Recalling
NH's Eccentric Pop Legacy
The Shaggs: The Strange Philosophy of their World
By Gregory Nicoll
"The Shaggs are like castaways on their own
musical island." Bonnie Raitt
After
two decades in the music business, I have a personal record collection
that exceeds 4,000 discs; and for each record I kept, there were a dozen
more I sold, traded, discarded, or (in several extreme cases) blasted
apart with a deer rifle. I still receive about seven new recordings in
each day's mail, and (because of recent advances in home CD-encoding
technology) that figure is increasing. Yet of the thousands of discs that
have crossed my desk, I've never heard anything as distinctly different
nor as thoroughly remarkable as the Shaggs.
The Shaggs were three hefty, long-haired sisters who performed in Fremont,
New Hampshire during the late '60s and early '70s. Dorothy "Dot"
Wiggin plucked out their ersatz original melodies on a cheesy Japanese-made
electric guitar. She shared vocal duties with Betty Wiggin, who strummed
rhythms while a third sister, Helen Wiggin, hammered on a drumkit. Although
their studio sessions eventually yielded two albums (which have been repackaged
in several different CD configurations), the Shaggs actually released
only one record during their existence as a working band a single
vinyl LP, recorded in March of 1969, called "Philosophy of the World."
![](http://www.nhmagazine.com/00editions/00may/shaggs/shaggs.jpeg)
Betty and Dot Wiggin took to the stage once more as guests of the
blues group NRBQ at the Bowery Ballroom in New York last November.
Photo by Par Nilsson
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Mere
words can hardly convey this album's unique weirdness. First there's
the incredibly cheap sound of Dot and Betty's electric guitars, bargain
basement instruments which drift in and out of tune from measure to measure.
The girls strum them so hesitantly that in some cases it's debatable
whether they're actually playing chords or merely dusting off the
strings. And if the twin guitars sound out of synch, out of phase, out
of tune, and (to put it mildly) out of this world, just wait 'til
Dot and Betty's creative harmonizing starts to rattle against your
tympanic membranes.
In "Philosophy's" most essential track, "My Pal Foot
Foot," Dot sings about her lost cat the titular Foot Foot.
"My pal's name is Foot Foot," she intones flatly and with
solemn force, followed a half-a-beat later by her sister's sonorous
echo, "Foot Foot!" The effect is so unexpected and outrageously
silly, it could raise a smile on the Old Man of the Mountain.
But there's more. The song continues, "I go to his house/ Knock
at his door/ People come out and say/ Foot Foot don't live here no
more." Yes, people come out of a cat's house. When it came to
warped imagination, the Shaggs were in a league with Bunuel and Dali.
Then, wrenching listeners from the trance-like surreality of this image,
comes the cosmic drumming of Helen Wiggin. Throughout "Philosophy,"
her percussion skills vary from the steady plod of a military march to
the exuberant energy of a "Wipeout" style surf beat, often within
the same song. Most of the time Helen simply hammers away with the machine-like
persistence of a carpet tacker, uninfluenced by what her fellow musicians
happen to be playing. Several songs conclude with an extended barrage
of leftover drumbeats, as if Helen didn't realize her sisters stopped
playing.
Is "Philosophy of the World" the worst album ever recorded?
Certainly not. Even at its most sloppy, the songs remain entertaining,
even endearing. Dot and Betty's voices complement each other beautifully,
in the grand tradition of such sibling singers as the Everlys, the Carpenters,
the Cowsills, and those little Japanese twins in "Mothra."
Forever Shaggs
"The Shaggs. Better than the Beatles even today."
Frank Zappa
"...the most stunningly awful wonderful record," proclaims
Rolling Stone. "...like a lobotomized Trapp Family Singers."
"Maybe the best worst rock album ever made." The
New York Times
"3 thumbs UP!"
R. Stevie Moore
The RCA Victor "Philosophy of the World" reissue was co-produced
by WFMU radio personality Irwin Chusid, whose forthcoming book,
Songs in the Key of Z: The Curious Universe of Outsider Music
(A Cappella Books), has a centerpiece chapter on the Shaggs.
