While your five-song EP sits half-done in your GarageBand folder, The Shaggs’ Philosophy Of The World is getting a re-issue courtesy of Light In The Attic records.Generally regarded as one of the strangest outsider bands of all time, The Shaggs began playing around their hometown of Fremont, New Hampshire in 1968. To see and hear them play, it could be assumed that Helen, Betty, and Dorothy (and sometimes Rachel) Wiggin had never practiced, much less learned to play their instruments. The sisters did practice, though, every Sunday after church, in stressful rehearsal sessions run by their father, Austin Wiggin, Jr.
Austin was convinced that his daughters were destined for stardom in this business of rock ‘n’ roll, thanks to a palm reading by his superstitious mother, according to The New Yorker. The band’s first performance was met with jeering and soda cans tossed from the audience, and eventually the sisters started playing almost exclusively at the Fremont town hall and nursing homes around town (which, depending on where you stand on the band, could be considered elder abuse). The patriarch of the Wiggins clan invested his life savings to into The Shaggs’ debut album, Philosophy Of The World. 1000 copies were pressed, but 900 of them disappeared from the warehouse along with the album’s producer, the uncredited Charlie Dreyer.
The album became a favorite among collectors due to its sloppy playing and mostly nonsensical lyrics, and has been called “proto-punk” by some critics. (Frank Zappa once called The Shaggs “better than the Beatles,” and the band was also a favorite of Kurt Cobain.) Boston’s WBCN began playing a few tracks, giving the album a second life before is was reissued on NRBQ’s Red Rooster Records in 1978. From there, Dr. Demento got ahold of it, making The Shaggs’ “Its Halloween” a favorite amongst novelty-song aficionados.