Philosophy of the World

I know the Shaggs might be kind of old news to some of y'all, but they still make me happy.  "My Pal Foot Foot" certainly makes me happy, and will probably make you happy too.  If it doesn't, then something inside you is dead.  Really.

"The Shaggs love you, and love to perform for you.  You may love their music or you may not, but whatever you feel, at last you know you can listen to artists who are real."

--liner notes from Philosophy of the World

So... they might be making a Shaggs movie -- mixed feelings about that, I guess.  If it helps out the actual Shaggs (the Wiggin sisters, duh), then I think it's great.  But somehow I just know the filmmakers will (at least help) destroy something beautiful and good with a terrible movie.  And don't get me started on the actors... Drew Barrymore?!?  Ed Norton?!?  Ugh.  Those people could make the Holocaust worse without breaking a sweat.

Update!  Here's some nice Shaggs background/analysis.  In case you don't have time to click on the link, here's some of the more pertinent history:

WHO ARE PARENTS? (2:58)

Where else would Austin Wiggin have got the idea that his daughters should form a rock band? Neither he nor his wife, Annie, was musical; she much preferred television to music, and he, at most, fooled around with a Jew's harp. He wasn't a showoff, dying to be noticed-by all accounts he was an ornery loner who had little to do with other people in town. He was strict and old-fashioned, not a hippie manqué, not a rebel, very disapproving of long hair and short skirts. He was from a poor family and was raising a poor family-seven kids on a mill hand's salary-and music lessons and instruments for the girls were a daunting expense.

And yet the Shaggs were definitely his idea-or, more exactly, his mother's idea. Austin was terribly superstitious. His mother liked to tell fortunes. When he was young, she studied his palm and told him that in the future he would marry a strawberry blonde and would have two sons whom she would not live to see, and that his daughters would play in a band. Her auguries were borne out. Annie was a strawberry blonde, and she and Austin did have two sons after his mother died. It was left to Austin to fulfill the last of his mother's predictions, and when his daughters were old enough he told them that they would be taking voice and music lessons and forming a band. There was no debate: his word was law, and his mother's prophecies were gospel. Besides, he chafed at his place in the Fremont social system. It wasn't so much that his girls would make him rich and raise him out of a mill hand's dreary métier, it was that they would prove that the Wiggin kids were not only different from but better than the folks in town.

The girls liked music-particularly Herman's Hermits, Ricky Nelson, and Dino, Desi & Billy-but until Austin foretold their futures they had not planned to become rock stars. They were shy, small-town teen-agers who dreamed of growing up and getting married, having children, maybe becoming secretaries someday. Even now, they don't remember ever having dreamed of fame or of making music. But Austin pushed the girls into a new life. He named them the Shaggs, and told them that they were not going to attend the local high school, because he didn't want them travelling by bus and mixing with outsiders, and, more important, he wanted them to practice their music all day. He enrolled them in a Chicago mail-order outfit called American Home School, but he designed their schedule himself: practice in the morning and afternoon, rehearse songs for him after dinner, and then do calisthenics and jumping jacks and leg lifts or practice for another hour before going to bed. The girls couldn't decide which was worse, the days when he made them do calisthenics or the days when he'd make them practice again before bed. In either case, their days seemed endless. The rehearsals were solemn, and Austin could be cutting. One song in particular, "Philosophy of the World," he claimed they never played right, and he would insist on hearing it again and again.

Comments

[Ojo Rojo]

What's wrong with Edward "You Fucked With The Wrong Bull" Norton? He was great in American History X and 25th Hour.

[patrick]

There's an audio version of the 2000 New Yorker story about the Shaggs here:

http://www.assistivemedia.org/PopularCulture.html

& you have to check out the Shaggs tribute album Animal World put out a few years ago. It's good. 25th hour, however, is not.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00005QWXQ/qid=1113329838/sr=8-7/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i5_xgl15/103-7208687-3465446?v=glance&s=music&n=507846

[The Tartan Horde]

Should I be concerned that Amazon has already recommended this album for me?

[very metal]

You should be flattered, actually.

Also good that Patrick commented, when I more-or-less stole the "[i]f it doesn't, then something inside you is dead" line from him, from an old Activity Story post about the "dancing old person Six Flags commercial".

Here's an off-the-top-of-my-head joke for you, Ojo: What's the difference between Ed Norton and roadkill? I actually liked that thing I saw the roadkill in.