The Shaggs facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
The Shaggs
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The Shaggs in 1968
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| Origin | Fremont, New Hampshire, US |
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The Shaggs were an American rock band. They formed in Fremont, New Hampshire, in 1965. The band was made up of four sisters: Dorothy "Dot" Wiggin (singer and lead guitar), Betty Wiggin (singer and rhythm guitar), Helen Wiggin (drums), and later, Rachel Wiggin (bass guitar). Their music was very unusual. Some people thought it was not good. Others found it to be a work of accidental genius.
The Shaggs formed because their father, Austin Wiggin, wanted them to. He believed his mother had predicted their fame. For several years, he made the girls practice every day. They also performed weekly at the Fremont town hall. In 1969, Austin paid for the Shaggs to record an album. It was called Philosophy of the World. Only a few copies were made. The album did not get much attention. The Shaggs stopped playing together in 1975 after Austin's death.
The sisters were not very interested in being musicians. They never became experts at writing songs or performing. They created unique songs. Their guitars were often out of tune. The rhythm of their songs changed unexpectedly. The drum parts and melodies sometimes seemed disconnected. Their lyrics were simple, often about pets and family. Rolling Stone magazine once wrote that the Shaggs sang in a very strange way.
Over the years, Philosophy of the World became popular among musicians. Famous fans included Frank Zappa and Kurt Cobain. The album was re-released in 1980. It then received good reviews for being so unique. A collection of their unreleased songs, Shaggs' Own Thing, came out in 1982. People became very interested in the Shaggs in the 1990s. This was when "outsider music" became more popular. The Shaggs are also known for influencing a music style called twee pop. Dot and Betty played together again in 1999 and 2017. Helen passed away in 2006. Dot released an album in 2013 with her band, the Dot Wiggin Band. It had Shaggs songs that had never been recorded before.
The Shaggs' Story
Early Years: 1965–1968
The Shaggs started in 1965. The teenage sisters Dorothy ("Dot"), Betty, and Helen Wiggin formed the band. They lived in a small town called Fremont, New Hampshire. Dot wrote the songs, played lead guitar, and sang. Betty, the youngest, played rhythm guitar and sang. Helen, the oldest, played drums. Their younger sister, Rachel, sometimes played bass guitar with them.
Their father and manager, Austin Wiggin, Jr., insisted they form the band. Austin worked in a mill. His family was not rich. People in Fremont said he was a serious man. He was very strict and old-fashioned. He did not let the girls have friends, boyfriends, or go to concerts. Betty said they "missed everything." She dreamed of getting a car and leaving home.
When Austin was young, his mother told him three predictions. She said he would marry a woman with strawberry-blonde hair. She also said he would have two sons after she died. Finally, she predicted his daughters would form a popular band. The first two predictions came true. So, Austin worked to make the third one happen. Dot said her father sometimes held seances to talk to his mother. Dot later said the sisters thought their father was "nuts." But they did not want to upset him. She said Austin was not interested in music himself. He only created the band to fulfill the prediction.
Austin took his daughters out of school. He bought them instruments. He also arranged for them to have music and vocal lessons. He named the band "The Shaggs." This was after a popular hairstyle at the time. It also referred to the 1959 movie The Shaggy Dog. He planned their daily schedule. It included several hours of exercise and band practice. The sisters did not want to be musicians. They did not enjoy practicing. Dot later said, "Our father was stubborn. He could be moody. He told us what to do. We obeyed. Or we tried our best." The girls sometimes went to the lake when their father was out. Then, they would arrange their instruments to make it look like they had been practicing.
The Shaggs played their first public show in 1968. It was at a talent show in Exeter. People made fun of them. After playing at a local nursing home, Austin arranged for the Shaggs to play every weekend. They performed at the Fremont town hall. Sometimes, their brothers Austin III (on percussion) and Robert (on drums) joined them. The shows attracted many teenagers. These teens would often shout and throw things. Rumors spread about the girls' controlling father. Dot said Rachel, who was in high school, was bullied. The sisters did not think they were good musicians. They found the performances embarrassing. A video of one town hall concert was found in 2015. It showed the Shaggs playing from handwritten notes. They also did simple dance moves.
Recording Philosophy of the World in 1969
In March 1969, Austin took the Shaggs to record an album. They went to Fleetwood Studios in Revere, Massachusetts. This studio usually recorded local rock bands and school marching bands. The sisters did not think they were ready to record. One engineer remembered that they looked "miserable." Austin did not listen to the engineer's opinion. He said, "I want to get them while they're hot." Another producer, Bobby Herne, said the studio staff closed the control room doors. They "rolled on the floor laughing."
