Help! Tuli Kupferberg of the Fugs
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I just read some disturbing news on The Fugs' website.
Here it is:
Tuli Kupferberg, co-founder of the Fugs, suffered a stroke a few months ago at his home in New York City, which has left him severely visually impaired, and in need of regular nursing care.
You can make a secure donation to Tuli's care by entering their site.
After treatment at a hospital in New York, followed by convalescence at a nursing home, Kupferberg now is back home, during which time his eyesight was improving. Unfortunately Tuli had a second stroke in September, a smaller stroke apparently, which affected his speech area slightly. He has continued to improve, but is still basically blind, and in need of 24 hour care.
For the last several years, the band he co-founded 45 years ago, has been in the studio completing a new CD, entitled Be Free, which features 5 of Tuli Kupferberg’s new tunes, including the magnificent anthem, “Backward Jewish Soldiers,” and a setting of his famous poem, “Greenwich Village of My Dreams.”
Tuli Kupferberg, who has just turned 86!!!, is an American treasure, a National wonder, a Gaian glory, a genius in the footsteps of Stephen Foster and other major tunesmiths, for songs such as “Nothing,” “Morning Morning, “ “Carpe Diem,” “Kill for Peace,” “The Ten Commandments,” “When the Mode of the Music Changes,” and, of course, “CIA Man,” which was featured on the recent Coen Brothers movie, Burn After Reading.
Tuli’s History as a Publisher and Cultural Leader:
Beginning in the late 1950s and early ’60s, Kupferberg became a leading Beat era poet and underground publisher, with periodicals such as Birth, Swing, and then nine issues of the magazine Yeah, from 1961-64.
His famous 1001 Ways to Beat the Draft was published by Grove Press in 1967; and 1001 Ways to Make Love, also published by Grove, in ’69.
He was arrested at the historic Exorcism of the Pentagon in October of 1967.
His poems and songs with the Fugs made him an integral part of the social revolutions of the 1960s and ’70s
One of his memorable books is the 1973, Listen to the Mockingbird, satiric poem-songs to known tunes.
He became a noted political cartoonist beginning around the late 1970s, and has a long running bi-weekly television show on public access in New York City.
At the time of his recent stroke, the Fugs had completed a CD of 14 new songs, Be Free. Be Free will appear early in 2010.
