Not Just Another Reunion Concert

August 31, 2017 7:31 PM

(Single link New Yorker review) The Shaggs have been linked to twelve times on Metafilter. But not since 2015. Recently, they had their first reunion concert in forty years. And, perhaps, their last.
posted by kozad (21 comments total)

[Insert drawing]

I mean. It's just

It's perfect, is what it is.
posted by janey47 at 9:00 PM on August 31, 2017 [6 favorites]

I'm glad this happened for the people who are into it.
posted by rhizome at 9:51 PM on August 31, 2017 [1 favorite]

Certainly their last. But a band with just two of the three sisters, who sang only and were backed by a bunch of young musos is no form of The Shaggs that I'd stand behind. I don't begrudge them the gig, of course--I just hope they made off with some serious cold, hard cash.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 9:55 PM on August 31, 2017 [1 favorite]

The whole exercise of reconstructing a Shaggs gig, identical to the untutored idiosyncracies of the original recordings, reminds me a bit of Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard's File Under: Sacred Music, a similarly quixotic project.
posted by acb at 5:43 AM on September 1, 2017

The black t-shirted middle aged guy collector / super-fan who says "fuck" a lot for emphasis (full disclosure: basically, me) has started to make me really uneasy as a type and as a ubiquitous musical commentator.

The Shaggs' LP is a mysterious, sometimes genuinely moving, sui generis piece of folk art - either it grabs you or it doesn't, and I don't know that there's that much more to say about it. I think the Wiggin sisters are right in being both wary of and mostly disinterested in its long music dude-fueled afterlife.
posted by ryanshepard at 6:14 AM on September 1, 2017 [5 favorites]

Have there been many bands covering the Shaggs? If so, I'm wondering how they approached it: did they meticulously imitate the original recordings, or rewrite them into more conventional songs in their own style, or somewhere in between?
posted by acb at 6:19 AM on September 1, 2017

Have there been many bands covering the Shaggs?

Yes.
posted by ryanshepard at 6:21 AM on September 1, 2017

I don't like this. I know they are adults, and they can make their own decisions, but it seems like rather than sharing enjoyment with them, people are enjoying the music at the women's expense. It seems so icky.
posted by Literaryhero at 7:06 AM on September 1, 2017 [4 favorites]

BBC Radio 4 Interview: Jon Ronson talks to The Shaggs (10 May 2011)
posted by Mister Bijou at 7:17 AM on September 1, 2017 [1 favorite]

That's a good piece (by Howard Fishman); it says just about everything worth saying about the Shaggs and this strange one-off sort-of-revival. I just hope the remaining sisters are reasonably happy with their lives and don't get put through any more of this crap.
posted by languagehat at 7:57 AM on September 1, 2017

The whole point of the Shaggs is their knee-wobbling innocence, their state of being as a cargo cult musical act, as if guitars and drums and microphones were airdropped onto hitherto unknown desert tribes. Carefully reconstructed spontaneity is somewhat... off-putting.

If the Wiggins enjoy the end result, more power to them. It didn't read to me like they did, entirely.
posted by delfin at 8:17 AM on September 1, 2017 [1 favorite]

The Wiggins primarily kept their eyes down, glued to the music stand they shared in front of them. They did not seem at ease. Were they experiencing flashbacks to episodes, decades past, when they would allegedly be heckled and even had things thrown at them?

Yeah, man, it's all about the scene. Or their asshole Dad. Many sides.
posted by rhizome at 8:17 AM on September 1, 2017

It's really bothering me for some reason that the Shaggs have the same, unusual, last name as the kids from Ender's Game. Did Orson Scott Card listen to the Shaggs and imagine an alternate universe sci-fi fanfic where their descendents save the world?
posted by capricorn at 1:48 PM on September 1, 2017

I'm nearly into my third decade of writing, recording, and playing music. I've made multiple attempts to appreciate The Shaggs, but every time I do, I flash back to my first attempts at making Depeche Mode-esque synth-pop in my parents' basement. The idea of a cult following springing up around those recordings and overshadowing everything else I've done since makes me more than a little queasy.
posted by tantrumthecat at 9:04 PM on September 1, 2017 [1 favorite]

How do you feel about Beefheart?
posted by Joseph Gurl at 9:05 PM on September 1, 2017

The Shaggs aren't a joke to me. I earnestly and unironically enjoy the Shaggs, and other much less conventional acts. In a world where Jackson Pollock and James Joyce were once considered leaders in their respected fields, is this so hard to accept?
posted by idiopath at 9:32 PM on September 1, 2017 [2 favorites]

I've made multiple attempts to appreciate The Shaggs, but every time I do, I flash back to my first attempts at making Depeche Mode-esque synth-pop in my parents' basement. The idea of a cult following springing up around those recordings and overshadowing everything else I've done since makes me more than a little queasy.

Exactly. The Shaggs don't line up with the conventional outsider/visionary-art narrative; in that, the artist is compelled by a powerful vision, feeling an intrinsic need to create or express something, one that breaks through the limitations of their talents or skills and ends up with an artifact whose power is inextricably tied up with its technical flaws. With The Shaggs, if there was a vision, it belonged to the girls' father, who dreamt that they were a band and forced them to be one, to their reluctance.

There may also be a dimension of women in a patriarchial society being conditioned to please and acquiesce; the Wiggins girls obediently doing their best to write and record songs, despite lack of intrinsic interest in doing so, and then, decades later, doing their best, as meek, dutiful women do, to please the hipdude vinylbeards who have elevated The Shaggs to a cultural signifier.
posted by acb at 4:01 AM on September 2, 2017 [3 favorites]

You said exactly what I was thinking, acb.

As for Captain Beefheart, if anything he was the polar opposite of The Shaggs. He knew exactly what he was doing and exerted control over others to ensure his vision.
posted by Literaryhero at 4:21 AM on September 2, 2017 [2 favorites]

A crucial distinction is that Beefheart, Pollock, and Joyce were doing it on purpose.
posted by rhizome at 11:50 AM on September 2, 2017

As for Captain Beefheart, if anything he was the polar opposite of The Shaggs. He knew exactly what he was doing and exerted control over others to ensure his vision.

Yes, but the musical results are the closest "famous" music to what The Shaggs did. I think the Wiggins were also "doing it on purpose," though, and the linked article supports that view. But either way, I don't need intentionality to find art in something--who hasn't listened to the beautiful sounds of birds or gazed in wonder at the artless beauty of children's fingerpaintings? The Shaggs' story is more complex, of course, and more poignant because of it, but the music is out there and it's no longer subject to that story unless you want it to be. If you listen to it, you'll hear unique musical complexity. It may not be your cup of hot fat, but it I think it's awesome and absolutely on par with the musical accomplishments of Beefheart et al.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 4:46 PM on September 2, 2017 [1 favorite]

Beefheart wanted to make the music he was making, but he ran the band like a cult and treated them a lot worse than the Shaggs' father ever did.

Anyway, I think I understand the cringe people get about the Shaggs, around that question of agency, it's probably a lot like the feeling I get from youth orchestras.
posted by idiopath at 11:12 PM on September 2, 2017 [1 favorite]