. "Who's on the other side?" asks Ginsberg rhetorically. "People who think we arebad." The lines are drawn. "Total assault on the Culture," orders Ed Sanders, the Fugs lead singer, as he strikes out with ballads of contemporary protest points of view, and general dissatisfaction.

In the face of such Burroughsian challenges the other side typically seeks refuge behind the grey, authoritarian prose of the law. In Massachusetts, whoever sells to a person under 18 anything which is "obscene, indecent or impure, harmful to minors, or manifestly tends to corrupt the morals of youth" faces imprisonment for five years and a $5000 fine, Chapter 272, Section 28, of the Massachusetts General Laws Annotated proclaims.

In Cambridge, the other side is repelling the Fugs assault without recourse to law. Last month, the parents of a minor filed a formal criminal complaint against Briggs and Briggs for sellingThe Fugs, a record which, claimed the parents, was indeed "harmful to minors" under the provisions of Section 28. In a subsequent meeting with Cambridge Judge Lawrence T. Feloney, spokesmen for Briggs and Briggs agreed not to sell The Fugs or The Village Fugs, their first album. The judge dismissed the case without determining the legal status of the records.

The other side just couldn't cope with the Fugs' "Whitmanic orgy yawp." The Fugs contains a number of songs ("Frenzy," "Skin Flowers," "Group Grope," and "Doin' All Right") which are uninhibited, if awkward, paeans to sex love. Sample lyrics:

When your breast comes out of heaven

I rejoice till morning.

Or:

I'm not ever going to Vietnam

I prefer to stay right here and screw your mom.

Sung to the tune of Chuck Berry's "School Days," "Dirty Old Man" is a riotous parody, a reductio ad absurdum of the other side's stereotype of the Fug-like hippie, the bearded beatnik with "thrill pills for all you chickies, funny cigarettes for you boys."

Hanging out by the school yard gate,

Looking up every dress I can...

Communist literature in my hands,

Pees in all the bushes I can --

I'm a dirty old man.

Ginsberg's liner notes are even more relentless. "Dirty Old Man? Who said he was dirty, some other dirty old man masturbating in the bathroom with one hand and hypnotizing you with the Network official News thru a microphone in the other hand?"

It's one thing to express shock, quite another to brand the Fugs obscene and "manifestly tending to corrupt the morals of youth." "I think we help their morality," says Sanders seriously. "We give them alternative ways of viewing their sexuality. And it's not all sexual, you know. It's all-tied up in literature, politics, and economics. It's satirical and funny. I know the record has 'redeeming social importance.'"

In terms of Section 28, Sanders is probably right. As long as the record is not blatantly prurient, the blunt words and sexual allusions have no bearing on its legal status. In a 1962 decision which vindicated Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer, the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled: "It was not relevant that the book at many places was repulsive, vulgar, or grossly offensive in use of four-letter words and in detailed and coarse statement of sexual episodes."

The Fugs positively reek of "redeeming social importance." While their lyrics can be brutally sharp--"Kill for Peace" is a savage attack on the Vietnam war--their message is one of love. Writes Ginsberg, the funniest of the hippie saints, "Birchites are lacklove, Republicans and Democrats too are lacklove, Communists lack love, Narco, fuzz and White South Governors lack love. I say make love to them. They need it most. We all have to be funny saints to survive."

But there is no love fall-out over Cambridge. Says a Briggs and Briggs spokesman, "We don't want that kind of business. We should lean more to Beethoven and Brahms." Although they are at this point legally entitled to sell the Fugs records, other Cambridge stores, at the suggestion of the police, have followed the cautious example of Briggs and Briggs. They would rather voluntarily ban the records than face a court case, even though they would appear to have a good chance of winning. "It's too much trouble--just for one record," explains a spokesman for Minute Man Radio. "While the Coop opposes censorship, on the part of public bodies and individuals," says merchandising manager Al Zavelle, "this is not a record which we think is worth fighting for. It's a question of where you're willing to take a stand."

Retorts Bernard Stollman, president of New York's ESP Disk Ltd., which produces and manufactures the Fugs records, "Man, action speaks louder than words. The Cambridge police have successfully intimidated Cambridge merchants. The Coop thinks it can choose its battle line. But that's wrong. Censorship is like pregnancy. If a woman is a little bit pregnant, she's pregnant, man. The Coop has a good reputation, but they're blowing the whole thing."

Now in its second month, the Fugs ban--censorship by police suggestion--is having an effect beyond the city limits of Cambridge. A number of dealers, hoping to avoid a confrontation with authorities, have removed the Fugs records from the racks. "It might have been from something objectionable, from what we gather," says one saleslady at Jordan Marsh in Boston. "Indecent," snaps the Book Clearing House. "Too dangerous,"" explains Vara's in Medford. And Farrington's of Arlington has this solution: "We don't have it in regular stock," says the manager. Lowering his voice, he continues, "But we can get it for you on special order."

Stollman is perplexed--and a little pleased--by the banned-in-Cambridge status of the Fugs. "These records are selling all over the country, even in deep-dyed--triple-dyed, if you please--Baptist, fundamentalist Texas. Everywhere except Cambridge." To capitalize on the publicity value of the ban, however, Stollman has to find a commercial organization to place the records on sale and so precipitate a test case to determine the legal status of the records. At present, he can't find any takers.

If all else fails, Stollman says that he will come to Cambridge, set up a cardtable, and personally peddle the records. Before he takes the step, however, he has offered to let Harvard students do their bit for the First Amendment. His proposition: if a student will contract to serve as the Cambridge outlet for the Fugs records. Stollman will pay a commisson on sales and guarantee all court costs when the student is arrested. The plan obviously has great publicity value for ESP Disk Ltd. At the same time, he cheerfully suggests, it's a potentially great caper. Money, Fame, Excitement. A day in court; probably more.