A flood of commercialisation and west coast hippy mindlessness inundated America and the world, but floating among the flotsam and jetsam is the Fugs. They are irreverent, naughty, wildly creative, poetic, satirical, radical. They grew out of the Beat poet movement, but they seemed to skip over the whole early folk scene with Dylan and all that, and jump straight into an anarchic psychedelic collective musical project.

Here Ed Sanders tells the story and it is an absolutely thrilling ride, from the pre-Fugs days of his poetry journal "Fuck You - A Magazine of the Arts", through the cultural hub of the Peace Eye Bookstore (where visiting freaks could bed down for the night if they had nowhere else to stay), through to the Fugs' almost accidental acceptance by the music industry and the Folkways label. Ed witnessed menacing American nazis on the fringes of the march on Washington, when MLK declared that he has a dream. The Fugs led the exorcism of the Pentagon at the height of the protest movement against the Vietnam War ("out, demons out!"), and they brought a raw, spontaneous lust to their music, be it poetic or puerile.

Throughout it all Ed Sanders rolls along with remarkable stability, a calm voice in the storm, following his muse of the moment - the ancient Greek poets or maybe the slum goddess from the lower east side. He and the late Tuli Kupferberg remain guiding lights.

The garden is open. Grope for peace.