The album was recorded in just one day. Two songs, "My Pal Foot Foot" and "Things I Wonder," were released as a single. This was on Fleetwood Records. Soon after, Herne and another Fleetwood employee, Charlie Dreyer, bought a recording studio. It was called Third World. They were asked to mix the Shaggs' recordings again. They even hired other musicians to re-record parts. But this attempt failed. The new musicians could not follow the Shaggs' unusual timing. Austin paid Third World to make 1000 copies of the Shaggs' first album, Philosophy of the World. Austin wrote the album's notes. He said the Shaggs "loved" making music. He described them as "real, pure, unaffected by outside influences."
Many stories say that Dreyer only gave Austin 100 copies of the album. He then disappeared with the other 900. Dot said that Dreyer had stolen her father's money. She said he could not be found. However, a music executive named Harry Palmer said Dreyer told him something different. Dreyer said Austin refused to distribute the extra copies. Austin feared someone would copy the Shaggs' music. Palmer said Dreyer kept boxes of the records in the studio. He would give them to anyone who asked. A journalist named Irwin Chusid said it was unlikely Dreyer stole the records. They were not worth much money at the time. Philosophy of the World did not get any media attention. The Shaggs went back to playing locally.
Later Years and Breakup: 1970s
Harry Palmer had received several copies of Philosophy of the World from Dreyer. He was curious and wondered if he could find an audience for the Shaggs. In 1970 or 1971, he went to one of their shows in Fremont. He was surprised to see local people dancing strangely to the music. Palmer talked to Austin about promoting the Shaggs. But he pointed out that people laughed at them. He asked if this was a problem. Austin seemed resigned. Palmer decided he might be taking advantage of the Shaggs. So, he did not continue to promote them.
In 1973, the Shaggs' weekly town hall shows were stopped. The Fremont town leaders made this decision. The sisters were relieved. They were now adults. They were tired of their father's control. When Austin found out that Helen, then 28, had secretly married, he became very angry. The police had to get involved. Helen left her family home to be with her husband. But she later rejoined the band.
In 1975, Austin took the Shaggs to Fleetwood Studios for another recording session. They had practiced for hundreds of hours. They had become better musicians. But the engineer wrote about their poor performances. He felt sorry for them. He said they did not notice their out-of-tune guitars. They also did not notice their disconnected rhythms. This was even when he played the recordings back to them.
The recordings from the 1975 session were never released. Soon after, Austin passed away from a heart attack at age 47. The Shaggs broke up. They sold most of their musical equipment. A few years later, Betty and Dot got married and moved out. Their mother sold the family house. The new owner thought the house was haunted by Austin's ghost. So, he gave it to the Fremont fire department. They burned it down in a firefighting exercise. The Wiggin sisters never made money from their music. They took regular jobs to support their families.
Growing Popularity: 1980s
By the 1980s, copies of Philosophy of the World were shared among musicians. It gained a "cult following." This means a small but very dedicated group of fans. These fans included Frank Zappa, Bonnie Raitt, and Jonathan Richman. Zappa played two songs from the album on a radio show in the early 1970s. He is often quoted saying the Shaggs were "better than the Beatles." But this might not be true. Songs were also played on a Boston radio station.
The Shaggs also gained fans in Terry Adams and Tom Ardolino. They were from the American band NRBQ. Adams said he saw beauty and originality in the music. He felt it was "outside of the normal thinking process for songwriting." He believed it "needed to be heard" and that people would like it. He found the Wiggin sisters. He convinced them to re-release Philosophy of the World in 1980. It was put out on NRBQ's record label, Rounder Records.
Debra Ray Cohen reviewed the re-release for Rolling Stone. She called Philosophy of the World "the sickest, most stunningly awful wonderful record I've heard in ages." In another Rolling Stone review that year, Chris Connelly suggested it could be the worst album ever recorded. Rolling Stone gave it their "Comeback of the Year" award. Lester Bangs wrote for The Village Voice. He asked, "How do they sound? Perfect! They can't play a lick! But mainly they got the right attitude." He wrote that Philosophy of the World could stand with albums by the Beatles and Bob Dylan. He called it "one of the landmarks of rock 'n' roll history." In 2004, Pitchfork noted that the Shaggs were "embraced by the exact opposite audience Austin desired." This meant long-haired, artistic thinkers.
