The Shaggs
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The Shaggs were an American all-female rock and roll group from Fremont, New Hampshire. The group members were:
- Betty Wiggin Porter - rhythm guitar
- Dorothy Wiggin Semprini - lead guitar and vocals
- Helen Wiggin - drums
- They were later joined by their sister Rachel Wiggin - bass guitar
Their album Philosophy of the World was released in 1969. The Shaggs have often been considered the worst rock and roll band in the world (or the "Most Horrible" by the New York Times), and this designation has made the band's one and only album a collector's item.
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[edit] History
According to an account recorded by Irwin Chusid, the idea of The Shaggs is older than the girls themselves. When the girls' father, Austin Wiggin, Jr., was young, his mother made three predictions: he would marry a strawberry blonde; he would have two sons she would not live to see; and his daughters would form a famous musical group. After the first two came true, Austin set out to make the third happen.
In the mid-1960s, Austin withdrew his daughters from school, bought them instruments, and arranged for them to receive music lessons. They named themselves "The Shaggs" after the shag hairstyle which was then popular. In 1968, Austin arranged for the girls to play a regular Saturday night gig at the Fremont, New Hampshire Town Hall. The next year, the girls went into the studio and recorded their album, Philosophy of the World. All the songs were written by Dorothy.
To call the album amateurish is an understatement. Cub Koda wrote, "There's an innocence to these songs and their performances that's both charming and unsettling. Hacked-at drumbeats, whacked-around chords, songs that seem to have little or no meter to them ... being played on out-of-tune, pawn-shop-quality guitars all converge, creating dissonance and beauty, chaos and tranquility, causing any listener coming to this music to rearrange any pre-existing notions about the relationships between talent, originality, and ability. There is no album you might own that sounds remotely like this one." (emphasis in original) [1] Reportedly during the recording sessions, the band would occasionally stop playing, claiming one of them had made a mistake and that they needed to start over, leaving the sound engineers to wonder how the girls could tell when a mistake had been made.[citation needed]
Upon closer examination, The Shaggs seem to have a consistent (but highly idiosyncratic) approach to melody, harmony, and rhythm. The songs use highly irregular verse structures, which are emphasized by the melodic structures, which typically accord one note per syllable: the guitar accompaniment attempts to reproduce this pattern as well. Most of the Shaggs material is comprised of eighth- and quarter-notes.
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.
In 1975, Austin Wiggin arranged one last recording session for his daughters, but died of a heart attack, which put an end to his ambitions. However, in 1978, the group NRBQ found one of the original 1,000 copies of Philosophy at a Boston radio station and got their label, Rounder Records, to rerelease Philosophy of the World. They published songs from the 1975 tapes on the 1982 record Shaggs' Own Thing, but its closer approximation to conventional music causes some to disregard this collection. In 1988 Dorothy Wiggin rediscovered the lost masters of Philosophy of the World in a closet; these and Shaggs' Own Thing were remastered and released on an eponymous CD. RCA Victor also released Philosophy of the World on CD in 1999, whereupon it was hailed as something of an avant-garde cult classic.
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.
That same year, Artisan Entertainment bought the movie rights to the band's story. A stage musical about The Shaggs, Philosophy of the World by librettist/lyricist Joy Gregory, composer/lyricist Gunnar Madsen, and co-conceiver/director John Langs, opened at the prestigious John Anson Ford Theatre in Los Angeles in November 2003. The LA Weekly Award winning Scenic Design was designed by Brian Sidney Bembridge. It was later presented at Lookingglass Theatre Company in Chicago in the spring of 2004 and then at the New York Musical Theatre Festival in September 2005.
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. Frank Zappa is known to have said of the Shaggs, "This sounds like the missing link between Fanny and Captain Beefheart & his Magic Band." The album featured established acts such as Ida, Optiganally Yours and Danielson Famille covering The Shaggs' songs.
Kurt Cobain often expressed admiration for The Shaggs, even placing Philosophy of the World in his Top 100 albums list (included in his journals).
[edit] See also
[edit] Reference
- Songs in the Key of Z: The Curious Universe of Outsider Music by Irwin Chusid ISBN 1-55652-372-6
