| Three girls from New Hampshire who became one of music's strangest legends.DEPENDING on whom you ask, the Shaggs were either the best band of all time or the worst.Frank Zappa is said to have proclaimed that the Shaggs were "better than the Beatles."And what about their homely, blunt lyrics?The Shaggs were three sisters, Helen, Better, and Dorothy (Dot) Wiggin, from Fremont, New Hampshire.They performed almost exclusively at the Fremont town hall and at a local nursing home, beginning in 1968 and ending in 1973.Many people in Fremont thought the band stank.He believed his girls were going to be big stars, and in 1969 he took most of his savings and paid to record an album of their music.Even so, the album has endured for thirty years.Music collectors got hold of the remaining copies of "Philosophy of the World" and started a small Shaggs cult.In 1988, the songs were repackaged and rereleased on compact disk and became celebrated by outsider music mavens, who were taken with the Shaggs' artless style.Now the Shaggs are entering their third life: "Philosophy of the World" was reissued last spring by RCA Victor and will be released in Germany this winter.Which leaves you with even more things to wonder about the Shaggs.Route 125, the main highway bisecting New Hampshire, just misses the east side of Fremont; Route 101 just misses the north; the town is neither in the mountains nor on the ocean; it is not quite in the thick of Boston's outskirts, nor is it quite cosseted in the woods.Frost Cooperage, went to church, tended their families, kept quiet lives.Exeter River and glazes the big stands of blue pine, and sometimes the pastures are full and lustrous but ordinary days in southern New Hampshire towns can be mingy and dismal.He said it was nice but that he had been bored stiff.WHERE else would Austin Wiggin have got the idea that his daughters should form a rock band?Austin was terribly superstitious.His mother liked to tell fortunes.When he was young, she studied his palm and told him that in the future he would marry a strawberry blonde and would have two sons whom she would not live to see, and that his daughters would play in a band.It was left to Austin to fulfill the last of his mother's predictions, and when his daughters were old enough he told them that they would be taking voice and music lessons and forming a band.Besides, he chafed at his place in the Fremont social system.But Austin pushed the girls into a new life.He named them the Shaggs, and told them that they were not going to attend the local high school, because he didn't want them travelling by bus and mixing with outsiders, and, more important, he wanted them to practice their music all day.The girls couldn't decide which was worse, the days when he made them do calisthenics or the days when he'd make them practice again before bed.In either case, their days seemed endless.The rehearsals were solemn, and Austin could be cutting.Their world was even smaller than the small town of Fremont.And yet the sweet, lumpish Wiggin sisters of Fremont, New Hampshire, were playing pop music at their father's insistence, in a band that he directed.Rebellion might have been driving most rock and roll, but in Fremont Dot Wiggin was writing tributes to her mom and dad, with songs like "Who are Parents?"The girls were mortified; Austin told them they just had to go home and practice more.If they thought about quitting, they thought about it privately, because Austin would have had no truck with the idea; he was the kind of father who didn't tolerate debate.They practiced more, did their calisthenics, practiced more.Helen made up her drum parts on her own.Soon afterward, Austin arranged for them to play at the Fremont town hall on Saturday nights.The girls worried about embarrassing themselves, but at the same time they liked the fact that the shows allowed them to escape the house and their bounded world, even if it was just for a night.At that point, the girls had never even been to Boston, which was only fifty miles away.Austin III, the older of the two sons who had been seen in Austin's future, played the maracas; the other son, Robert, played the tambourine and did a drum solo during intermission; Annie sold tickets and ran the refreshment stand.Pepsi truck would drop off cases of soda at their green ranch house, on Beede Road, every Friday night.The rumor around town was that Austin forced his daughters to be in the band."THROUGH the years, this author as town historian has received numerous requests from fans around the country looking for information on 'The Shaggs' and the town they came from," Mathew Thomas wrote in his section about the band.To their surprise they succeeded.The Beatles' arrival in America piqued Austin.He wanted to see the Shaggs on television, and on