I Heart The Shaggs

Shop talk at work goes around and around, an attractive veneer laid over the work experience. Talk about music is common, the Olson twins who work with me have wide tastes (excepting that Don is allergic to Country) and that helps the day go by a little easier. Eventually, the Shaggs came up in conversation.

They were a group of girls from Fremont, New Hampshire, who recorded an album of original songs unlike anything made before or since. The complete story is here. My co-workers’ minds were suitably blown by the girls’ unique musical vision. The thing that keeps me intrigued is the philosophy (implied and overtly stated) that comes through:

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
We do our best, we try to please
But we’re like the rest we're never at ease
You can never please
Anybody
In this world

-Philosophy Of the World, by Dorothy Wiggins

With titles such as:
What Should I Do?
Things I Wonder
Why Do I Feel?
Who are parents?
-and, the ultimate Shaggs song-
My Pal Foot Foot

The Shaggs gave an honest inside view of the world from an adolescent perspective, free of pretense, influence or accepted musical conventions.

Flippism at its finest.