CIA Man. The Fugs. 1967. ESP Disk.

 The excitement begins almost at once. An introductory guitar lick followed by the authoritative voice of the Ghost of History Present, also known by his stage name, New York genius Tuli Kupferberg. Equal parts reportage, cultural unmasking, and satirical agitprop—all of it definitively rock and roll—the Fugs’ CIA Man generates excitement by shrinking the distance between audience and performers, the Fugs’ instinct for spontaneity connecting us with inspired creative thought processes rooted in the traditions of high and low cultural Jewish modernity. Before the academic and literary acknowledgment of the voice of multiculturalism, post-modernism drew attention to the artistic potential for restating twentieth century modernist ideas in audio, video, and written languages appropriated from popular culture. This, along with Kupferberg’s personal history of lower east side radical bohemianism and political left wing activism, shaped the sensibility that emerges from CIA Man. Both Kupferberg and Fugs co-founder Ed Sanders deployed their fearless, anarchic imaginations in service of a career of launching incautious challenges to American social and cultural conventions, the outcomes of which, anticipating an overarching revolution of mass freedom and equality, eviscerated conformity and established a working, creative model of late century civil disobedience in the age of mass media. Though that revolution failed to materialize, CIA Man’s minimalist, garage rock aesthetic sparks our own capacity for skepticism and individual rebellion in the face of governmental control systems attempting to corrupt the absolute human right of liberty. When Kupferberg died in 2010 we lost an influential American artist who had never stooped for concessions to fame or commercial success, “who,” in the words of Allen Ginsburg, writing in Howl, “jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually happened and walked away unknown and forgotten into the ghostly daze of Chinatown soup alleyways & firetrucks, not even one free beer.” The irradiative heat from Kupferberg’s improbable resurrection would have made a lesser man a mere god. It made Kupferberg, and his peculiar genius, a rock and roll star.

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