concert tours.Shaggs rehearse and suggested that they weren't quite ready to record.But Austin insisted on going forward, reportedly telling the engineer, "I want to get them while they're hot."The Shaggs are real, pure, unaffected by outside influences.The Shaggs love you...They do it because they love it.If he was, it no doubt got harder to dream as the years went on.They were getting older and had began to chafe at his authority.She left with her husband, and it was months before Austin spoke to her.The Shaggs continued to play at local fairs and at the nursing home.SHORTLY after the newest release of the Shaggs' album, I went to New Hampshire to talk to the Wiggin sisters.After Austin died, they sold much of their equipment and later let their kids horse around with whatever was left.Dot hung on to her guitar for a while, just in case, but a few years ago she lent it to one of her brothers and hasn't got it back.Southern New Hampshire has regular outbreaks of tribute bands and reunion tours, as if it were in a time zone all its own, one in which the past keeps reappearing, familiar but essentially changed.Some time ago, Dot and her husband and their two sons went to see a revived version of Herman's Hermits.The concert was a huge disappointment for Dot, because her favorite Hermit, Peter (Herman) Noone, is no longer with the band, and because the Hermits' act now includes dirty jokes and crude references.The Shaggs never made any money from their album until years later, when members of the band NRBQ heard "Philosophy of the World" and were thrilled by its strange innocence.The resulting album, "The Shaggs' Own Thing," includes the second session at Fleetwood Studios and some live and home recordings.The articles introduced the Shaggs to the world.Three years ago, Irwin Chusid, the author of the forthcoming book "Songs in the Key of Z; The Curious Universe of Outsider Music," discovered that a company he worked with had bought the rights to the Shaggs' songs, which had been bundled with other obscure music publishing rights.Chusid wanted to reissue "Philosophy of the World" as it was in 1969, with the original cover and the original song sequence.Mozian says, "The Shaggs were beyond my wildest dreams.Even though the record is being played on college radio stations and the reviews have been enthusiastic and outsider art has been in vogue for several years, RCA Victor has sold only a few thousand copies of "Philosophy" so far.Mozian admits that he is disappointed.Shaggs in the record collections."Her hair no longer rippled down to her waist and no longer had a shelf of shaggy bangs that touched the bridge of her nose; it was short and springy, just to the nape of her neck, the hair of a grown woman without time to bother too much about her appearance.The Wiggins have received fan letters from Switzerland and Texas, been interviewed for a documentary film, and inspired a dozen Web sites, bulletin boards, and forums on the Internet, but it's hard to see how this could matter much, once their childhood had been scratched out and rewritten as endless days of practicing guitar, and their father, who believed that their success was fated, died before they got any recognition."The really cool part, to me, is that it's thirty years later and we're still talking about it.And I saw a guy at a fair recently and talked to him for about half an hour about the Shaggs.We ordered our coffee and doughnuts and sat at a table near the window.For the Wiggins, music was never simple and carefree, and it still isn't.Betty shushed her and said, "She really does have some kind of voice."Dot is the only one who is still attached to her father's dream.She played the handbells in her church choir until recently, when she began taking care of one of Helen's children in addition to her own two sons and no longer had the time.She said that she's been writing lyrics for the last two years and hopes to finish them, and to compose the music for them.The Shaggs, thirty years late, may yet make it big, the way Austin saw it in his dreams.The Shaggs must have known this all along.This article appeared in the September 27th, 1999 issue.The Shaggs in 1968.Helen Wiggin (drums), and later Rachel Wiggin (bass).The Shaggs were formed by Dot, Betty, and Helen in 1968 on the insistence of their father, Austin Wiggin, who believed that his mother foresaw the band's rise to stardom.The Shaggs disbanded in 1975 after the death of Austin.Posthumously, the band gained notoriety and praise for their unconventional style, lack of musical talent, and lyrical honesty after Frank Zappa named Philosophy of the World one of his favorite records.Philosophy of the World was later reissued, and the compilation Shaggs' Own Thing was released in 1982.The Shaggs are now seen as one of the most important outsider music groups.History
