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Marketed as the fourth album of the Fugs, so much so that it was released in 1975 with the subtitle “Fugs 4”, it technically wouldn't be the fourth record release of the “New York City” group as they had already released several works through the Reprise label. “Rounders Score” is in fact a collection with many early unreleased tracks.
However, the compilation is among the most interesting works of this eccentric protest folk-rock collective, featuring tracks from studio sessions in 1965, a time when Tuli Kupferberg, Ed Sanders, and Ken Weaver had set up their theatrical show consisting of insults against American bourgeois society, songs as anarchic as they are intelligently subtle, puppets simulating the human obscenity of war, and abhorrent acts denoting a deep sexual frustration inherent in society fueled by ignorance and institutionalized hypocrisy.
Sanders, Kupferberg, and Weaver were originally writers closer to the beat generation than to the psychedelic movement and were introduced to music by Peter Stampfel and Steve Weber (The Holy Modal Rounders), who accompanied them with various instruments not only live but also in the studio. The lyrics of the period were mostly conceived by the three founders, crystalized prose set to music: harsh, cruel, aggressive, politically incorrect, and quite angry. The compositions were entrusted to the “Rounders”, the duo that transformed protest folk into something very experimental, something that is definitely not for everyone. This recording proposal could serve as an ideal connecting vehicle between the disenchanted art of the Fugs and the Holy Modal Rounders, their musical mentors.
From the first record, originally released in 1965 by the Broadside label and reissued a year later by Esp Disk, are the most successful songs: “Boobs a Lot”, a hymn to abundant breasts, “Slum Goddess”, subliminal idealization of the ghetto, and the irreverent drunken tavern song “I couldn’t Get High”. Strangely missing is the fourth hit of the period, “Supergirl”, with which they incurred heavy accusations from feminists too engrossed in “lesbicare” to understand the message of Kupferberg's poetics, a rebellious genius of a generation light-years ahead. From the second self-titled album of 1966, which features a completely renewed lineup with John Anderson on electric bass, Vinny Leary on acoustic guitar, Pete Kearney on electric guitar, Lee Crabtree on keyboards, comes the sublime “Morning”, the anti-war anthem “Kill for Peace” (“pray that our God becomes a pacifist”, to paraphrase Kupferberg himself) and an excerpt from the electro-acoustic experiment “Virgin Forest”, the superb suite that combines spatial electronic sounds, real recordings, ethereal moments that anticipate by a year the Pink Floyd of "A Saucerful Of Secrets", and with the terrifying tribal recitations of “Squack man meets the lunatic Vagina” and “Dog style diversion”. From the third release Virgin Fugs, also a compilation of previously unreleased 1965 tracks published by Esp Disk when the Fugs had already signed a lucrative contract with Reprise, some outtakes from the first studio sessions are included, among them the frenetic “New Amphetamine Shriek”, the nonsensical “Caca Rocka”, and the rock in opposition “CIA Man”.
The album offers, in addition to the best (or worst) of the Fugs' embryonic period, the unreleased tracks from the American country folk repertoire such as the pseudo-instrumentals “Crowley Waltz”, “Fiddler a Dram”, and “Fishing Blues”, a solo piece by Peter Stampfel “Romping Through the Swamp” and two hilarious songs quaintly conceived and played by Tuli Kupferberg: “Defeated” and “Jackoff Blues”.
To conclude: the album cover is designed by a chimpanzee named Jezebel who dabbled in surrealist painting at the Portland zoo. Recommended for those minds who have grasped the difference between the Fugs free to fly and those tamed by the rules of the record business.
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