Dot Wiggin Band
Ready! Get! Go!
Alternative Tentacles
Street: 10.29.13
Dot Wiggin Band = The Shaggs + Jad Fair – Frank Zappa
It’s a time of musical reunions, but this is perhaps the least likely of them all: In 1969 the Wiggin sisters of Fremont, NH—The Shaggs—released their album Philosophy of the World to an, uh, unsuspecting world. It didn’t exactly take the world by storm, with its eccentric lyrics, off-kilter melodies and inept performance, but people like Frank Zappa enjoyed it (as later would Kurt Cobain), and the group had a minor hit with “My Pal Foot Foot.” Remaining sister Dot Wiggin has a new band with Shaggs songs that weren’t recorded before, with surprisingly danceable tunes like “Banana Bike” and “Speed Limit 2” and a cover of Skeeter Davis’ “End of the World.” Without this kind of stuff by the original outsider band, you wonder if someone like Daniel Johnston would’ve been possible, and it’s fitting that this is on the label of Jello Biafra, who discovered Wesley Willis. –Stakerized!