In all fairness, his mother never said the band would be good. She just said they would have a band.

the only truly original album ever made, the girls had absolutely no outside influence.

This is the first time that I have ever heard a song played in the key of K.

My broke friend owed me 20$. I told him I would forgive the debt if he listened to The Philosophy of Life in its entirety in one constant sitting. He did it. I forgave the 20$ and gave him a pack of smokes as a bonus.

I like that he never thought giving them lessons was a reasonable step in his plan.

Somewhere in parallel universe, this album was the most succesfull album of all time

“The drummer isn’t with the Bass player!” “That’s okay, the drummer isn’t even with the drummer!!!”

Just listening to 30 seconds of "My pal Foot Foot" it sounds like a few jazz musicians got really, really, drunk, broke their fingers and THEN recorded an album......OUTSTANDING

It sounds like their dad forced them to make music without ever letting them hear music in the first place

We're still talking about them in 2019. The prediction was correct.

I put this album in my truck and listened to nothing else for a month in the 90s, then went to Trout Mask Replica. I can now hear colors and see time.

"I have never heard that combination of sounds before...." My EXACT words in 1980, fourteen seconds before my 1958 Buick Roadmaster burst into flames in the middle of US Rt 30. 😜

1 hotel California 2 stairway to heaven 3 freebird 4 my pal foot foot 5 bohemian rhapsody

Why does it sound like they are singing backwards?

What surprises me about this is how coherent the whole thing is. Given that they wrote the song themselves without any outside influence or help and without even knowing how to play any of their instruments the fact that they created something that sounds even remotely like music is amazing. I feel like if they had gotten lessons they would have been pretty good

One part of the prophecy he ignored, the daughters will form a band. The demise started when he formed the band by pulling them out of school and not teaching them anything. They would have learned about so much, maybe music theory and how to play instruments. Writing songs, you just do or you don’t.

“The only band talented enough to play 3 songs at the same time” - Commenter

"YOKO! ITS YOUR COUSIN MARVIN - MARVIN ONO. I GOT THAT 'NEW SOUND' YOU'RE LOOKING FOR. LISTEN!"

The album does have an innocent charm.

- Dad, who's gonna play the bass? _ What's a bass? it doesn't matter now, we got no money left

Ah, "The Room" of albums

Their music kinda sounds like a Guitar Store on a Saturday afternoon

Some years ago when they were gaining their cult status, someone organised a reunion gig for them. One of them (I think the drummer) fell ill, but the other two performed. Because they hadn't played in so long, they had to get the sheet music out to remind them how to play the songs. Sheet music? Yeah, but like no sheet music you've ever seen before. Not only did they have to learn how to play instruments by themselves, and write songs with no training, they also had to invent their own system of music transcription in order to document it. Philosophy of The World is brilliant in its purity and sincerity. All these artists that come from music colleges and trying to figure out a way in which they can be "weird" and never pull it off because it's so contrived, and here were three girls that had to essentially invent music from the ground up. Imagine giving a child a bunch of metal parts and telling them that they're not to come out of their room until they've built a more efficient form of combustion engine, when they've never even held a spanner before.

Definitely NOT the worst album ever made. These girls invented their own form of music.

This just proves if anyone picks up an instrument and starts playing, someone will like it

by forcing his daughters into this life he fulfilled the prophecy, super interesting

To get to even any level of musical understanding without having any training is really impressive. Not only that kids were writing their own songs, but if you listen to the music it does show a hint of progress. Like if a parent bought their kid an instrument, had no musical knowledge and said "Eh... I guess try to do something with this" and that kid came back a few months later sounding like this, it would be seen as progress

"Worst album ever" still better than cardi b🙃

Band is booed at every live performance. Next step: record an album. Makes sense.

Growing up as a punk rocker in the 80's, my friends and I all had copies of their album. It was horribly great

Ok - this is the kinda story that scares the SH*T outta me, because it's so disturbing and unsettling. I may have trouble sleeping tonight...

The prophecy actually did come true. It's 2021 and I knew who you were going to talk about without even pressing play. Well played, Shaggs.

the drummer consistently sounds like she's playing a completely different song

It sounds as though they got off on the wrong "foot foot".

I actually really like the drum intro on Foot Foot

"I've never heard a band sound like that before." I've never heard a guitar player fall down a flight of stairs with his guitar but I'd guess it would sound similar to the Shaggs.

“I did not hit her... I DID NAHHHTT. Oh hi, Foot-Foot.”

The Shaggs is a terrible name for a band of young girls

They have an authenticity that is hard to find.

I’ve heard people talk about this album before and as far as I can tell it seems to be the most hated rock album, but now that I know the very strange backstory surrounding it, the music is just feels kind of depressing now

Well, I mean, they became popular, so the prophecy is true.