The conceptual beginning of The Shaggs came from Austin Wiggin, Jr.He was stubborn and he could be temperamental.On the topic of the album, Cub Koda wrote, "There's an innocence to these songs and their performances that's both charming and unsettling.There is no album you might own that sounds remotely like this one."Upon closer examination, The Shaggs seem to have a consistent (but highly idiosyncratic) approach to melody, harmony, and rhythm.At this point, the man who had promised to press 1,000 copies of Philosophy of the World reportedly absconded with 900 of them.The rest were circulated to New England radio stations but attracted little attention, and the girls' dreams of superstardom were dashed.Upon the LP's release, Rolling Stone magazine accorded the Shaggs "Comeback of the Year" honors.Adams and Ardolino issued some unreleased 1975 recordings on the 1982 LP Shaggs' Own Thing, but its closer approximation to conventional music caused some to disregard this collection.In 1988 Dorothy Wiggin rediscovered the lost masters of Philosophy of the World in a closet; these and the tracks from Shaggs' Own Thing were remastered and released on Rounder an eponymous CD, which had different cover art and a resequencing of all tracks.The Wall Street Journal reviewed the CD on the day it was released, and The New Yorker subsequently ran a lengthy profile of the Shaggs, authored by Susan Orlean.In 2000, NRBQ celebrated their thirtieth anniversary with a concert in New York City; their opening act was The Shaggs.Helen, who had been suffering from depression for years, declined to attend, so NRBQ's drummer was faced with the challenging task of attempting to play Helen's parts.In 2001, the Animal World label released Better than the Beatles, a Shaggs tribute album.The title was based on the title of an article by Lester Bangs in which he described the importance of what The Shaggs accomplished musically.The album featured established acts such as Ida, Optiganally Yours, Deerhoof and Danielson Famille covering The Shaggs' songs.John Langs, opened at the John Anson Ford Theatre in Los Angeles in November 2003.The production was staged at Lookingglass Theatre Company in Chicago in the spring of 2004, and at the New York Musical Theatre Festival in September 2005.Helen Wiggin died in 2006.Annie Wiggin, died in 2005.Chicago) A Cappella, 2000.All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.Actually, what we
learned from The Shaggs (and from their father Austin Wiggin, Jr.In the case of The Shaggs, this gift was a lucky, charming moment captured
on audio tape.Today we listen, have a few laughs and are grateful The Shaggs' music has survived
somehow.Dot, Betty and Helen Wiggin transformed their own lives into lyrics while performing
music as The Shaggs.They shared their beliefs and subsequently became role models of personal musical
expression.We love The Shaggs because we share those feelings and hopes.They believed, and we desperately want to.Here is a photo of Annie and Austin, Mom and Dad.Shaggs personal collection for our fans.The Shaggs Philosophy Of Life:
Never judge others until you've walked a mile in their footsteps.Do as Thumper's parents say: If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything
at all.People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.She plans on meeting
with the Shaggs and researching the town of Fremont in the next few months.Do you have a question or a comment?Our email addresses:
Dorothy
Betty
Helen
back to the Main Menu
The Official SHAGGS WORLDWIDE FAN CLUB
The Official SHAGGS WORLDWIDE FAN CLUB is located only at this
web site address (www.Welcome to the SHAGGS WORLDWIDE FAN CLUB!My Shaggs' official
fan service.This is NOT the album cover!The photo that appears
ON THE ALBUM is actually years older.Fan Club stickers (4 different designs)
Email service notification of future Shaggs news and exclusive
discounts on fun Shagg's products.Then what are you waiting for?Don't have the Adobe pdf reader?Here is a photo that shows Helen, Dot, Betty, Rachel at Rye Beach.So, if you REALLY love the Shaggs,
you'll want to know more about us and this is the place to do it!"The Shaggs"
By: John DeAngelis
When Austin Wiggin, Jr.The girls hadn't been playing very long and were uncertain of their abilities.Upon hearing the three sisters play, the recording engineer suggested to Austin
that perhaps the girls weren't quite ready to record.The music recorded that day was indeed hot, and Austin paid a local entrepeneur
to release Philosophy Of The World by the Shaggs on the Third World label.Whole Wheat Horns, an adjunct to the legendary adventurous
NRBQ, played a tape of the Shaggs for the rest of NRBQ.Most critics loved it, although
their reasons varied greatly.Some thought the Shaggs were a joke, or some elaborate
