Pee Shy - Noteworthy Aspects

Noteworthy Aspects

The band's name drew no end of grief from label executives and music critics, and even prompted a columnist in The Tampa Tribune to bemoan "the decay of morality" demonstrated by "increasingly dicey" band names "a la Butthole Surfers, Pee Shy and others." Band members explained that the name originated from a nickname that Wheeler had received from an old boyfriend. In their early days they also performed a song called "Pee Shy," in which urinary reticence became a metaphor for unexpressed longing—as exemplified in the crucial line, "If you won't leave, I can't start." The band apparently never recorded this song.

A December 2000 article in the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, examining Ybor City's "bohemian" culture of the mid-1990s, held up Pee Shy as a prototypical "DIY band turned corporate sellout," at least in the sense that the members' decision to sign with a major label had been controversial with some of their friends and indie rock compatriots.

Pee Shy's primary musical innovation may have been accordion feedback, a yowling, oscillating sound that Wheeler created by pressing the instrument against a speaker as she played.

According to Wheeler, in 2003 the director Robert Altman sought to use seven seconds of Mr. Whisper in the soundtrack to his ballet film The Company, starring Neve Campbell. But the Universal Music Group, which by then had acquired PolyGram, refused to waive its $10,000 fee.