Adams and Ardolino helped create a new release. It was the 1982 collection Shaggs' Own Thing. It had unreleased recordings from 1969 to 1975. The title song was a duet between Austin and his oldest son, Robert. In 1988, Philosophy of the World and Shaggs' Own Thing were improved. They were re-released by Rounder Records as a collection called The Shaggs.
Media Attention and Reunions: 1990s–Present
In the 1990s, more people became interested in "outsider music." This is music made by self-taught or naïve musicians. Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain said the Shaggs were one of his favorite bands. In 1999, RCA Victor re-released Philosophy of the World. It had the original cover and songs. Joe Mozian, a vice president at RCA Victor, said, "It's so basic and innocent... It is kind of a bad record—that's so obvious... But it absolutely intrigued me." Despite the growing interest, the re-release did not sell well. Mozian thought "people are a little afraid of having the Shaggs in their record collections."
That year, The New Yorker magazine wrote about the Shaggs. The writer was Susan Orlean. Betty was surprised that Orlean liked their music. She said, "God, it's horrible." Dot said she did not listen to it. The sisters did not like the article. Dot did not like that Orlean wrote Betty's hair was not neat. Soon after the article came out, actor Tom Cruise and his partner Paula Wagner bought the rights to make a film from Orlean's article.
In 1999, Dot worked as a cleaner. Betty was a school janitor and warehouse employee. Helen was living on disability benefits. Only Dot was still involved in music. She played handbells in a church choir and wrote lyrics. That November, Dot and Betty performed four songs. It was at NRBQ's 30th-anniversary party in New York. The NRBQ drummer Tommy Ardolino played for Helen. Fans from all over the world came to the show. Dot later said it was the first time she realized how many fans the Shaggs had. A review in The Village Voice said Dot seemed comfortable on stage. Betty, however, appeared nervous.
In 2001, a record label released Better than the Beatles. This was a tribute album with covers of Shaggs songs. Many bands covered their music. A stage musical about the Shaggs, Philosophy of the World, opened in New York City in 2011. New York Times called it "quirky but dreary." They said it was "hamstrung by tonal uncertainty." The girls' lack of talent was clear. But the script was unsure if it should make their lives a joke. Rounder Records re-released The Shaggs collection in 2004. Helen passed away in 2006.
In 2012, Dot and Betty went to a Shaggs tribute show in Brooklyn. The musician Jesse Krakow organized it. Krakow wanted to play the songs exactly as they were recorded. He said, "Everybody says the Shaggs are impossible to play, but we're going to do it as is." Krakow found out that Dot had unrecorded Shaggs songs. So, he put together a group of musicians, the Dot Wiggin Band. They recorded the songs with her. They released an album, Ready! Get! Go!, in 2013. They also toured with the band Neutral Milk Hotel in 2015. Dot said she was not interested in recording. She "just wanted to get the music out there and get the royalties." Philosophy of the World was re-released again in 2016. By this time, original copies were selling for up to $10,000.
In 2017, Dot and Betty performed a reunion show. It was at the Solid Sound Festival. Their band included Krakow, Brittany Anjou, and drummer Laura Cromwell. Cromwell spent "countless hours" studying Helen's drum rhythms. Dot was disappointed that Krakow did not fix the mistakes in the music. But she knew that "everybody seems to like it the way it was." She and Betty sang but did not play instruments. They relied on the band to tell them when to start singing. Cromwell said Dot was willing to practice. But Betty was more quiet and "even bewildered." Dot said Betty only performed for the money. Betty said she had no interest in performing again.
A musician named Howard Fishman wrote about the 2017 show for The New Yorker. He said the Wiggin sisters did not seem comfortable on stage. They did not talk much to the audience. Fishman wrote that "watching the Wiggins being led through a zealous re-creation of music they'd never been particularly proud of was a jarring experience." He knew that Krakow and his band respected the Shaggs' music. But he asked, "What did it mean to celebrate a mistake? If accidental art is re-created on purpose, what is it?" In 2018, news came out that a film musical about the Shaggs would be made. Ken Kwapis would direct it. Elsie Fisher was cast in a role.
Music Style
The Shaggs tried to write normal pop songs. But they created very unusual music instead. Many people found it strange. They did not know their music was different. They also did not understand why critics talked about it so much later. The journalist Irwin Chusid said their music was "100 percent authentic." It was not trying to be ironic or trendy.
