Artwork by JAIMIE HERNANDEZ
The Shaggs were three sisters from rural New Hampshire who were just this side of collapse when they strapped their instruments. The Wiggin family was, by all accounts, a study in Pepperidge Farm country gothic. Daddy Austin Wiggin Jr. worked in the cotton mill and applied every coffee can-ful of cash he could earn toward his dream: that his three eldest daughters–Betty, Helen and Dot–would one day become international pop stars. Just one problem: Despite years of music lessons, none of the Wiggin girls could 
play or sing in a way that you would call “good.” But to Austin, and succeeding generations of astute listeners, it was beeyootiful music when his daughters picked up their guitars and beat on the drums, together in the same room, if not always the same song. Named after the girls’ thick, horsetail-length hairstyle, the Shaggs were born in 1967, taking miscues from the Monkees and Herman’s Hermits songs they heard on the radio. They pretty much had to make it up as they went along, as their father would not allow them to attend rock concerts and insisted on home-schooling to allow more time to work on their music. Recorded in 1969, Philosophy of the World is as much an intriguing anthropological find as it is a timeless, albeit unintentional, statement of outsider art–Frank Zappa hailed it as his third favorite recording of all time. — JONATHAN VALANIA
THE DOT WIGGIN BAND OPENS FOR NEUTRAL MILK HOTEL @ WORLD CAFE LIVE @ THE QUEEN IN WILMINGTON TONIGHT