I’m always questioning my intentions for listening to music and what, personally I want to attain from the experience. Am I like so many others listening to this to be difficult and to try and extract meaning from what is not actually there or do we genuinely love what we are hearing? The Shaggs, like Johnston, put me on edge. Are we listening to this because someone we respect adores it and in trying to acknowledge them we acknowledge something we don’t like? Similar to Johnston is it fair to admire someone for a misfortune that they cannot control?
Michael M, on some other website wrote this interesting point of view:
‘The worst album ever recorded, but not for reasons that are entirely obvious at first.My reasoning behind this is that there is no purpose to the madness. Usually, so-bad-it's-good albums succeed because either the musician is in on the joke and plays up the utter horribleness of the work or because the musician is not in on the joke and truly believes they are creating good art. This leads to good art in a Dadaist sense of "expanding the boundaries" of what we can appreciate and even like, in a macabre sort of way since most of us will be snickering inside at the stupidity of the musician.The Shaggs have no opinion one way or the other. They don't even know what the joke is. The only reason they made this album at all was because of their fairly tyrannical father, who took a prediction of his mother's far too seriously and inflicted what I can only assume was a fair bit of psychological damage on these poor girls to try to make them into successful musicians. He even pulled them out of school so they could practice daily. The girls themselves just don't care, and it's painfully obvious in their work. I can think of no better example of a parent forcing their own desires on their children against their will.It's better to wrongly believe you're a good musician and fail at it than to make music but not have any investment whatsoever in the quality of what you're doing.This is child abuse set to music, and anyone who enjoys it has either been suckered into the myth created by Zappa* when he said they were "better than the Beatles" or is just so desperate to seem different and cool and (dirty word coming) indie that they will pretend to like whatever is necessary to accomplish this.I have nothing against most "deconstructivist" music. Anything that attempts to redefine art is fine by me; that's kind of the point of art. However, Philosophy of the World is not art, it's torture.* Zappa used every opportunity he could to take potshots at the Fab Four because he contended that Freak Out! is the first concept album, not Sgt. Pepper's. I am noncommittal about this. His obsession with degrading them is behind his famous proclamation that the Shaggs are better. Unfortunately, rabid fans took it too far and actually fooled themselves into liking it.’
I think he has a strong point. I do believe that some people listen music for the wrong reasons and some people will listen to this album for the wrong reasons but it is dangerous to say that everyone will. I concede that this album is not art, it was never intended as art and in this circumstance it shouldn’t be analysed artistically. The way it should be seen is as a record, in the literal sense as a record of events. As so many people had said it is incredible that this was ever created. From an almost sick voyeuristic position we can listen to the pain of three girls with a dominating father. To me this is one of the saddest records I’ve ever listened to. Not because they sing about terrible things but in fact the opposite and that is the reason why it is so mesmerising. The delusional joyousness of the album only serves to highlight the instability of the girl’s adolescent world. If the back story is true (which I’m almost certain of) this is a document of a destructive family dynamic that many people experience. The question is then should we enjoy it?
Michael M, on some other website wrote this interesting point of view:
‘The worst album ever recorded, but not for reasons that are entirely obvious at first.My reasoning behind this is that there is no purpose to the madness. Usually, so-bad-it's-good albums succeed because either the musician is in on the joke and plays up the utter horribleness of the work or because the musician is not in on the joke and truly believes they are creating good art. This leads to good art in a Dadaist sense of "expanding the boundaries" of what we can appreciate and even like, in a macabre sort of way since most of us will be snickering inside at the stupidity of the musician.The Shaggs have no opinion one way or the other. They don't even know what the joke is. The only reason they made this album at all was because of their fairly tyrannical father, who took a prediction of his mother's far too seriously and inflicted what I can only assume was a fair bit of psychological damage on these poor girls to try to make them into successful musicians. He even pulled them out of school so they could practice daily. The girls themselves just don't care, and it's painfully obvious in their work. I can think of no better example of a parent forcing their own desires on their children against their will.It's better to wrongly believe you're a good musician and fail at it than to make music but not have any investment whatsoever in the quality of what you're doing.This is child abuse set to music, and anyone who enjoys it has either been suckered into the myth created by Zappa* when he said they were "better than the Beatles" or is just so desperate to seem different and cool and (dirty word coming) indie that they will pretend to like whatever is necessary to accomplish this.I have nothing against most "deconstructivist" music. Anything that attempts to redefine art is fine by me; that's kind of the point of art. However, Philosophy of the World is not art, it's torture.* Zappa used every opportunity he could to take potshots at the Fab Four because he contended that Freak Out! is the first concept album, not Sgt. Pepper's. I am noncommittal about this. His obsession with degrading them is behind his famous proclamation that the Shaggs are better. Unfortunately, rabid fans took it too far and actually fooled themselves into liking it.’
I think he has a strong point. I do believe that some people listen music for the wrong reasons and some people will listen to this album for the wrong reasons but it is dangerous to say that everyone will. I concede that this album is not art, it was never intended as art and in this circumstance it shouldn’t be analysed artistically. The way it should be seen is as a record, in the literal sense as a record of events. As so many people had said it is incredible that this was ever created. From an almost sick voyeuristic position we can listen to the pain of three girls with a dominating father. To me this is one of the saddest records I’ve ever listened to. Not because they sing about terrible things but in fact the opposite and that is the reason why it is so mesmerising. The delusional joyousness of the album only serves to highlight the instability of the girl’s adolescent world. If the back story is true (which I’m almost certain of) this is a document of a destructive family dynamic that many people experience. The question is then should we enjoy it?
