Everything I write is shit!

[slyc_willie]

What have you been smokin', Slyc?

Actually, nothing. Serious.

I stick to the legal stuff. I figure my mind can compensate for the rest.

 

[TE999]

What have you been smokin', Slyc?

Whatever it is I want me some!

I mean like do my head up righteous!

 

[starrkers]

Actually, nothing. Serious.

I stick to the legal stuff. I figure my mind can compensate for the rest.

I think right now I'm glad I live on the other side of the world

 

[SlickTony]

On the shoulder of every writer there sits a demon telling him or her that what he or she is writing is dreck. To each one, the demon speaks in a different voice. Pay attention to the voice that you hear. It will be that of someone you have known. And then consider the source.

 

[AvoidingRealWork]

I'll have to read your stories when I get a chance. All I can say is that the muses are fickle, but multitudinous. If one departs, start searching for another .

Keep trying, keep writing!

 

[dr_mabeuse]

There's also the circular theory of art that says that if you do something stupendously bad it will actually be so bad it will be good. To reach a vision of pure badness requires such a radical revision of things and a complete restructuring that only the most visionary or totally naive can attain that level of purity necessary to step outside the cliches of art and reimagine in it in a way that gives us all a fresh understanding of its intent and purpose.

A band called the Shaggs comes to mind. Formed in the late 60's from a backwoods Vermont family whose musically ignorant father thought his equally ignorant daughters could somehow exploit the rampant Beatlemania that was sweeping the country, he invested in guitars and drums for the talentless girls and forced them to teach themselves not only to play these instruments and sing, but to compose their own music. They had no idea of the the basics of tuning or musical structure or composition and yet managed to put out an album in less than 9 months which he paid for but never distributed and which has since become an underground classic of such unbelievable awfulness that it forces one to re-examine one's basic understandings of what music might mean.

The late Frank Zappa for one called The Shaggs album one of the most important recordings in the last 50 years, and people like John Cage have praised them for their iconoclasm. The music is literally shocking. Meant to be sweet and endearing, it's like a Texas chain saw massacre of out-of-tune guitars, surreal lyrics, and dropped drumsticks swirling in a rhythmless horror of bleeding fuzz-tone and random, pulsing blobs of clotted bass. It makes you dizzy and faint. It's like aural open-heart surgery done without anaesthetic. "My Pal Foot-Foot"--a song about the hijinx of their pet cat--is enough to make grown men weep in despair.

So don't fight the dreck. Go with it and see where it might take you. You might have a "My Pal Foot-Foot" waiting within you as well.

--Zoot

 

[Guest]

Okay.

I need to find this recording.

(We can play it at the Lit-together.)

 

[fieryjen]

Okay.

I need to find this recording.

(We can play it at the Lit-together.)

I just listened to some of it on YouTube.

Holy hell.

 

[Guest]

I just listened to some of it on YouTube.

Holy hell.

Okay - maybe not.

 

[AvoidingRealWork]

There's also the circular theory of art that says that if you do something stupendously bad it will actually be so bad it will be good.

I was about to write, "Case in point..." And then I read down:

A band called the Shaggs comes to mind.

Wow. That's damned spooky. Because that's what I was going to bring up.

The Shaggs are so raw, so technically awful, and yet there is a purity and innocence to them that's endearing anyway.

Still, I played "Philosophy of the World" for our roommate the other night. She said, "Make it stop. Make it stop! MAKE IT STOP!!!!"

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I was about to write, "Case in point..." And then I read down:



Wow. That's damned spooky. Because that's what I was going to bring up.

The Shaggs are so raw, so technically awful, and yet there is a purity and innocence to them that's endearing anyway.

Still, I played "Philosophy of the World" for our roommate the other night. She said, "Make it stop. Make it stop! MAKE IT STOP!!!!"

I LOVE the Shaggs! Their drum solos where they drop the sticks establish a new concept of rhythm, one freed from the limiting contraints of time. Their microtonal harmonies deconstruct the artificiality of Western harmonic theory and reveal the infinity of notes that exist between any two notes on the piano keyboard. The earnest intensity with which they create this horrible music proves the thesis that Art is nothing but an attitude.

I collect Bad Art. Since I live in fear that I'm a secret Shagg myself, I study it. I have all of Ed Wood Jr's films, and the works of Cash Flagg. I can bring the Shaggs to the Litogether, but I warn you, you can't put them on as background music. Serious musicians are fascinated. Most people run for the torches and rope.

 

[geronimo_appleby]

For some reason, I look at what I'm writing and I'm thinking, what a complete waste of time! Someone could wipe their ass with this tripe except they'd probably get a rash.

