They were pretty bad but there were plenty of garage/psych bands that could give them a run for their money. For instance, The Godz, who I liked when I was young and stoned.
Now that I think of it, Big Brother and the Holding Company weren’t all that much better either. And others of their ilk.
That might generate some pushback.
They did have a better singer. The rest of the guys sounded like they had just been introduced to their instruments shortly before going into the studio.
There are a surprising number of Shaggs clips on YouTube. If you want a . . . distinctive sample of their work, I’d start with “My Pal Foot Foot.”.
After that, you’re on your own, although it’s amusing to see the later concerts, where the backup musicians are trying their best to imitate the original sound… No matter how hard they tried, they just can’t deliberately play that badly,.
This is a decent short recap:
I don’t want to introduce even a slight hijack, but, as one who has actually attended a live performance by Big Brother and the Holding Company in the 60s, I have to step up here with the aforementioned pushback. They were not a garage band or some frat guys who got together. Most of them came from a jazz background and they played the Avalon Ballroom regularly as a rock band. They were AT LEAST a very good regional band.
Now, some of their recordings were of pretty poor quality, but I can assure you that they could actually play and sing.
For me, they fit quite well in the same category as the Portsmouth Symphonia or The Residents. It’s really hard to play that free from any preconceived notions of ‘good music’.
I remember the drummer for that musical about The Shaggs commenting on how hard it was to play those drum parts!
Despite how tragic the back story of the whole project is, there is something quite interesting about hearing music that dares to be that ‘outside’. I don’t know about ‘outsider genius’, but I’d rather listen to them than anything I’ve heard AI produce…
[Emphasis added.]
Hey now! 
But yea, The Shaggs were bad by any objective measure.
Zappa described The Shaggs as “better than The Beatles.” But knowing his sense of humor, it’s obvious he was just taking a swipe at The Fab Four.
My brother may still have the tapes from his high school band. On these tapes, he and his friends would just bang on their instruments and make noise, and my brother screamed obscenities at the top of his lungs.
A decade later, a few years after my brother’s brief sojourn as a college radio deejay (see footnote), I was telling someone at work about it, and they joked that a band like that, if it existed now, could go to Seattle and get rich quick. (Early 1990s, of course)
Footnote: When my brother was a late 1980s college deejay, and when Nirvana’s “Nevermind” blasted its way to the top of the charts, I asked him if he ever played anything from their debut album, “Bleach.” He said he did, and if a time traveler had come to him and told him that in the fall of 1991, this band would release an album that would basically hit #1 in every country that keeps a chart, and turn popular music on its ear forever, he’d have said they were nuts.
Ok, I broke down and listened.
I sincerely think it was recorded by aliens, Probably pakleds. Aliens that have no music center of their brains, who are as baffled by humans as possible, but they want to fit in.
“We look for tunes. Tunes to make us go.”
I can’t explain it. There’s something there but I don’t know what it is. It’s obviously rehearsed but the musicians seem not to be able to hear each other. The untuned guitars and random melodies push the listener away but we can’t leave–something holds us. The sincerity? The naivete? Or are we just transfixed by the horror of the situation?
It’s likely that I am seeing clothes on the emperor that aren’t there but I’m not alone. Frank Zappa may have but probably didn’t call them better than the Beatles but, many people who take music seriously do see something there. Zappa and Jonathan Richman may hold opinions that are a little “special”. But honest music reviewers see it too.
Are they outsider geniuses? Of course not! It’s inconceivable to me that whatever worthwhile in that was intentionally created. This music could never have been made by skilled musicians but I can’t imagine non-musicians doing it either. I have tried and I cannot begin to imagine what kind have people could have done this. Was it necessary to have been forced to practice for months without caring about or wanting to make music? I have no answers.
I don’t hope to change anyone’s opinion about them. Maybe I don’t even want to. Maybe I just want to maintain the illusion that I know something you don’t but there’s something there–pre-verbal–I can feel it but I can’t say what it is.
It’s been mentioned that Foot Foot is almost impossible to cover; I wonder how different the song was every time they played it. They probably couldn’t replicate it themselves.
Interesting. There DOES seem to be a certain musically autistic element going on with the Shaggs. Like yes, they’re all on stage or in the studio assembled together as a group, and yes, they are ostensibly performing the same ‘song’, but any cooperation or interaction or interplay between the ‘musicians’ gives one the impression of being entirely accidental.
I would wager that listening to individual recording tracks of them would be merely unpleasant, however, there’s a certain synergy in their dysfunction that makes it more awful than the mere sum of its parts.
There aren’t just bad aspects of their music, but rather, every. single. musical. element is performed wrongly.
EDIT: I’m reminded of accounts by German soldiers after encountering American infantry for the first time. Sometimes Americans would conduct attacks that were so ill-considered that it never even crossed the minds of the tactically competent Germans that someone would attempt it, and thus they were sometimes taken completely by surprise. So too, I think a professional musician would be constitutionally incapable of performing as badly as the Shaggs because no matter how off-key or off-tempo they try to be they’re always plagued with the knowledge of what sounds right. Every last one of the Shaggs seem to be completely unburdened by this.
For sure. A good musician can play off time or off key but it would be harder to do so unmusically.
Very hard for a good singer to sing badly. Jean Stapleton was a trained singer who performed on Broadway. She could sing with a bad voice but she didn’t really sing badly.
That particular song isn’t much to listen to, but damn, the Godz were rock and roll machines. There is more sustained drive in Rock and Roll Machine then most bands could come up with.
I get Trout Mask Replica vibes. But not nearly as good as TMR.
Lucille Ball was a great example of someone who could sing horribly or well depending on the situation.