The Shaggs – Philosophy Of The World


This is one of the strangest albums you’ll ever hear. It’s either the worst collection of music ever recorded or the best example of outsider art you’re likely to hear. Frank Zappa thought it was the third best album of all time and Kurt Cobain placed it in his top five. High praise indeed for an album made by three sisters with no musical ability whatsoever.


The strange story of this group begins with a palm reading. Apparently the girls father Austin Wiggin was told during a palm reading by his mother that he would marry a strawberry blonde, have two sons and that his daughters would form a popular music group. Well after the first two predictions came true Austin decided to buy his daughters musical instruments and paid for lessons in order to push things along. In 1969 he brought them to a recording studio to get them on tape “while they were still hot”. They recorded Philosophy Of The World in one day and then had 900 of the 1000 copies stolen by the president of the recording studio (only God knows what he wanted them for). The album sank without a trace and after playing regular gigs in a local club the group disbanded in 1975 on the death of their father. Listening to the album you get the feeling that Mr. Wiggin should have taken more heed of Shakespeare’s MacBeth before he started trying to force predictions to come true…0/10 or 10/10