Thursday, September 29, 2005

Philosophy of the World

Oh, the rich people want what the poor people's got
And the poor people want what the rich people's got
And the skinny people want what the fat people's got
And the fat people want what the skinny people's got

You can never please anybody in this world

...

It doesn't matter what you do
It doesn't matter what you say
There will always be one who wants things the opposite way
We do our best, we try to please
But we're like the rest we're never at ease
You can never please
Anybody
In this world



I saw The Shaggs last night, the musical based on the real-life actual band, The Shaggs, proof that if you're gonna be bad at something, it's best to be the absolute worst.

There's a purity in the awfulness that was The Shaggs' music, an intense honesty in their dissonant chords and monotone vocals, as well as a genuine eeriness in the way in which their blunt lyrics and discordant tunes haunt you long after you'd like to erase them from your memory.

At some point, it seemed hip to laud them for their sheer atrocity - a quality which ironically made them even more rock n' roll than the slickest of rock n' rollers! From Rolling Stone to Susan Orlean, critics began recognizing the deeper emotional truth in the Shaggs' music - an unpretentious truth that is actually transcendental in a way that the over-produced William Hung phenomenon could never capture.

Because, in the end, The Shaggs weren't the instruments they couldn't really play, nor were they the lyrics they couldn't really sing. They were just some girls from New Hampshire, trapped in their father's dream, trying to be the best they could be at something they never were. And in their failure, they managed to stumble upon the elusive magic of true art.

There are many things I wonder
There are many things I don't
It seems as though the things I wonder most
Are the things I never find out