The Shaggs did not use clear chord progressions. They played cheap guitars that were often out of tune by accident. Their melodies, sung together, seemed random. Terry Adams of NRBQ compared them to the free jazz music of Ornette Coleman. The musician Howard Fishman wrote that Dot and Betty's voices had a "sort of intuitive, spooky closeness." This was like other sibling groups. The Rolling Stone critic Debra Ray Cohen wrote that they sang in a very strange way. The songs moved unexpectedly between different time signatures. Helen, the drummer, often played separately from her sisters. She played drum patterns she remembered from school lessons.
Dot wrote lyrics based on her life. For example, she wrote about her cat Foot Foot disappearing. She also wrote about wanting straight hair. A writer for Vice compared the lyrics to "dilapidated nursery rhymes." They were like fables with clear messages. Some were also like odd Christian songs. In Rolling Stone, Gory Krow wrote that some Shaggs songs are happy. Others "have an inexplicable sadness about them."
Ron Eyre, a head at United Artists Records, compared Philosophy of the World to aboriginal music. He also compared it to music he heard in China. The Pitchfork critic Quinn Moreland found the songs interesting and catchy. She said the "chaos is negated in the same way that after enough contemplation the violent splatters of a Jackson Pollock painting become calming." The musician Cub Koda saw an "innocence" in the Shaggs' music. He found it "both charming and unsettling."
After recording Philosophy of the World, the Shaggs got better at playing. But they never became masters of their instruments. Moore described their later songs as "amateurish bubblegum country." Moreland felt it was "playful and free of anxiety." She said their covers of songs by bands like the Carpenters were "faithful, even graceful."
The Shaggs' Impact
The Shaggs' music has been called both among the worst of all time and a work of accidental brilliance. Chusid noted that many people, after hearing Philosophy of the World, wondered if it was the worst album ever recorded. The LA Weekly critic Bruce D. Rhodewalt wrote, "If we can judge music on the basis of its honesty, originality, and impact, then the Shaggs' Philosophy of the World is the greatest record ever recorded." The critic Lindsay Zoladz said the Shaggs' music was "inscrutable." It made listeners think about what "good" and "bad" music really means. Koda said it would make "any listener coming to this music to rearrange any pre-existing notions about the relationships between talent, originality, and ability."
The Shaggs are important to the history of outsider music. This is music made by self-taught or naïve musicians. Chusid called the Shaggs "the legendary—if unwitting—godmothers of outsider music." Alan McGee, who started Creation Records, wrote that they were "ground zero in the spurious world of outsider music." He said they "created possibilities" for unheard artists like Daniel Johnston.
However, Moreland argued that the Shaggs were not outsider musicians. She said outsider music "is meant to come from an undisturbed place." She quoted Jean Dubuffet, who started the "art brut" movement. He said that in outsider art, we see art in its purest form. It is something new, created from scratch by the artist. The artist uses only their own ideas. Moreland pointed out that the Shaggs were forced to make music by their father. She saw a feeling of being trapped and sadness in their music. She argued that calling them "outsiders" ignored this.
Pitchfork wrote that the Shaggs "laid the groundwork" for the "faux-naivete" of twee pop. According to the journalist and musician Bob Stanley, they inspired "a wave of faux-naive groups," such as Beat Happening. Reviewing their 1999 reunion, Eric Weisbard wrote that the Shaggs now seemed less unusual. He compared their out-of-tune guitars to Sonic Youth. He also compared their "mixture of repression and cuteness" to Shonen Knife. He concluded that their music provided "rough sketches for the future of underground rock."
Band Members
- Dorothy "Dot" Wiggin – vocals, lead guitar
- Betty Wiggin – vocals, rhythm guitar
- Helen Wiggin – drums
- Rachel Wiggin – bass guitar
Music Releases
Studio Albums
- Philosophy of the World (Original release: Third World Records, TCLP 3001, 1969) (Re-release: Red Rooster/Rounder 3032, 1980)
Collections
- Shaggs' Own Thing (Red Rooster/Rounder 1982)
- The Shaggs (CD includes Philosophy of the World and Shaggs' Own Thing) (Rounder Records 1988)
Tribute Albums
- Better than the Beatles – A Tribute to the Shaggs (2001)
Songs on Other Albums
- Songs in the Key of Z – The Curious Universe of Outsider Music (2000)
See also
In Spanish: The Shaggs para niños
