The Shaggs: Who are parents?

"Good" and "bad" become really vexed issues when talking about the Shaggs, so it may be better to temporarily shelve them. "Fascinating" may be better -- "fascinating" in one of its more enjoyable senses. What amazes me about them is the sort of convoluted fact that their songs, the way the play them, absolutely do not make sense, and yet this somehow makes sense, and that's precisely what doesn't make sense about them. Everyone seems to be playing everything wrong, and yet all of the elements still fit together in some warped, completely alien fashion -- the drummer in particular seems to be playing other songs entirely, until you realize she actually is on-beat, only in some completely anti- intuitive way. If prog-rock guys managed to play like this, in so many different directions but somehow holding together, they'd be called wanky technical masters. So I suppose the beauty of the Shaggs is that they managed to do this seemingly by accident. Everything changes in some of those later recordings where they all manage to play to the same tempo.

And of course there's the whole innocence and beauty issue.

This is an interesting thread in the wake of more Strokeshype: What is real? What is the value of purity?. Does John Casablancas = Austin Wiggin?

Yeah, Scott -- the Shaggs will win any authenticity contest you can possibly devise. They're earnest in the way only the un-self- consciously young can be earnest; they're trying very, very hard to get their music across to you; it's all completely un- premeditated, to the point of not even attempting to "fix up" their many technical shortcomings.

But the irony there is that their very authenticity -- their authentic "badness," in certain senses -- means that much of their present-day listening is completely ironic listening. Which seems like such an insult to me, if not an outright cruel laughing-at- failure sort of thing. Listening to the Shaggs like that is like watching the Special Olympics for comedy value, as opposed to appreciating seeing people earnestly engaging in something and trying as hard as anyone else to do well, with the result just being different from everyday expectations of quality.

Oh, that's not to compare the Shaggs to being disabled. Listening to the Shaggs is more like just listening to children sing -- you're not necessarily loving it because it sounds like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, you're loving it because it gets to the heart of everything that's basic and fun about people singing.

In all honesty, I've always adored their cover of "Yesterday Once More." I wouldn't doubt that they sat under their sheets at night listening to the radio and when they get to the part in those songs when he's breaking her heart, they almost broke down and cried. They grew up so in love with the music they performed even when doing so wasn't, in a way, rational.

btw, it's Julian Casablancas, which of course sounds much prettier.

His father is John, the head of Elite Modeling. A half-joking reference to the possibility that, like the Shaggs, the Strokes were financied by daddy.

*financed*

Short answer: A band that both Frank Zappa and Lester Bangs (two complete, utter and hostile opposites) could like has to have something going for them. :-)

Long answer: Ditto what Nitsuh said upthread.

Is it time to mention the Raunchy Young Lepers, yet?

Oops. Too late.

Always wanted to know how Tomata-du-Plenti got a writing credit for a couple of Shaggs songs? Always thought he was the singer to The Screamers.

Always wanted to know how Tomata-du-Plenti got a writing credit for a couple of Shaggs songs? Huh - What?! Anyone got the LD?

>>Listening to the Shaggs is more like just listening to children sing ... <<

Good point. I agree. Now at the risk of belaboring this discussion, Why are the Shaggs better than the Brady Bunch (singing)? Aside from the Brady Bunch being strictly commercial - if you didn't know that - they were children singing. And you can't tell me they were overproduced bubblegum - because their records sound like they were made in about an hour.

(I'm not trying to make a point that the Brady Bunch were as good as the Shaggs - I'm just asking, why weren't they?)

Johny Bravo

The notes to one of the Rounder issues gives Painful Memories to Betty Wiggin/Hi Varieties/Tomata-du-Plenti/ASCAP and Shaggs Own Thing (vocal version to D. Wiggin & A. Wiggin, Jr/Hi Varieties/ Tomata-du-Plenti/ ASCAP. Publishing is credited to "Hi Varieties/ Tomata-du-Plenti /ASCAP, except where noted".

I know not what is going on though.

I haven't listened in years, so I may be all wrong, but I don't remember their songs being simple. I remember their using very strange song structures. Singing out of tune, and playing the beat clumsily, which they also did, may be childlike, but inventing one's own song structure isn't. From Susan Orlean's New Yorker profile several years ago I learned that the Wiggins sisters were mortified that they couldn't play better - they played music because their father forced them to; it's a sad story, actually. But nonetheless, they were originals, in a way that ineptitude cannot explain.