Schmoochie, who has an endearingly deaf ear, kept humming something this past week, occasionally mumbling a few incoherent lyrics, until I rather exasperatedly asked, ‘What the hell is that, anyway?’
‘What,’ said he, feigning amazement. Or maybe he wasn’t. ‘You’ve never heard of “The Shaggs?” And you call yourself a Frank Zappa fan, shame on you.’
I’m not so sure I’d agree with Frank that The Shaggs were better than The Beatles, but once you get past the awkward music style, the self-conscious singing voices, the artlessness of the lyrics, The Shaggs do tend to grow on you... somehow. Maybe because they aren’t slick and homogenized Pop Idol clones, they’re not your typical girl band lip-synching auto-tuned vocals through pouty lip gloss. Despite their unfortunate band name, none of The Shaggs went on to marry Man United footballers or B-list movie stars, or flash their knickers at the nightclub paparazzi while falling out of limos drunk and/or stoned out of their minds. They were just... kids. Normal, average kids. With a father strangely obsessed to turn his progeny into a rich and famous pop band.
Dot Wiggen wrote the songs and melodies, then worked with her sister Betty on the chords and rhythms while Helen kinda sorta just made up the drum bits herself as best she could. Later on, their sister Rachel joined in playing bass. The result was their 1969 debut album, ‘Philosophy of the World’, with songs full of discordant key changes, idiosyncratic timing and metres, and awkward lyrics about sports cars, parents, Halloween, and – yes – philosophy. Well, of a sort – we’re not talking Socrates or Descartes here. Their first album was a small production of only 1,000 copies, made even smaller when the producer ran off with 900 copies and all the money. The band lasted from 1968 until their father’s fatal heart attack in 1975 when the girls promptly disbanded with more than a sigh of relief, and would have slipped back into obscurity had it not been for another, slightly more successful band, NRPQ discovering one of the rare surviving albums in 1978. A CD compilation of The Shaggs music was released in 1988, and another in 1999, with Blender Magazine placing the album dead last on its list of ‘100 Greatest Indie-Rock Albums Ever’ in 2007. The girls’ fans included Deerhoof and Kimya Dawson of The Moldy Peaches, while Kurt Cobain listed Philosophy of the World as his fifth favourite album of all time, and Zappa listed it as his third favourite.
The Shaggs is certainly an acquired taste, but while Dot’s song about her lost cat, Foot Foot, is head and shoulders above the artificially awful ‘Smelly Cat’ of Friends fame, I have to admit I rather liked this song, ‘My Cutie’, which is almost melodic, and unpretentiously sweet, even melancholy. Enjoy.
