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Al Barger and MoreThings - getting people's goats since 1998.
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November 17, 2005
The Fugs Are Down with the "Spades"
Look, race is awkward in America- even if you're the coolest hipsters around. This thought comes after listening to The Fugs Second Album from 1966, and particularly the song "Doin' All Right."
Poetry magazine Yeah publisher Tuli Kupferberg and Ed Sanders created the Fugs as almost a parody version of folk protest music, including contributions from Allen Ginsburg and such "songs" as "I Couldn't Get High" and "Boobs a Lot." They were pretty much a high-toned jug band with a (theoretically) slightly more intellectually upscale version of the basic revolutionary 60s ideals of sex and drugs and rock and roll. By intellectual, I mean stuff like their mission statement "We're the Fugs," in which they declared "We eat a pussy, we're not fussy."
On their second album, they became more like a legitimate rock band, backed up by real musicians. This certainly made for better actual music- though they're not going to make you forget the Lovin' Spoonful, much less the Velvet Underground.
One bit of lyric here stuck out real salient to me, a real timepiece of hep cat thinking. "Doin' All Right" has a lyric by friend and anti-war activist Ted Berrigan most noted for the lines "I’m not ever gonna go to Vietnam/I prefer to stay right here and screw your mom."
But the really funny line comes in the second verse. Just in passing, as an example of how alright he's doing, he notes, "I'm getting almost as much pussy as the spades."
Oh, holy crap. I'm not trying to be judgmental or anything like that. Rand knows I'm not the one to complain about someone's bad turn of phrasing on a racial issue.
Plus, you know they meant nothing bad. They obviously intended it as a compliment.
It's fairly benign, but it certainly is a racist sentiment, strictly speaking. That is, they're making a broad statement of behavior about a racial group. Plus, they're doing it by playing to what has often been considered some of the worst stereotyping of the race- the black man as superstud.
Except of course, in Fugs land those superstud stereotypes would be intended to be understood as COOL. Plus, the Fugs are within those bounds exalting the black man over themselves. They're getting almost as much pussy as the black guys.
The word "spade" caught my attention. But thinking it through, that particular word is not the real questionable issue. It's the thought underlying the line, and it would have been just as questionable no matter what exact term they used to refer to black men. It would be just as questionable if it were "I'm gettin' almost as much pussy as the African-Americans."
Basically, the point of interest to me is seeing how these hepsters try to wrap their mind around the particular racial weirdness of America. It's a bit like watching Bulworth.
Mostly though, I wonder what a black man might make of this. I've had The Boondocks in mind recently. So I guess I'm wondering what Aaron McGruder or young Master Huey would make of all this.
posted by Al at 11/17/2005 09:31:00 PM
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