I’m gonna guess most of you are passing familiar with this girl group from the 60s. I got to reading about them, and there’s a story there somewhere. Their dad was a Bizarro Murray Wilson. Where Murray pushed his boys to excel and put out timeless music, the Shagg’s dad just bought them guitars and declared them a band thanks to some prophecy from his mother. And they had zero interest in becoming proficient at their instruments. After playing around their town, dad booked studio time so he could record them “while they were hot”. Here’s their big hit, “My Pal Foot Foot”
I saw an off-Broadway musical about them a while back! I don’t remember anything about it other than the music was really strange.
Pretty sure there are two guitars and drums but no bass guitar.
There are people who claim that the Shaggs were outsider musical geniuses. That, far from being incompetent, they were actually playing the way they did as a deliberate stylistic choice.
Those people are idiots.
I love a lot of music that some people think is “noise”, and I can tell you: the Shaggs were just hopeless at music.
A fourth sister Rachel later played bass. She only appeared on one track of their original album but did more on the “unreleased” issue stuff. It doesn’t appear that she ever did a reunion thing.
When describing The Shaggs, I usually say something like, “Imagine you’re a fourth grader and the class is going to have a Music Day. You have no musical talent at all, but the teacher gives you a guitar and tells you that you have to stand up front and perform…and that it has to be an original song.”
I’m surprised to see I am not. I wonder how I missed them. I was right there.
From this thread, I don’t think I’ll go look them up.
And Teacher picks out the costumes.
When discussing the merits of modern art you can almost always hear the opinion - “You call that ART? My four year old kid brother could do better!..” The musical analog must compare the Shaggs to one’s talentless young sibling.
Great band name, though. With a name like that, you expect the hair-dos to look like Jane Fonda in Klute or Joan Jett in her heyday.
I’d read somewhere recently where a group tried to painstakingly recreate the Shaggs music. Right down to having their instruments precisely mis-tuned just so.
The mind boggles.
The Dead Milkmen wrote a song about The Shaggs. Kinda.
I had to sit through a high school recital where the student teacher tried to convince the audience that any collection of noises is music by having student bang on objects at random times. He is wrong. It was not music.
And stop with the Outsider genius malarkey. As I understand it, they were essentially forced into performing in public by their step dad. At a subsequent reunion, more than anything else they were reportedly interested in…getting paid.
I think some people like to find things that are distinctive, maybe somewhat because it makes them feel like they have special knowledge, but I do think some folks may have liked them unironically. At least a few, anyway.
They were going to make a movie about them with Elsie Fisher (Eighth Grade) in one of the roles, but that seems to have disappeared.
I was in college radio in the 80s so obviously I knew all about the Shaggs.
With a name like that, I expect them to be women who like to, well, shag.
“Ooo, behave!”