Reissue CDs Weekly: The Shaggs

“The Shaggs are real, pure, unaffected by outside influences. Their music is different, it is theirs alone.” So began the liner notes to Philosophy of the World, The Shaggs' sole album. Not many people read the words or heard the music when it was pressed in 1969. Only 100 copies were made. It was meant to be 1000, but a murky business deal meant the balance of 900 never showed up.

The Shaggs were Betty, Dorothy and Helen Wiggin, three sisters from Fremont, New Hampshire. Their father, Austin Wiggin Jr., was their champion and took them into Revere, Massachusetts’ Fleetwood Recording Studio in March 1969 to record what would become Philosophy of the World. Sure his daughters had what it took, he had rehearsed them at the family home for the Ed Sullivan appearance that was inevitably theirs. It didn’t happen.

What did happen though was that the band NRBQ encountered the album in 1980 and organised its reissue on their own Red Rooster label. They had heard it via a cassette recorded from a copy of the album brought into an Amherst, Mass. second-hand record shop. The seller said it was “the worst record I ever heard,” begging the question of what they considered good. In time, Kurt Cobain named it as one his favourite albums. For the new reissue, Patti Smith guitarist/Nuggets compiler Lenny Kaye’s essay eloquently tells the full story of the band, their rediscovery and Philosophy of the World's afterlife.

Coming as I did to The Shaggs cold in 1985 was a jolt. The music was, indeed, “different.” Clearly, they were also “unaffected by outside influences.” The only things to benchmark them against were third album Velvet Underground, Rock ‘n’ Roll with the Modern Lovers and Scotland’s Pastels. And Jandek. Later, it was clear how much Beat Happening drew from The Shaggs. But back then, on first exposure, it was obvious this was neither art or a knowingly deconstructed form of rock music akin to what had sprung to mind while figuring it out. This was unfettered: unencumbered by notions of good or skill. It just was. And it took quite a while to tune in to The Shaggs’ wavelength.

Philosophy of the World is amelodic, arhythmic, out of tune and its vocal lines are like chants. The Shaggs wrote standard verse-chorus-verse pop songs but played them in such a way the vocals, guitar and drums did not mesh. The writer Irwin Chusid said NRBQ’s Terry Adams drew a comparison with Ornette Coleman as their music "has its own structure, its own inner logic." Live, at shows Austin Wiggin Jr. organised (pictured left, Matthew Thomas/Light in the Attic), they performed Herman’s Hermits’ covers, “Folsom Prison Blues” and “Ring of Fire”. People danced.

The Shaggs were very direct lyrically. Songs titled “Who Are Parents?”, Why do I Feel?” and “What Should I do?” were more existential than any contemporaneous singer-songwriter. On the title track, they tackled discontinuities encountered in day-to-day life. “Oh, the rich people want what the poor people's got/And the poor people want what the rich people's got. And the skinny people want what the fat people's got/And the fat people want what the skinny people's got,” they sang. The pay-off was “It doesn't matter who you see/There will always be someone who disagrees. We do our best, we try to please/But we're like the rest, we are never at ease.”

Naked emotionally and unadorned musically, Philosophy of the World is one of the greatest and most important albums of the Sixties. Anyone without a copy should rectify the situation immediately.

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