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."

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."

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.

The Fremont Town Hall was the principal venue for the Shaggs during their brief, uncelebrated performing career. Photo by Jeff Rapsis

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.