The Shaggs

apparently one sold for 5k on ebay last year:
http://www.musicpriceguide.com/6557/The-Shaggs-Philosophy-Of-The-World-1969-vinyl-LP-SEALED-Third-World.html

they did have musical influences though -- not very hip ones, but still. they weren't raised in a cave. i think they were into herman's hermits.

― Nardil the Human MAOI (get bent), Friday, May 13, 2011 2:47 PM (4 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I don't hear that, though. I listen to Trout Mask Replica and go, oh Howlin Wolf, but there isn't a song on Philosophy of the World that sounds like Herman's Hermits. The way the instruments and vocals are structured seems to me like the Wiggins sisters created their music entirely on their own terms.

i honestly think a sealed copy of that record is worth five thousand dollars. more priceless than a stupid rolex.

yeah, 5k seems reasonable - the guy asking 10k sounds like he doesn't actually want to sell. I wonder if he'd take a 5-6k offer (not because I will make the offer, just wondering)

This sounds like a (quite good) normal radio pop song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ny2pV-CCxQ

Yeah, that's quite a bit more conventional than "My Pal Foot Foot."

damn, I live about 15 minutes away from Fremont & had considered going on a pilgrimage/drive-by to the old Wiggin homestead, but this doesn't seem too promising:

A few years after Austin died, Betty and Dot married and moved to their own houses, and eventually Annie sold the house on Beede Road and moved to an apartment nearby. After a while, the house’s new owner complained to people in town that Austin’s ghost haunted the property. As soon as he could afford it, the new owner built something bigger and nicer farther back on the property, and allowed the Fremont Fire Department to burn the old Wiggin house down for fire-fighting practice.

Well, you can't always please everybody in this world.

Do we still care? Shaggs' Dot Wiggin Reflects on Divisive 'Philosophy of the World' Album

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/shaggs-reflect-on-divisive-philosophy-of-the-world-album-w437682

Philosophy of the World was just reissued. I thought they might stick a lot of Shaggs Own Thing on but it looks like it's just the 12 track lp.
I had a copy of the Rounder vinyl reissue I bought in the mid 80s after reading the review in an earlier NME from when it was reissued at the start of the 80s. May need to get the cd.

Are there any good covers of the band around? Is that possible?
I had a version of My Pal Foot Foot by a Japanese impro group that extended it greatly but not sure how recognisable it was or if I still have it.

Was Shaggs Own Thing worth having?

Deerhoof - My Pal Foot Foot

Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 from that same album:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_than_the_Beatles

Seem to recall some underwhelming versions of Shaggs songs from recent years by some jazz performers.

Ah found it. My Band Foot Foot. From 2007, how time flies. Some serious players, but sometimes they miss the point.

I even started a thread at the time: My Band Foot Foot

Yeah did wonder if the fact that the approximation would be intentional would devalue any musical content and just leave a not very good joke or intentional quirkiness.
But some of those Wiggins drum rhythms always reminded me of the Swans. So did wonder if there was any way of taking a positive influence from them.
trying to d/load that Better than teh Beatles but not sure if it's actually seeded.

God, hadn't heard before how old the sisters were at the time the lp cover photo was shot. I assumed they were years younger, 22, 21 and 18.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1999/09/27/meet-the-shaggs

I'm interested in hearing how some of you encountered the Shaggs, and your initial rections, and if that reaction changed at all after time.

Hearing them recently, I had the thought that if they were completely unknown, and I came upon their record in some old dusty attic, I absolutely would feel the thrill of having discovered something significant, and I'd be shouting their name from the rooftops.

That said, I do not think I've ever listended to 'Philosophy' all the way through even once. Their music is fascinating as an anthropological study, and their is something about the extreme dissonance and weirdness that I find thrilling. But only in small doses. I like trying to guess what music the girls grew up on, and how any of that even could have influenced their work. I mean, there are no standard chord progressions and no attempt at verse-chorus-verse at all. How could four band members agree to practice and play and record something so weird and arbitrary and unprecedented?? I'm not sure that sentence makes any sense.

reactions. hopefully no erections

There is verse-chorus-verse...

I bought Philosophy of the World 15-20 years ago out of curiosity. My first reaction was shock at the musical ineptitude — "How did this ever get released?" — and then laughter. I'd play it for friends as a joke. I don't subscribe to the notion that I simply don't understand what the girls were trying to do — that it's this free jazz concept carried over to pop, as a poster stated up thread. (I listen to, and enjoy, plenty of free jazz.)
However I do find the music fascinating, partly because it does seem to make sense to the people playing it. I also find some of the songs to be truly moving, even sad. Maybe that's because I read the Susan Orlean essay first; I'll never know for sure.

Sometime around 1998 or 1999, someone posted about The Shaggs on the Loud Family mailing list. I was intrigued by the descriptions (no audio clips were to be found online at that point) but couldn't find the album anywhere. When my parents went on vacation to California (I think it was), I sent along a list of CDs for them to look for that I couldn't find back home (as was my tradition whenever my parents went somewhere) and one of the discs they returned home with was Philosophy of the World. Twenty seconds in to the title track, I was laughing my head off.

I've lent the album out to curious friends over the years, and I'm pretty sure I included "My Pal Foot Foot" on a couple of mix tapes/CDs back in the day. I still own the album; it even survived, as numerous objectively better albums did not, The Great CD Purge of 2015.

Think I must have picked it up on vinyl sometime mid 80s. Was just remembering talking about it in New York so must be by 86 at latest.
Read it reviewed somewhere possibly the NME for the Rounder reissue.
Have loved Pal Foot Foot since hearing it.
Picked up a cd version of it over Xmas.

Also interesting to read about the scam about the initial pressing as related in a recent Ugly Things that recounted the story of the scam artist.

It gets weird in places starts sounding like it is being done too well so it's being faked. So interesting to see video footage of the band at work at one of their gigs.

I'd read about them in the AMG books and occasionally in mags--a couple short bits in Mojo and/or Spin stand out (particularly a review of the partial reunion show in NYC w/a crying Georgia Hubley in the audience) alongside the write-up in The Secret History of Rock--but I never actually heard them until the DJs running a College Radio '60s show started spinning them in the mid-'00s. The drumming really stood out. I later picked up the BMG CD reissue of Philosophy... cheap on Amazon*. I haven't listened in awhile (all CDs in storage rn), but it always struck me as inside-out bubblegum with surprisingly strong hooks--and those accents!

*If I'd held out for a few more years, I could have picked it up for a fiver in person at Fry's when they had a huge budget music selection; how surreal it felt to walk into a massive big box store and see THE SHAGGS front and center rubbing shoulders w/80s Dylan and early Allman Bros. and other Classic Rock staples. Wonder how many copies the chain actually sold?

Really enjoyed this interview with Dot (by the person who introduced me to The Shaggs):
https://www.thetrapset.net/272-dot-wiggin-the-shaggs/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orcvDjy3fvs

As the band’s primary songwriter, she is the author of some of the most astonishingly unique, life-affirming music ever recorded.

I think the joke has run its course.