the songs you've always wanted to play

April 16, 2012 4:51 PM

The Shaggs' Things I Wonder - a guitar lesson for strummers of all levels. OK! Now that you've got the melody under your belt, here's the melody plus second guitar part. And though some might think nobody would really want (or be able) to faithfully recreate the Shaggs' music onstage, those people would be wrong.
posted by flapjax at midnite (16 comments total)

The Shaggs, previously.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 4:52 PM on April 16, 2012

<3 The Shaggs.
posted by shakespeherian at 4:56 PM on April 16, 2012

Yeah, before the haters get in on it, I'm going to go ahead and say I also think they are awesome, for all the reasons I and others mapped out in the previous thread.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 4:59 PM on April 16, 2012

Oh, and here's the original Things I Wonder. A thing of rare and luminous beauty.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 5:00 PM on April 16, 2012

It's a Shaggs day, I guess! Earlier today, The SLOG posted a classical arrangement of "Philosophy of the World" by Alarm Will Sound. Neato!
posted by Rev. Syung Myung Me at 5:02 PM on April 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

Is this the thread for people who hate "Imagine"?
posted by grog at 5:04 PM on April 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

I like how she doesn't use barre chords.
posted by awfurby at 5:30 PM on April 16, 2012 [5 favorites]

Hope you don't mind, man. I had to add a Proto Punk tag. These girls were/are awesome and are/were pretty influential! Great stuff!
posted by snsranch at 7:34 PM on April 16, 2012

I couldn't for the life of me figure out how that rather banal teaching video propagated that other thread, but I certainly approve of this one.
posted by SomaSoda at 8:30 PM on April 16, 2012

i couldn't understand the shaggs until i had been through the crucible of jandek. i still don't, really, but i'm not afraid anymore.
posted by facetious at 8:42 PM on April 16, 2012

Reading through that epic previous thread about the Shaggs, I was wondering:
Were the Shaggs able to do the crazy mismatched drums-vs.-rest of the band the same way every time when they played live? Or was it just that the drummer was kind of randomly off from the rest of the band?

The weird guitar and vocal rhythms are obviously worked-out, as the vocal and guitar lines often closely match. But the drums almost sound like they took a drum track from a completely different song and mixed it in instead of the original drum track.

But if they were really able to consistently keep "together" but playing out of synch like that, that's just amazing.
posted by straight at 11:00 PM on April 16, 2012

I've had Who Are Parents going through my head on and off frequently in the last year since that post introduced me to The Shaggs.
posted by straight at 11:09 PM on April 16, 2012

Warning: what has been heard cannot be unheard.

I'm going to go listen to some music now.
posted by charlie don't surf at 11:43 PM on April 16, 2012

This hurts my ears!
posted by John Cohen at 4:54 AM on April 17, 2012

Last Friday night, I attended the Shaggs tribute night at the Bell House in Brooklyn (the three surviving Shaggs were there and took questions) and it was clear from watching the bands that covered the songs that they are very difficult to play -- the drummers looked as if they had the hardest task.
posted by AJaffe at 9:08 AM on April 17, 2012

This hurts my ears!

That is the actual sound of your cochlear cilia and auditory cortex dying.
posted by charlie don't surf at 9:15 AM on April 17, 2012