Fugg - FuggDrucked (EP)

Today's Free Music is a real blast from the past for me, the 1997 FuggDrucked EP from Wollongong fuzz-punk band Fugg. I'd like to say a big thank you to Ronny from the band for not only granting us permission to put this up but also for providing some guide-work for the songs. Please download (right click and save on the titles) and enjoy! Here's Ronny...

The cd was our first 'serious' recording, having done 3 or 4 demos and vinyl releases. We did it at Powerhouse in Alexandria with Russ Pilling before he moved to Damien Gerrard studios (I still record with him these days, great guy and excellent engineer). Anyway, as Fugg had 2 writers/vocalists there was a kind of friendly competetion/rivalry at the time to come up with material.

1. Distortion Saved My Teenage Arse
This was a very new one I wrote at the time, just before we were going in to record. The title was your typical "I was a real geek at school but punk rock got me through" type sentiment, and Triple J picked up on it pretty quick. They had a DJ at the time, Jane Gazzo, and she left a message on our answering machine telling us she loved it. To us that was pretty bigtime. We shot a clip for it in an art gallery with no real storyboard and an extremely loose bunch of half baked ideas. The result, embarrassingly, is still up on Youtube somewhere. We tried to get distro for the cd based on that track which Triple J were playing a bit, and was also played on Triple M, Triple Z, and numerous community radio stations. It was pretty frustrating that the song was getting played but there was no way to buy the cd except at gigs. We were getting a lot of shows around Sydney and Wollongong with Nancy Vandal, Frenzal Rhomb, Six Foot Hick, The Meanies, Custard and a whole bunch of bands that were going at the time, plus playing Canberra, Newcastle, Jindabyne, Brisbane and later on Victoria, but the deal eluded us despite us sending free cigarettes with every bio we sent out to record companies.

2. Living with your mum
Was pretty much a direct description of Adam's life at the time, but was probably true of half the people we were playing to. It was a great tune which was originally the track we thought might get some attention, and always went down well. Great fun to play with 3 of us doing the backing vox, completely out of key.

3. I'm Lonely
A hangover from some earlier pre-Fugg material I had that suited the band's punkier end very well. Nathan our drummer, for no apparent reason other than it seemed like a great laugh, did the Scottish accent over the intro, and Adam got his girlfriend to speak all the porno stuff over the end of the outro. They split up shortly afterwards and he could never listen to it again.

4. Eat Me
A potent anti-religious track written by Adam, who went to an all boys Catholic school which later became embroiled in the kind of sexual abuse cases that would become commonplace in the '90s. It was the first time we used a keyboard in our recordings (which in later versions of the band was a permanent fixture). An absolute ripper.

5. Ma's Bar
A strange tale of the horrific discovery that one's mother was in fact born with both sets of genitalia. I have no idea what the reference point for this one was, but it was one of our most popular live tunes, particularly the refrain 'it's a lolly, it's a lilly, it's a real sweetmeat, dad's a mister twice guy, and he really loved to eat Ma's bar'.

6. Komanarty
This was a re-recording of one of our early demos. One of Adam's strangest lyrics,and frankly even after he explained it to us, we didnt get it. However, it was another ripper to play live and this recording far exceeded the early one.

7. KB
Given there were the 2 writers, we sometimes did get a rare contribution from either our lead guitarist Grant or drummer Nathan, and in the interests of band democracy they were included no matter how shit they were. This one was written by Nathan and sung by Grant (which started a tradition on Fugg recordings that Grant would get at least one vocal with every release, which were mercifully few and far between).

The cd artwork featured a picture of Princess Di aged around 10 (she was hot news at the time seeing as she'd just died and we had no artwork ideas of our own). The back cover was shot in a lagoon after an enormous food fight photography session. It had a bit of a DEVO feel about it, all of our stage costumes at the time were identical which reflected our love of bands that were immediately identifiable by their look, such as KISS, ABBA, the Ramones, etc. My main recollection of the time was that it was enormous fun and a massive adrenalin rush. Later recordings rarely captured FUGG as well as this one did.