I wouldn't say these are bands that history got wrong-- they just got poor promotion, broke up, never tried etc. I didn't see any bands that everyone thought sucked, only to change their opinions later, like critics did with Led Zeppelin.
Yes! I've read various record producers and engineers say over the years that often the second record nobody likes is what the first album would have sounded like if they'd had the budget for it.
I'm the same way. You could put one molecule of a fish into any food on earth and it would ruin that food. I totally know how much I am missing out but I can't help it either.
The point is not that Spence was a primitive or a child, but that he heard the guitar a particular way, and that's how he tuned it. And when I play the rhythms or melodies or harmonies kids write incorrectly, they always catch it and tell me.
There's an aspect of the shaggs that must have been discussed but I never hear discussed: their music is what happens when kids with no direction write music. I'm a guitar teacher and do a lot of writing exercises with kids-- have seen this over and over again.
And anyone who has worked with kids and writing knows that they can have set up a total softball rhyme, but pass it up for three more clauses that don't ever rhyme at all.
I've had students that were 7 or 8 years old write really complex rhythms, for instance, that are difficult to write down but they play them exactly the same every time.
When he took a break, this person went up and tuned his guitar. When Spence came back on, he strummed it once, looked irritated and put it back the way it was.
It reminds me of a story I heard someone tell about Joseph Spence. He was playing a gig in the 60s at Harvard, and someone was feeling tortured because they thought his guitar was out of tune.
There is a stream-of-consciousness element to the lyrics, melodies, and rhythms that is solidified with repetition, despite the fact that a listener would not detect patterns there.