"The New England backwoods have always spawned a special kind
of eccentric, free-spiritedness," observes Chusid. "There's
an oddball elegance, a crackpot nobility that sets these folk a
breed if not an inbreed apart. They're likable,
yet dignified and unfathomable the perfect recipe for enjoyable
outsider art."
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To
be fair, what seems outrageous about "Philosophy of the World"
may owe more to the artificial environment of the recording studio than
any shortage of Wiggin talent. What flowed freely during home rehearsals
became halting and uneasy in Boston's Fleetwood Studios, as recording
engineers thrust huge microphones in the girls' faces and dragged
soundproof barriers between them. The Wiggins could barely play their
instruments. How could these babes-from-the-woods be expected to 'play'
a studio?
For insight about their actual sound, it's useful to examine the
solitary live track on their second album, "The Shaggs' Own
Thing." In the early '70s the Shaggs gave regular Saturday night
performances at the Fremont Town Hall, and it was there, on April Fool's
Day, 1972, that they recorded their "Gimme Dat Ding." Its sound
is boomy and lo-fi. We can barely hear Dot introduce the number. Kids
screech wildly and the Shaggs' father, Austin Wiggin, mutters about
the lateness of the hour. But in the background, those three Wiggin girls
are proudly wigging out. Guitars and drums are in joyful lockstep together,
and you can almost see Dot's ear-to-ear smile as, forcefully and
confidently, she sings, "Gimme dat ding/ Gimme dat/ Gimme gimme dat...."
Everyone who listened to Top 40 radio back in 1970 recalls this song,
but almost nobody can remember who originated it: a one-hit band called
the Pipkins. It's a testament to the Shaggs' place in pop history
that, without hit records and with only negligible sales to their credit,
they remain today far better known than a group whose pop radio smash
they once re-recorded.
Although I'm a native son of New Hampshire, I first learned about
my birth-state's weirdest music legacy while working at radio station
WYMX in Augusta, Georgia. When I heard Frank Zappa playing "My Pal
Foot Foot" during a 1981 broadcast of "The Dr. Demento Show,"
I was hooked.
On my next trip north, I attempted to track the Wiggin sisters down. Fremont
proved smaller than I expected, and locals seemed uneasy in the presence
of a stranger. All conversation stopped cold when I walked into the local
convenience store; and asking where the Wiggins lived was the equivalent
of entering a Rumanian pub and announcing my destination as Castle Dracula.
The town hall was easy enough to find, but the doors of this dark, empty
wooden edifice were locked. I peeped through the smudgy glass, imagining
what it must have been like to attend a Shaggs concert there in 1972,
and I hummed "Gimme Dat Thing." My final stop was the Fremont
post office, where I jotted pleasantries on some postcards for record-collecting
pals back home.
![](http://www.nhmagazine.com/00editions/00may/shaggs/shagcd.jpeg)
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![](http://www.nhmagazine.com/00editions/00may/shaggs/fremont.jpeg)
The
Fremont Town Hall was the principal venue for the Shaggs during their
brief, uncelebrated performing career.
Photo by Jeff Rapsis |
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Then,
on a spur-of-the moment hunch, I asked the postmistress if she knew the
Wiggins. She smiled. "The girls who had the band," she said,
recognizing the name. My pulse quickened. "Oh," she continued
sadly, "they've all moved away, I'm afraid."
When I mentioned how much I enjoyed the Shaggs' album, she frowned.
"I remember the band," she said slowly, "but I don't
remember any record...."
With a shrug, I paid for the postage and turned to go. "The Wiggins,"
muttered the postmistress thoughtfully, "they used to live in that
house just down the road ... but they're not there now, of course."
She pointed me in the right direction, and as I left Fremont I stopped
to pay my respects at the roadside residence where the Shaggs once lived,
rehearsed, and wrote songs. It was a house I'd often thought about,
sometimes even sang about.
It was Foot Foot's house.
Gregory Nicoll of Atlanta is editor of "Southeast Performer,"
a trade magazine for musicians.
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