http://theragblog.blogspot.com/2010/07/tuli-kupferberg-of-fugs-rocks-inner.html
Beat poet, humanist, political mystic, rock star:
The Fugs' Tuli Kupferberg dies at 86
13 July 2010
By Carl R. Hultberg
During the same teenage trip to NYC in 1966 when I witnessed Howlin'
Wolf on MacDougal Street I also got to see another band. It was the
next evening and even though I was out of money, the shill at the
door to the Players Theatre corralled me in to see a group I'd never
heard of. Don't worry, you'll love it, he said as he ushered me into
a place that looked just like a dark church.
I sat down on a pew and after a few more audience members had been
dragged in, the drummer came onstage and sat behind the kit. He
looked like the meanest Hells Angel I had ever seen. Make that the
only Hells Angel I'd ever seen.
A young kid who looked younger than me (16) plugged in an electric
guitar and after a bit of anti-showbiz stage business, what seemed to
be the lead singer emerged. He was scary too, and old, but it looked
like he might have a sentimental streak. Maybe. The band was pretty
amateurish, except for the kid on lead guitar.
The gruff singer was perhaps intentionally bad, a spoof maybe,
reading his pretentious poetry from typewritten sheets. The lyrics
were deep, mysterious, some sort of freeform Egyptian temple hokum.
After a couple of numbers -- were they actually songs? -- the stage
darkened and a solo spotlight fixed on a new figure entering stage
right. He shook a broomstick with bottlecaps nailed all over it as he
shuffled in like an inner city shaman
God was he ugly. His face was all pock marked (actually freckles),
characteristically Jewish in the sense of the worst evil medieval
stereotypes. A gargoyle. Uglier than Uncle Fenster or Tiny Tim and
yet... there was a glow of gentleness and goodness that was
impossible to explain. Despite all my waspy-whitebread cultural
upbringing I fell in love with this individual immediately, even
though he was probably the ugliest member of the meanest looking
group I had ever seen.
It didn't hurt that the song he was chanting over the surging rock
beat was titled "Jack Off Blues." Wow, now that was some kind of
naked adolescent human honesty I'd never seen before. The band was
the Fugs and the "singer" was Tuli Kupferberg. Suddenly they broke
into a startlingly beautiful song by Tuli, "Morning Morning," with
the exquisite guitar work of (yes)16 year old Jonathan Kalb (brother
of Danny) that went on for maybe 20 minutes. What a mixture of
opposites. Rock and roll art and beauty emerging from the derelict
dregs of the Lower East Side. Could dirty old men Beat poets posing
as a Beatles band still get the chicks?
These are the obvious concerns of poetry and the Fugs certainly got
that one right.
Alas, the Fugs never got to be as big as the Beatles. They got bumped
out of their spot at the Players Theatre in the late 1960s by the
Mothers of Invention, another scary rock group that actually used
professional musicians. Frank Zappa, the leader of the Mothers,
called the Fugs the Three Stooges. Frank's own sense of humor was
just as sexual as the Fugs but actually far more cynical and
juvenile. He never had a shred of Tuli's earnest poetic humanist
sensibilities. Lucky for Frank he was such a hot guitar player.
In the 1980s I was part of the All Species Circle, presenting totem
art projects, doing performances wearing animal masks in public.
Another member of the group, Rick Heisler, did a humor cassette with
Tuli Kupferberg and I got to do the photography for the cover. On our
way out to the shoot in Prospect Park, Tuli picked up a stray piece
of trash on the ground which we later used as part of the arrangement
for the photograph. It was a banjo shaped cast iron burner from an
oil furnace. Later I realized that the same object had appeared on the
cover of the first Fugs album in 1965. Like I said: shamanic magic.
Tuli passed away this week -- Monday, July 11 -- after suffering a
series of strokes. He was 86. He had been active in the Village since
1929. His self deprecating humor and uncompromising political
mysticism was a constant influence in the magic zone. Poetry,
pacifism, rock and roll music, later cartoons in the Village Voice. A
giant in the field of modesty. A true poet and definitely one of my
inspirations in life.
Fug on Tuli. What a beautiful man.
--
[See URL for videos and images.]
.
0 comments:
Post a Comment