Jeffrey Lewis - Works By Tuli Kupferberg (1923-2010) [CD]

This recent album I've recorded, is all covers of Tuli (Fugs) Kupferberg songs. Tuli died in 2010, and every year since then I've organized an annual tribute concert in which I pick an assortment of Tuli songs and I assemble a band of musicians to play with me (sometimes including Peter Stampfel, appropriate 'cuz he was in the original Fugs lineup with Tuli in 1965). Each year I tell myself I'll get around to making a proper recording of some of these songs, in a studio, but it has taken till now for me to have enough time to get around to it.

So here's the result, which is 15 of the songs, some of which are known from Fugs albums, others from Tuli solo albums and obscure side projects, others from Tuli's published books of never-recorded poems/lyrics which I'm here setting to music, and others are just from personal cassettes and demos and stuff like that, never publicly released. I would not call this a "best-of" Tuli Kupferberg, because any "best-of Tuli" would include at least 5 of his greatest songs which are NOT on this album (for instance, my album does not include versions of his most-famous songs Nothing, Kill for Peace, Supergirl or CIA Man). This is just a collection of interesting material created over decades by an interesting person who was not quite a songwriter but just a general creative, satirical, philosophical character, and a real New York City original.

- Jeffrey Lewis