Every time I type a word, a baby starts crying. Every time I close a paragraph, a puppy dies. If my story ends up in the bottom of a hamster cage, the poor thing will die of dysentery. Somewhere, Hemingway is clawing his way out of his grave to come and pee on my computer.

Anyway, just had to vent.

J

i know the feeling.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I was about to write, "Case in point..." And then I read down:



Wow. That's damned spooky. Because that's what I was going to bring up.

The Shaggs are so raw, so technically awful, and yet there is a purity and innocence to them that's endearing anyway.

Still, I played "Philosophy of the World" for our roommate the other night. She said, "Make it stop. Make it stop! MAKE IT STOP!!!!"

All jokes aside too, as a musician, you're always looking to expand your ideas, and so I listened to the Shaggs first and laughed, and then listened in awe until I was actually semi-comfortable with their stutter-drumming and Plutonian guitar-tunings and their 7 1/2-bar phrases, and they really open up whole new vistas to you, whole new insane possibilities of ways of using instruments and voice.

And then something truly bizarre happens. There's a real poignancy that comes through, and you start to feel these girls' anguish and embarrassment. They knew they were no good. They knew they didn't know what they were doing, but they were forced into it by this crazy father of theirs who must have pretty much browbeat them into making these recordings, and the whole thing becomes terribly tragic. In other words, despite their ineptness, the artistic message gets through nonetheless.

It's like that so often with bad art. The first impulse is to laugh at the artist's naivite and incompetence, but then you see the soul struggling beneath it and it's deeply touching. The only time bad art is truly dreck is when it's all technique; when it's trying to pass itself off as brilliance. Otherwise, even in the worst fuck story you see someone struggling to express his or her joy or excitement about sex, and it's strangely moving. None of it's truly bad.

I heard a rumor on a Bad Music site I belonged to that they were contemplating a film about the Shaggs. At least one of the sisters is still alive and lives in Vermont but refuses to talk about the band. I guess nothing came of it.

 

[Guest]

I LOVE the Shaggs! Their drum solos where they drop the sticks define a new conception of rhythm, one freed from the limiting contraints of time. Their microtonal harmonies deconstruct the artificiality of Western harmonic theory and reveal the infinity of notes that exist between any two notes on the piano keyboard. The earnest intensity with which they create this horrible music proves the thesis that Art is nothing but an attitude.

I collect Bad Art. Since I live in fear that I'm a secret Shagg myself, I study it. I have all of Ed Wood Jr's films, and the works of Cash Flagg. I can bring the Shaggs to the Litogether, but I warn you, you can't put them on as background music. Serious musicians are fascinated. Most people run for the torches and rope.

You're Something Special to Me - 2- 3- 4-

Do you realize that last night, after we caught that one on you tube, that drone of a chorus actually stuck in our heads? Arrgh.

We had to listen to William Shatner's Mr. Tambourine Man man just to cleanse our palates.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

i know the feeling.

I can't remember who said one of my favorite writerly quotes. It was someone strange though, some sports writer or someone. He said, "Writing is easy. You just sit down at the typewriter and open a vein."

--Zoot

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

It were Red Barber.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Editor William Sloane confirmed that he rejected Thomas Wolfe when Wolfe sent him a masterpiece that filled a cardboard box. Wolfe never had writer's block in his entire life. Sloane didnt see a masterpiece, he saw a pain in the ass. Wolfe took his book to Maxwell Perkins, and Wolfe became the big fish that got away from Sloane.

Editors are no different from writers. They come in all the different flavors that writers do.

 

[Liar]

So don't fight the dreck. Go with it and see where it might take you. You might have a "My Pal Foot-Foot" waiting within you as well.

And when it's out there, something will finally give "I kiked down the dor..." a run for the money.

 

[Liar]

I can't remember who said one of my favorite writerly quotes. It was someone strange though, some sports writer or someone. He said, "Writing is easy. You just sit down at the typewriter and open a vein."

--Zoot

If only. I tried that, and I still had to squeeze the fucking blood out with a vice.

 

[AvoidingRealWork]

All jokes aside too, as a musician, you're always looking to expand your ideas, and so I listened to the Shaggs first and laughed, and then listened in awe until I was actually semi-comfortable with their stutter-drumming and Plutonian guitar-tunings and their 7 1/2-bar phrases, and they really open up whole new vistas to you, whole new insane possibilities of ways of using instruments and voice.

...

Mabeuse, your feelings on this are very close to mine. I have a hard time trying to convince even other musicians what it is that's valuable about the Shaggs.

Those godawful backwater Vermont accents are pretty ear-shattering, though. "Who aah pewents?..."