hoax.Others took the Shaggs more seriously.Shaggs' Philosophy Of The World is the greatest record
ever recorded in the history of the universe."It will change your life."Shaggs cut for a professional musician who didn't roll his
eyes and whisper, 'Where can I get this record?World release of Philosophy was neither mixed nor mastered in the most highly
attentive fashion.Rounder reissue had to
be painstakingly transferred from a clean copy of the original release.It was soon discovered that the "big tapes" included the original
multitrack recordings of Philosophy Of The World.Philosophy reveals a cleaner, yet wonderfully bracing quality that
will suprise even those already familiar with its contents."That Little Sports Car," has
been restored, adding a whole new dimension to that song.Shaggs Own Thing, which contains material recorded after Philosophy that was
compiled and released after that record's triumphant reissue.Shaggs were presenting their own unique interpretations of other people's
songs, confused those who were expecting a carbon copy of Philosophy.The Shaggs originated almost twenty years ago.After all these years, Dot Wiggin can't shake The Shaggs.The Shaggs shown during a sound check prior to
a concert at The Bowery Ballroom in New York.Betty Porter, left, her sister,
Dot Wiggin, right, are two thirds of The Shaggs.Today, they get fan mail from around the world, and
their lawyers are negotiating a possible movie deal."It's almost like we lived two lives: That was then, this is now," Wiggin
says."Only the then is becoming the now."The idea of The Shaggs is actually older than Wiggin and her sisters.Epping, where the three sisters now live.Shaggs (named by their father for their long, shaggy hairstyles) played
cover songs and their own arrangements.The Shaggs, then ages 18 to 22, were reluctant, but their father was firm.By the end of that day, they had recorded the 12 songs that would become "Philosophy
of the World."I'm so sad when you're away") were simple enough.But the sound
was something else.The rest were circulated to New England
radio stations, but attracted little attention.Austin Wiggin was undeterred.The Shaggs were back in the studio a few years
later to record a few more songs.He was strict, but supportive, Wiggin said.He knew what he wanted and there was no two ways about
the way it was going to be," she said.In 1975, their father died of a heart attack.The Shaggs died along with him."Philosophy of the World" on vinyl in
1980.Eight years later, they combined tracks from both recording sessions on
a CD called "The Shaggs."Frank Zappa called the Shaggs "better than the Beatles."Irwin Chusid, who produced the latest CD, devotes a chapter to the Shaggs in
his book, "Songs in the Key of Z: The Curious Universe of Outsider Music."Shaggs for their "honest artistic expression of their musical impulses.""It's aboriginal rock and roll.The Shaggs even showed up in a scholarly paper by Guy Capuzzo, a music theory
professor at Penn State, written when he was a graduate student.Shaggs because they remind him of what musicians sound like
when they first start out."It's kind of like a balloon that's just about to burst.There's this enormous
tension.You're waiting for the whole thing to fall apart, but it doesn't,"
he said."We couldn't play 'em like we played 'em then.Both were amazed to meet fans who could sing along with all their songs.Foot Foot, the cat
they sing about in "My Pal Foot Foot.""I'm glad we did it," Wiggin said.But The Shaggs also have their critics."Shock therapy and all the Prozac in the world would never stop the haunting
sounds of these banshees," one reviewer wrote on a music Web site."We see a lot of the garbage on the Internet," Wiggin said.On it, she would explain her philosophy of life, which she
boils down to two rules.The Shaggs don't spend much time dreaming about what might have happened if
they had continued performing."As we got going we would've gotten better,
and it seems as though people don't want it better."Producer: Austin Wiggin, Jr.Having never seen a live rock band, but having heard their favorite songs on the radio, these hothouse siblings formed a trio playing two guitars and drums.In 1969 they recorded PHILOSOPHY...The Shaggs are a touchstone of unpretentiousness.Wiggin sisters as the legendary, if unwitting, Queens of Outsider Music.The RCA Victor package represents the first authentic reissue of the original PHILOSOPHY OF THE WORLD, as conceived by the Shaggs' proud papa, Austin Wiggin, Jr.The Wiggin sisters, teenagers from New Hampshire who recorded in the late '60s and early '70s as the Shaggs, had a unique, original musical vision, one that was either complemented or detracted from by the fact that they could barely play their instruments, at