With that same GOD driven urge that afflicted the Osmonds, Mr. Austin Wiggin of Fremont, New Hampshire decided to force his 3 ugly and untalented daughters into the 1960's rock music scene.




Betty, Helen, and Dot Wigging may or may not have been actually into playing music, but either way THE SHAGGS were soon born under the watchful eye of dear old Dad.. and it seriously creeps me out.

Instead of trying to express my own thoughts about them, look at what these other brilliant minds had to say:

"The Shaggs. Better than the Beatles- even today."-- Frank Zappa

"They bring my mind to a complete halt."-- Carla Bley

Maybe the best worst rock album ever made."-- The New York Times.

For decades seemingly respectable journalists have done features on the Shaggs. Craziness!

"When I first heard The Shaggs album Philosophy of the World, I wondered how this music could've been recorded and distributed. The music was so hilariously bad. The singers simply could not sing, much less harmonize, and not once on the entire record did the drummer manage to bang a drum on beat. Besides that, The Shaggs sang about things like a lost pets ("Foot Foot"), Halloween, and their parents. I assumed the album was some kind of joke. -- Mike Walsh

"More recently, though, a music fan who claimed to be in "the fetal position, writhing in pain," declared on the Internet that the Shaggs were "hauntingly bad," and added, "I would walk across the desert while eating charcoal briquettes soaked in Tobasco for forty days and forty nights not to ever have to listen to anything Shagg-related ever again." Such a divergence of opinion confuses the mind. Listening to the Shaggs' album "Philosophy of the World" will further confound. The music is winsome but raggedly discordant pop. Something is sort of wrong with the tempo, and the melodies are squashed and bent, nasal, deadpan. Are the Shaggs referencing the heptatonic, angular microtones of Chinese ya-yueh court music and the atonal note clusters of Ornette Coleman, or are they just a bunch of kids playing badly on cheap, out-of-tune guitars?"-- Susan Orlean




Feast yourself on this lovely lyric snippet from "Things I Wonder":

There are many things I wonder
There are many things I don't
It seems as though the things I wonder most
Are the things I never find out

or...

It doesn't matter what you do
it doesn't matter what you say
there will always be one who wants things the opposite way.

Fuck yeah!

My favorite song is without doubt, What Are Parents?

Have a listen HERE.

There was a fourth sister, Rachel, who was not in the band. I always wonder about her. Was she jealous? Is she thankful now? I can imagine her on VH1 Behind the Music: The Shagg's ...

Daddy just didn't love me like he did my sisters. As soon as the Shaggs went double platinum, he told me that I couldn't play with them anymore. So my eyes weren't as sparkly as Dot's; so my hair wasn't as golden as Helen's; so Betty's breasts were larger than mine. I think it was because as soon as I showed up on the set for the video shoot of Things I Wonder the director just gave me a look. A look that said, "Honey, you just don't got it." I was the ugly sister, and Daddy knew it. MTV went on to play that video in heavy rotation, sending my sisters into the history books. Our family died then, the fame went to their heads... not to mention the drugs. They even stopped going to church.

So after years in seclusion and medicated denial, the Wiggin sisters are slowly speaking up on the ordeal that was their career. For years they seemed to shun, well, reality and refuse to talk about their rockin' days. But this new fangled internet has won them a new legion of fans.

According to their Official Site somebody is even making a Shaggs movie.

Could a comeback tour be in cards?

I got into my time machine and scheduled myself an interview...

Me: Did you ever expect the Shaggs to have such a global appeal? They've set record LP sales in almost every country they've been released in. Are you surprised?

Austin Wiggin: *Coughing* Of course not. I knew it would be this way from the start.

(Austin is wearing a powder blue leisure suit, smoking a cigarette, and nursing a gin and tonic. His eyes are beady and he has a hard time holding still.)

Me: Is that why you drove the girls so hard?

Austin Wiggin: The good Lord doesn't just hand you a plate full of food.

Me: Uh-- what?

(At this point Betty enters the room, her eyes bloodshot and hands trembling.)

Betty: Motherfuckers!

Austin Wiggin: Who?

Betty: Cabbage folk. Comin' out the fucking woodwork. Maggots, GOD DAMN IT!!! (At this point Betty pulls off the large embroidered dress she is wearing and climbs under the food table.) Fuckers!!!

Austin Wiggin: Somebody get her some water.

(Helen enters the room next. Her brow is furrowed at the screams of a thousand teenage boys outside that chant her name, sharing the collective fantasy of shooting their wads across her square jaw.)

Helen: Daddy, I really don't feel so well.

Austin Wiggin: Not again... There's nothing wrong with you, Helen.

Betty: (From under table) Fire in the hole!!! GOD DAMN IT! There are many things I fucking wonder--

Helen: But, Daddy-

Betty: There are fucking many things I don't--

Austin Wiggin: How many doctors Helen? How many have you seen?

Betty: Fucking maggots. Seems like the shit I wonder most is the shit I never find out.

Helen: (crying now) A lot.

Betty: That's some spooky shit, man...

Austin Wiggin: And what did they tell you? It's in your head. C'mon let's go... have a talk.

(Austin leads Helen from the room, rubbing her shoulders and leaving me alone with Betty. I peer under the table at her naked form. She is eating from a plate of bean burritos.)

Me: Those any good?

Betty: No.

Me: Okay then.

Dot: (whom I did not notice was sitting behind a gigantic white mountain of cocaine) She hates those, but she won't go on-stage without them. She tore the shit out of a dressing room in Cleveland because they forgot them.

Betty: Fucking Cleveland.

Dot: (wiping the clouds of white powder from her nose) She hates Taco Bell.

Betty: Fucking Taco Bell.

(Austin re-enters the room. He looks much calmer. Helen is drinking a glass of water.)

Austin Wiggin: Let's go! It's time to rock! Betty, get dressed.

Betty: Fucking parents. Who are parents?

Me: What? No more questions?

Austin Wiggin: Sorry, no time.

Dot: (smiling at me) It doesn't matter what you do, it doesn't matter what you say. There will always be one who wants things the opposite way.