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What Was Shag Carpet? A Dirt Nap City Dead End · Dirt Nap City - History's Most Interesting Dead People

• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: Hey Kelly.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_02: What's up, Alex?
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_02: How you doing?
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: Good.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: I thought maybe we could do a dead end.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, I love those.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_02: Let's do it.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: Alright.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: I want to talk to you about Shag Carpeting.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_02: Wow, okay.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you said this might be a short one.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um Shag carpeting.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: Do you remember Shag?
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Like, so if you picture, if you just picture the 70s.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: Or the 60s, I suppose.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: You picture like a house with in the carp, like shag carpeting, right?
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: So for those of you who don't know, what what what would you consider shag carpeting to be?
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's when the carpet has a lot of um little fibers, and by fibers I mean like they're almost like hairs that come up and they're you know they're fairly thick, but they're fairly long.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_02: They're they're long enough that you can like run your hand across it and make a pattern on it.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_02: Because like um, you know, a lot of carpet now, like in this room I'm in right now, I have some really tightly woven carpet, so it's it's a very flat um surface.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_02: But upstairs, we have carpet that is like a shorter version of shag carpeting, you know, it's it's like sort of like little fibers that stick up, but but they don't stick up long enough to bend over.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: Is that like a burber?
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: Or they call it a burber carpet?
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I think no, I think burper is is the tighter is the tighter weave.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I'm sitting on right now.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Berber carpet.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I got some burber.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, you've got it's almost like hair, like you say.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: Like the regular carpet that you see today is like a crew cut carpet.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, like my haircut.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, sure.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_02: And you got a shag.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the shag was like uh long hair.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like it was, and people had long hair back then, right?
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that was what appealing.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: People back then, and and some of it was like literally like um like you could pet it.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know what I mean?
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: Like you see some of the carpets from back then, it felt really soft.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, soft.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_02: Like animal skins?
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_02: Like an animal skin.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: I think people back then in the 60s were really looking for tactile everything.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: Everything was they wanted another dimension, right?
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, some people attributed I've I've I've read some things from designers.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: Some people attribute it to the drugs that people were taking back in the uh peripheration of drugs.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: Some people say that uh they um people wanted um that shag carpets weren't fun to roll around in.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_02: As I say, as they were.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_02: Uh although, although I do have to say, because we had shag carpeting when I lived in not not not where I met you, but in the house before that in northeast Houston, up near Umble, actually, uh near the DeLorean place.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_02: We we had a house with um shag carpeting, and I just remember my mom always being really um kind of grossed out about what was in it when she vacuumed.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: Not real easy to keep uh clean if you had pets and or kids.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_02: Lego pieces, like little the little tiny Lego pieces would get lost in it.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_02: Popcorn kernels.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: Your feet would get lost in it, walk around barefoot and you couldn't see your feet.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: But it would kind of mirrored how people kept themselves back then, too, right?
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: True.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: The 60s were a very shaggy decade.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: And the 70s.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, just that word.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: Now, now the word shag has nothing to do with the British kind of you know euphemism that they use for shag.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: They um, you know, that's kind of the uh impolite word to use, the Austin Powers word.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um what does it mean, Alex?
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: Shag, I think it just had to do with fibers.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, you mean that the yeah, in the UK it's an ugly word.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: But um but they were using shag to refer to textile back in the 1700s.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh back even before that, it was a type of silk that was cheap.
• 4:14
  unknown: Okay.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: The cheapest kind of silk was called shag silk.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: And after that, um wool was shag wool, it was kind of just kind of long textiles, right?
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: Cheaper wool.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: The stuff that came in the 60s was a synthetic version of that.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: That that but people wanted cozy spaces.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: I think prior to that, kind of that mid-century look that people were wanted to get away from was the very kind of sterile um wooden hardwood floor.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh people wanted a a cozy spaces.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_02: Well, and it's it's sort of ironic that that you know you call you call hardwood as sterile, um, where that's actually a real natural fiber, like a real natural thing, and then you cover it with the synthetic stuff and you feel like it's less, it's more natural.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: But it was a reaction to wanting to make a place look more cozy, you know?