Trout Mask Replica: Kids Bop Edition.

i didn't know the whole backstory to this band. i thought they were just random girls having fun who everyone decided to shit on. the backstory makes this so much sadder actually.

The more I follow them, the more convinced I am that this is one of the most hilarious musical jokes of all time. The backstory of their creation, the lyrics, instruments, the "music," it's got to be a gag and a brilliant one at that. Sort of like those hilarious jokes that come around, where no one knows who thought it up, but whoever he was deserves an award.

This was really interesting. Never heard about the Shaggs before. Cheers!

Didn’t expect Kurt to be involved in this story

The fact that the Wikipedia page immediately has the band questioning why this album retroactively became popular as indie music is hilarious.

"Better than the Beatles." Frank Zappa. The Shaggs were a fantastic band that to this day are incomparable.

I doubt it’s worse than Total Xanarchy

Moral of the story : Songs that are considered "weird" now will be considered "fascinating" and "unique" after some years

It's inspirational so truly bizarre, I only wish I had heard it when I was a kid in the early seventies listening to my sisters albums by bands like Queen ( who I loved then and still do ) but I'd have had a band together. I have a reissue of this album and I love it but I'll probably never know why.

I'm glad you mentioned that Foot Foot was a cat. I always thought it was her imaginary friend or some strange person she knew that went missing. This explains much.

Kurt Cobain and Frank Zappa listened to the Shaggs... Tbh that actually explains a lot (they weren’t bad, both were amazing).

Sounds like the earliest form of a shitpost that got trendy

Interesting. In the 1960s there was a New Haven, CT-area band called the Shags (one 'g') that was popular and did well. It wasn't until years later that I learned that "shag" was British slang for sex, and not necessarily a reference to long hair. I don't know where the Shaggs got their name, but I suspect the Shags of New Haven were spoofing audiences with the biggest joke of the decade.

It's like feeding a self-learning AI a buttload of music theories without actually giving it a single input of music, and then taking the first pieces it generated to stamp on vinyl. Hell, they know exactly what they were doing in the whole thing. They practiced the songs in and for the studio!

when you played snippets of the tracks and i felt like i was having a stroke

Okay, I'm back, after having listened to Philosophy of the World. The most baffling thing is that the guitar work, drums, and vocals aren't even THAT bad individually, they're just mashed together like a fruit salad made exclusively of meat.

One day I listened to the entire album. I laughed, I cried a little, I felt like a heavy weight was on my chest and it me hurt. Very special.

I remember a band called Fagin's Boys who were worse than the Shaggs. By a long way. They recorded several self-financed albums, released a terrible song called "Rustic Reggae", marginally improved themselves then released a synth instrumental called "Furtwangler". They also murdered "Portsmouth".

So what your saying is the palm reading was 100% correct?

Did anybody feel some anxiety kick in as soon as the music was played.

This album is great! Please give it a shot. Unique songs and arrangements, brilliant. To be bad, or "THE WORST", it would need to have ZERO points of interest, but we are still talking about it to this day.

I've both been to the town they're from and biked by the studio where they recorded the album, it's quite cool to have been so near to such an important piece of history.

Feel like death grips would sample this

The craziest thing about this story I find, is that the palm reader's prediction actually came true.

This video is always one of the first to pop up whenever I search anything related to Merzbow

This is surely one the most original, startling and uncanny albums ever made, and therefore one of the greatest. As mentioned in the TLS 'Philosophy of the World' achieves a 'transcendental strangeness'. Truly great music opens doors to sounds and experiences and states of mind you could never imagine under either normal or abnormal circumstances - how many other albums out there could claim the same? We're not talking about 'so bad it's good' - which has become a trivial catchphrase to excuse cult junk - we're talking about something 'so magnificently 'itself' we don't know what to think.' We have to stand with Carla Bley on this: The Shaggs 'bring my mind to a complete halt.'

Sounds like Phoebe buffay was heavily influenced by them.

It’s definitely a interesting part of music history, especially being released in 1967 when rock was really booming with experimentation

I actually think if you listen to some of the later tracks that were record for "The Shaggs Own Thing' you start to hear what could have been. There's kind of a sweetness to honesty to the vocals and guitar work. Maybe their biggest contribution is the people who were more proficient that they inspired, if you listen to "Little Trouble Girl" by Sonic Youth you can almost see what The Shaggs did a blueprint of except executed well.

Came here looking for a Nickelback album and end up finding something decent.

