For the uninitiated, I give a brief introduction to the Immaculate Phenomenon that is the Shaggs’ œuvre:
The [all too kind] STORY, from Wikipedia:
The Shaggs were an American all-female rock group formed in Fremont, New Hampshire in 1968. The band was composed of sisters Dorothy “Dot” Wiggin (vocals/lead guitar), Betty Wiggin (vocals/rhythm guitar), 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 band’s only studio album, Philosophy of the World, was released in 1969. The album failed to garner attention, though the band continued to exist as a locally popular live act. The Shaggs disbanded in 1975 after the death of Austin. …
The band is primarily notable today for their perceived ineptitude at playing conventional rock music; the band was described in one Rolling Stone article as “…sounding like lobotomized Trapp Family singers.”[3] As the obscure LP achieved recognition among collectors, the band was praised for their raw, intuitive composition style and lyrical honesty.[citation needed] Philosophy of the World was lauded as a work of art brut, and was later reissued, followed by a compilation album, Shaggs’ Own Thing, in 1982.[/QUOTE]
This music, being far too tuneless & arrhythmic for the capacities of mere mortals, was widely considered to be a hoax, perhaps the work of some disgruntled out-of-work “Loft Jazz” musicians from New York.
As Susan Orlean puts it, on her site “Meet the Shaggs“:
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.”
I believe he was being ironic here. This was back before you could find irony in Wal ★ Mart’s clearance aisle.
More recently, though, a music fan who claimed to be in “the fetal position, writhing in pain,” declared on the Internet that the Shaggs were “hauntingly bad,” and added, “I would walk across the desert while eating charcoal briquettes soaked in Tabasco for forty days and forty nights not to ever have to listen to anything Shagg-related ever again.” Such a divergence of opinion confuses the mind. Listening to the Shaggs’ album ‘Philosophy of the World’ will further confound.
Something is sort of wrong with the tempo, and the melodies are squashed and bent, nasal, deadpan.Are the Shaggs referencing the heptatonic, angular microtones of Chinese ya-yueh court music and the atonal note clusters of Ornette Coleman, or are they just a bunch of kids playing badly on cheap, out-of-tune guitars? And what about their homely, blunt lyrics? Consider the song ‘Things I Wonder’:
There are many things I wonder
There are many things I don’t
It seems as though the things I wonder most
Are the things I never find outIs this the colloquial ease and dislocated syntax of a James Schuyler poem or the awkward innermost thoughts of a speechless teen-ager?
ENJOY! (click on blank empty space if object is not visible)
footnote [3]: from missioncreep.com Expresso Tilt:
…proclaimed The Rolling Stone, “. . . like a lobotomized Trapp Family Singers.” The late Lester Bangs called The Shaggs an “anti-power trio” and claimed that Philosophy of the World was “a landmark in rock and roll history.” He also expressed his surprise that the sisters were not junkies.