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I think they definitely accomplished that.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, people used to put those like um shag rugs on the walls, they used to cover their walls.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: You can see pictures back from the 60s and 70s where the floor and walls were just covered in like hair.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: Door to ceiling shag, baby.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: So the the the night the other appealing thing though about shag carpeting was because it was synthetic, it made it real easy to make in lots of different colors.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: You could color it, and so you could really you know make your house look pretty psychedelic.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you could put all kinds of different uh colors, you could put muted colors or earth tones, but you could also kind of make them um neon or kind of trippy that way.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um you could have rainbow shag carpets, whatever, whatever you really wanted.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there were ways that you could actually dye your own carpet, too, I think, uh, where people were changing the colors of their carpet.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: This was a small period of time, a very short period of time, the 60s and 70s.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: By the 1980s, shag had kind of gone away.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, carpet had kind of gone out of the way.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of people were I think that was more like the late, late 90s, early 2000s when people in the 80s, people were lifting up their carpet and finding beautiful hardwood floors that had been covered with uh carpet, so that kind of became out of favor.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: But the big thing was what you mentioned before that it held on to a lot of dust, a lot of food, a lot of pet hair, a lot of odors smelled like people's houses smelled because of the the the floors, yeah, it was hard to clean.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um but remember people used to have carpeting in their vans.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: Do you remember that?
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_02: Oh yes, yes, the good times van or the mystery mobile.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_02: And and shag was kind of a carpet of choice for a van.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely, man.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_02: If you wanted to get, you know, if you wanted to shag, you needed shag.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: But that was a thing.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: You'd get a van, you wouldn't have seats in the back, and you just have carpet, and people just like hang out and sit in.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: Beanbag chairs carpeted.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: It was like the height of luxury, man.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_02: Beanbag chairs with with seat belts.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I I remember um I had a friend uh who had his his parents had a a van and it had one of those little tables that you could put in so you could sit and play cards and stuff in it.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and and it had uh shag carpeting, captain seats, captain seats in the front, and then like those beads between the front and back that could be tied back.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_02: Like an opium den beads.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_02: It was like a full-on opium opium den for uh you know with with seven-year-old, ten-year-olds riding around.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think uh I think uh child molesters gave those a bad name.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_02: They really did.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_02: They really did.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_02: We should bring back, I mean, those vans could be so much more positively used, but the child molesters and the ice cream men went and ruined it.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: Now, a lot of people in the recording industry say that the reason that a lot of the music from the 60s and 70s has kind of a dead sound is because of shag carpeting.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, because a lot of the studios back then had shag carpet in the uh on the floor and sometimes on the walls, yeah, and kind of give that deaden sound, and a lot of that music had to be remastered to today's audiences so it sounds more like the kind of stuff that we're used to and more lively.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: But drummers in particular talk about just a very there's a dead sound from a lot of the rock and roll from the 60s.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know what I'm talking about?
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you you you want that though, you don't want a lot of echo and and flatback and stuff like that.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: You don't want the echo, but I don't think I think people now don't love that sound.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: They feel like you could you that there was something lost to that.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_02: We we need to find a studio with shag carpeting where we can go in and record Dirtnap City.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if that would sound that good.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if it would sound that good.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_02: As long as the carpet matches the drapes and we're good to go.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: Well, well, luckily, Shag for people who like the Shag, um, the rugs are back.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: You can go and buy Shag rugs now to put over your hardwood floors and get that look, but be able to change it out.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: For the most part, rugs are the thing, and Shag is making a come making a comeback, but not shag carpeting, right?
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: Shag rugs that you'll probably never see again.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_02: You oh, and those words always go together.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_02: You don't really hear shag without without carpeting, right?
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_02: It it nobody says shag shag uh rugs.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_02: Except for Austin Powers.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, Shag, yeah, rugs.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 10:09
  unknown: Yeah.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_02: Well, there you go.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_02: Shag.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_02: Shag me, baby.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have much more.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: Shag carpet on the floor.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: Look so tacky, that's for sure.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: Was big back in seventy-four.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: Now it's just an eyesore.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: Give me a burns every day.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: No safe place for me to lay.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: These honey hips do sway.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: Why can't it just fade away?