least not by conventional Philistine standards.This CD comprises the complete recorded output of the Shaggs as we know them, including material not issued on other formats or albums.Believe us: if can find it in you to let the Shaggs make it past your funnybone, they'll get to your heart.The Shaggs are like castaways on their own musical island.The Shaggs convince me that they're the real thing when they sing.They bring my mind to a complete halt.The video has been added to your playlist.Change this to see only comments above a certain value.The Shaggs' on an Australian show called 'Collectors', where this woman collected albums (vinyls) that were seen as a bit 'trashy' and 'The Shaggs' were amongst them.The Shaggs' were like.Odd meter rhythms, unintentional tritone subbing, pentatonic primal melodies, you can study music for decades and only dream of playing like this.Sauds does the Shaggs!The Shaggs performing Who Are Parents?Change this to see only comments above a certain value.Change the value of a comment by clicking on a thumb.Lol yeah its bad but....The Shaggs reunited in 1999 for the NRBQ 30th Anniversary show, with Tom Ardolino replacing Helen Wiggin on drums.The Shaggs are the heart of Punk.While everyone else in school was trying to look cool, they got their instruments from a Sears Catalog and, dang it, they made an album!The Shaggs performing Who Are Parents?Sauds does the Shaggs!The Village Voice
Jan.But credit must be
given to the foremothers: the Shaggs.Hell, they let Nancy Reagan in!God Bless the Shaggs.Hours() * 3600 + newCurrentTime.Hours() * 3600 + currentTime.Minutes() * 60 + currentTime.This item is not eligible for Amazon Prime, but over a million other items are.Available from these sellers.No one has tagged this product for Amazon search yet.Why not be the first to suggest a search for which it should appear?Angry Rock Music nowadays, but if there was ever a band which qualified for such mute reverence, it's The Shaggs.And yet they can't really be called inept; they negotiate arrangements of Beefheartian complexity with a certain awkward grace, and by the time they'd learned to play properly they could rock da house with some power, if with diminished character.The Shaggs truly made music as if nobody had ever made it before.Most of us take up instruments because we want to emulate other, better players; The Shaggs played as though they heard it all perfectly formed in their heads, and just wanted to get it onto plastic."Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided to other Amazon.From time to time, he would put the Shaggs on for his unsuspecting customers to hear.After a few seconds, the music would arrest their attention.Nevertheless, this is without any possible question the most unique and unusual album in the history of music.Suggestion for an experiment: buy it, put it on to play at a party without warning your friends, watch their reactions.Then ask yourself, could anyother album in the history of music (music, not just rock) have produced that effect?The album is the result of three sisters being given Christmas presents, two of them guitars and one drums.The result is not rock primitivism as some like to say: it is rock amateurism carried to the furthest extreme.The drums often have no relation to anything the guitars are playing.It might have the effect of causing the listener to rethink everything that they knew about music, but it won't set your foot to tapping or make you want to sing along.On a certain level, this music is laughably bad and thoroughly amaterish.It's unlike anything else ever recorded.Is it any wonder that the Shaggs have been the object of cultish devotion for all these many years?If you must laugh *at* the Shaggs, and enjoy music that is so bad, it's good, well, this can have that sort of appeal, too.Basically what I am getting at is that the Shaggs can be enjoyed on a variety of levels.Was this review helpful to you?The real story behind The Shaggs was the father.What planet was he from?I've never heard anything as compellingly naive.How strange that so many respect this music as genius, and think that it is wildly original.All evidence indicates that the Shaggs were a case of three daughters being browbeaten by their domineering father, Austin Wiggin Jr.See all 42 customer reviews...What Are You Listening To....What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?Music You Should Hear: Artists' PicksWant to know what Norah Jones, Sting, and Il Divo are listening to?Is there any other feedback you would like to provide?Track your recent orders.Visit our Help department.After viewing product detail pages or search results, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in.Look to the right column to find helpful suggestions for your shopping session. |