"Philosophy Of The World" holds a special place in my heart. To me, it is NOT the worst album ever made, even though it's not what most people would call well-written or well-performed. My sister once used it to get rid of guests that wouldn't leave. My best friend laughed for 30 minutes straight when I played him the record. Fond memories! I like trying to lip-sync to "My Pal Foot Foot", it's the hardest thing to do. I love the thudding tom beat on "It's Halloween". "Things I Wonder" just has the greatest opening. I love "That Little Sports Car", the only song on here featuring a bass guitar, with its final climax of repeating "Never Do Wrong"s, going up in one mode and coming down in an entirely other one. The sisters seem to sing flat or sharp on a whim, but they're doing it TOGETHER. This music, my friends, has been PAINSTAKINGLY REHEARSED. At least I think it was. Sometimes it reminds me of some secret language developed by twins. When I first listened to The Shaggs in 1990, I also listened to a lot of jazz, hiphop, cabaret, pop and rock. To me it seemed like they had smashed a whole record shop and then assembled shards of many different vinyls in a primitive, naive and original way. Even though it's not an easy listen for everyone, I like the Shaggs' perspective. And I am a person who likes well-crafted, well-performed songs in general. EDIT: when I first got the internets at home in 1996, guess what my first research on Altavista was about? Yep, that's right. I wanted to know whether I was the only person on the planet to dig The Shaggs. And it turned out I wasn't! Haters gonna hate, but lovers gonna love.

I find this album strangely listenable, except “My Pal Foot Foot,” which honestly sounds like a nightmare.

Daniel Johnson. Very early Velvet Underground. Very early Pink Floyd. The experiments of the Beatles. The list goes on and on. Fact is: This kind of music has what no "professional" music has: unpredictability, spontaneity, deviation from million-times-heard, and a "newnness" up to a point where it seems to be "fractal". You hear things that are unique and will stay unique forever. Thanks for the tip.

It is a formative influence on my own music, especially the drumming. I love the idea that drums can add rhythmic excitement while being completely independent of any other element. The idea that melodies can violate implicit harmonic rules like tonic- dominant and still carry emotional meaning is also compelling. If you love the Shaggs for MUSICAL reasons like I do, check out Charles Ives, especially his Fourth Symphony, and of course Trout Mask Replica by Captain Beefheart.

The crazy thing is, the prophecy came true and in the end they did end up becoming a popular band Damn

If the father would've given them more time before throwing them in the fire, they could've had great synergy and potentially make great music.

I feel sorry for these girls. They were only placated by their parents. They didn''t care enough about those girls to be honest with them and get them training, instead they were sent out to be embarrassed and humiliated. Don't do this kind of thing to your children people, please. Be real.

This is how punk really started

The guitar just sound like she hit random strings with her foot foot

Correction, the drums actually have tons of consistency. She was just always playing at an entirely separate tempo from the guitars. That's the magic ingredient to that Shag-edelic sound. Write a song in a given key but DO NOT tune the guitars, have the drummer play at a totally different speed. Boom. Instant classic.

Second album: "Shaggs Own Thing." Mostly originals, but they cover a Carpenters song (!!!!!).Dot Wiggin released a Dot Wiggin Band album in 2013, called "Ready! Set! Go!" with actual musicians.....

I died laughing when I heard "My Pal Foot Foot". Then I stumbled on to a "Shaggs Tribute Band" who tried to recreate the mayhem. AND FINALLY .. someone posted a Shaggs Karaoke version of Foot Foot: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/aq2EetmkqsfMeYk.html Am now convulsing on the floor ... please help me, I can't breath! 🤣

This is what happens when you force someone to do something they don't want to do. You get the Shaggs.

They also had no bassist.

Just hearing the songs without knowing the backstory, one could be forgiven for thinking that it was a deliberate spoof... maybe something from Firesign Theater titled "an evening with the Helen Keller School Marching Band". But it's pretty remarkable considering the restrictions placed upon them.

They could've been great if they dad just, hired a music teacher to teach them after school. Maybe pushed them into joining school band. Instead of just handing them a guitar

The recording engineer actually did a good job.

This is like the SpongeBob episode where Patrick’s poem gets recorded at a studio

theres a group called the godz (new york band) couldnt play any instruments but went on to record 9 albums . they got better over time a bit .

I recently read a remastered 5.1 mix is in the works. Including demos!

"Kurt Cobain lists it as his 5th favourite album of all time." That explains so much.

That’s a weird way to pronounce Confessions of a Dangerous Mind

lulled me in with the intro,then G D! I wasn't ready for this

Dude it's like 3 am and I just listened to the song and now I feel haunted

The snare still sounds better thatn the one from Metallica-St. Anger.

The Shaggs is accidentally an awesome name for a band.

I grew up near Dot. I had friends in Freemont. Onlu took 30 years but Freemont to Plaistow area had it's own little hardcore scene in the 1990s.

i love how "random composition" this actually is