How to Hear the Shaggs

With the recent announcement of preproduction plans for a Shaggs biopic starring the Fanning sisters, it is high time to start relistening, or, for most, listening, to their milestone LP Philosophy of the World. Released in 1969, this record stands alone in the world of pop music. There is nothing, seriously, nothing, quite like it. The Shaggs were a trio (and sometimes quartet) of sisters from a small New England town who, soon after forming their band, were ushered into a studio by their father and, despite the incredulity of the recording engineer, recorded this accidental masterpiece.

Released on a micro-label, it received virtually no attention for over a decade. Frank Zappa made mention of it early on in an interview as being one of his favorite records; Lester Bangs wrote a short piece on it in the early 80s. Eventually, the smarties in NRBQ reissued it to some fanfare and even cobbled together a second LP out of outtakes and live performances.

…the Shaggs were a great band. They were incompetent, wincingly awful, and probably talentless. And pretty damned brilliant.

That’s as much of the facts as I am going to give you. In the case of the Shaggs, facts are beside the point. Sure, go ahead and look them up on the web. Find out who they were, where they went, who their father was. Doesn’t matter. What matters is that record. And here’s why.

Philosophy of the World has oft been regarded as the World’s Worst Record, much in the way that Plan Nine From Outer Space has been dubbed the World’s Worst Movie, and Ed Wood the World’s Worst Filmmaker. Wood is not the world’s worst filmmaker, of course. Michael Bay is. Plan Nine is endlessly entertaining, charming and full of joy that makes you glad you’ve seen it…every time you see it. Wood was, in fact, an auteur. And a savant. But he was, in the end, a great filmmaker.

Similarly, the Shaggs were a great band. They were incompetent, wincingly awful, and probably talentless. And pretty damned brilliant. Again, what I am about to impart is not the truth. It is not fact. It is merely true.

Imagine three young girls, raised in such austere isolation that they had never heard music. They have reached puberty without ever having heard a song, perhaps not even the chirping of birds or the baying of dogs. One day, a stranger comes along with machines that make strange noise. The stranger shows these very nice young ladies a little bit about how to manipulate the machines to make different noise, and leaves them with vague instructions as to how they might use the machines to make short stories with sounds, stories about their own lives with words on top of the noises, and how to make the noises repeat enough to be retained in their own memories.

The Shaggs, in one fell swoop, reinvented song writing and band dynamics.

That’s not what happened. But that’s what it sounds like had happened. The Shaggs, in one fell swoop, reinvented song writing and band dynamics. The rules of music by which this record operates are not the rules we mere mortals generally associate with the making of music. Throw away the verse/chorus/bridge motif. Forget the notion of an instrumental solo. Disregard standard harmony. Reenvision the way instruments interact.

For instance, rethink lead guitar. Instead of an offset and refrain to distinguish verses and vocal lines, lets make lead guitar a co-singer. Drums? Why have them play the beat implied by the guitars, when they can function as more of a Greek chorus, commenting on everything else without necessarily relating in such a pedestrian fashion as to keep the rhythm. The rhythm is already there in the rest of the band. Have them do something entirely different! How about have them introduce AND finish a song?

What should songs be about? Love between boys and girls? Why write about that? Even those of us with experience know precious little about what we’re doing. You think teenaged girls know about love? Gee, no. Songs should be about kittens, and Halloween, and parents, and radios, and, well, things that are really interesting and that really matter.

And so the Shaggs reinvented the song. In doing so, they created one of the greatest albums ever made. More so than any other record I have ever heard, this record is sincere, guileless, naive, honest, and artless. It was not recorded to have hits. It was not recorded to become famous. It was not recorded to make a statement. It was not recorded to make money. It was recorded to express joy. It is the sweetest music ever made, and if you can’t hear it, you have a still heart behind your cold dead eyes.

There have been other records made with as little formal training. Amon Duul from Germany; the Godz out of New York City, Jandek from parts unknown. But all those records were made by people who knew what they were doing. They were crude, they were noisy, and often they were fun. But they lacked a certain honesty that flowed so freely from the Shaggs.

Imagine your training in mathematics did not extend beyond basic high school algebra. Imagine you were given a fairly complex problem in trigonometry. Now imagine that you solved that problem, perhaps clumsily, perhaps circuitously, but you solved it nonetheless. That would not be talent. Talent is the aptitude for acquiring skill. You have not acquired skill to solve the problem. You didn’t use talent. That, my friend, is genius.

And the Shaggs did not have talent. Their record shows virtually no skill. But they solved the problem of making music, not elegantly, not beautifully, but with genius. Go right out and find a copy of Philosophy of the World. It is the best worst record ever made.