Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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39 of 41 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
It's all true, November 12, 2000
I was queueing in the bank the other day, lodging the usual pathetically small paycheque, and in front of me was a hairy young rock guy wearing a long-sleeved t-shirt advertising some mud-soaked hell-hole of an alterno-rock festival in Holland. Written on the sleeve were two gnomic sentences: "Those who do not know cannot understand. Those who know cannot explain."Well, in the context of off-the-shelf teen rebellion these are ludicrous sentiments indeed, the more so when applied to the kind of soundalike sludge that passes for Angry Rock Music nowadays, but if there was ever a band which qualified for such mute reverence, it's The Shaggs. They defy star-ratings. They had none of the usual qualities that make for great rock stars; you can't dance to them, you can't hum their songs, you definitely couldn't make out to them and they looked like three hefty female ice-hockey goalkeepers in knee socks. Their songs sound like the kind of thing that very small children sing on public transport. And yet they can't really be called inept; they negotiate arrangements of Beefheartian complexity with a certain awkward grace, and by the time they'd learned to play properly they could rock da house with some power, if with diminished character. The Shaggs truly made music as if nobody had ever made it before. Most of us take up instruments because we want to emulate other, better players; The Shaggs played as though they heard it all perfectly formed in their heads, and just wanted to get it onto plastic. That this was only arguably the case, is testified by their later recordings, where they play easy-listening standards with professional smoothness. But, weirdly enough, they also re-recorded their own early stuff as if they'd meant it that way all along. A perplexing band. You wouldn't want to have them on all the time. But for the sheer thrill of watching the expression on your friends' faces as you play them this for the first time, I recommend this album - the complete Shaggs. God bless them and their dad, Austen Wiggin, a rock'n'roll visionary and the man responsible for getting them into a studio. I don't normally subscribe to the myth that ineptitude is a measure of sincerity, but listening to The Shaggs...you wonder. You wonder.
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20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Well . . . Uhhhh . . . Er . . . Well, that is . . . ., April 12, 1999
I have a friend who runs a used record store. From time to time, he would put the Shaggs on for his unsuspecting customers to hear. After a few seconds, the music would arrest their attention. Jaws would drop, breathing would cease, the area around their chest would tighten, their credulity would be tested, a vision of the abyss of eternity would open out before them.
"Unique" is an overworked word. Nevertheless, this is without any possible question the most unique and unusual album in the history of music. Suggestion for an experiment: buy it, put it on to play at a party without warning your friends, watch their reactions. Then ask yourself, could anyother album in the history of music (music, not just rock) have produced that effect? I think not.
The album is the result of three sisters being given Christmas presents, two of them guitars and one drums. After playing around for a few months on their new toys and writing some songs, their father took them to a recording studio. The recording engineer suggested that they might want to polish their act a bit first, but their father said he wanted to record them "while they are hot." The result is not rock primitivism as some like to say: it is rock amateurism carried to the furthest extreme. The girls not only can't play their instruments, they play with each other as if each were in a sound proofed room oblivious to what the others are doing. The drums often have no relation to anything the guitars are playing. And the songs are simply beyond description.
I do not want to leave the impression that this is great music. It is not. It truly does fall into the category of something that is so awful that it is good. It might have the effect of causing the listener to rethink everything that they knew about music, but it won't set your foot to tapping or make you want to sing along. Nor could you if you wanted to.
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17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Ed Wood of Popular Music, March 2, 2000
The Shaggs 1st record (you get both the 1st and the 2nd on this CD) Philosophy of the World is a milestone of Popular Music. One of those things that you stumble across once in a good lifetime if you are lucky. The Shaggs (Dot, Betty, and Helen Wiggin, with occassional contributions from Rachel, Austin, and Robert Wiggin) were a family from New Hampshire that were either exposed to strange chemical substances that caused mental mutations or they were really from another planet or dimension. They made music never heard before or since on this earth. Praise God for the insistance of their father, Austin Wiggin Jr., that they record and release 2 records, especially the first (Philosophy of the World). The 2nd, Shaggs own Thing, is not as good as the first as they are sort of learning to play by then, but it still has its moments. Lots of bands are not good. Most are just mediocre and only a few are actually bad. Yet, in all of recorded history (AND I MEAN IT - PORVE ME WRONG!) none were ever as bad, strange, or out of it as the Shaggs! Not even close! They were so far out of it, that listening to this record makes you realize that it's really genius art on a plane of understanding that we mere humans, used to our ordered lives, are simply not capable of understanding. But its fun to try! The quote on the back of the CD from singer Carla Bley says it all "They bring my mind to a complete halt." I DARE YOU TO PLAY PHILOSOPHY OF THE WORLD TO A DRUMMER AND SAY, "HEY YOU TRY TO PLAY LIKE THAT!" They will die never able to even come close to Helen Wiggin! Dare someone to try and DO ANTHING like the Shaggs and watch and see what happens! This is what the government should have played to get the Branch Davidians to leave their compound in Waco, Texas or blasted at General Noreaga in Panama! If you are in college, BUY THIS CD AND PLAY IT REAL LOUD TO MAKE PEOPLE LEAVE YOUR DORM ROOM, OR USE IT TO HAZE PLEDGES IN FRATERNITIES! Buy this CD! Expand your mind!
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