A new documentary will look at the legacy of the Shaggs, the discordant group of sisters who recorded 1969’s Philosophy of the World, a favorite album of both Kurt Cobain and Frank Zappa. A trailer for We Are the Shaggs shows people’s first reactions to listening to the band’s unusual music with the commentary, “I don’t think anybody can be prepared to listen to the Shaggs.”
The doc’s trailer shows two of four Wiggin sisters looking back on the way their father forced them to form a band, the fallout when the album was dismissed, and the surprising reappraisal of their music in recent decades. Filmmaker Ken Kwapis, whose resume includes Follow That Bird and episodes of Freaks and Geeks, Malcolm in the Middle, and The Office, directed the picture. It premiered at South by Southwest in March. (The producers are entertaining offers from distributors with hopes of getting the film in theaters early next year.)
“I’ve been fascinated with the Shaggs ever since I first heard Philosophy of the World in 1980, and their music remains as puzzling and provocative as ever,” Kwapis tells Rolling Stone. “Many accounts of the Shaggs paint [band members] Dot, Betty, and Helen Wiggin as curiosities, or as the puppets of a domineering father. My intention was to humanize and dignify the sisters and make the case to take their unique music seriously.”
He went into the project with a few questions in mind: “When it comes to music, why do we like what we like?” he says. “What qualifies as ‘good’ versus ‘bad’? ‘Sophisticated’ versus ‘primitive’? When it comes to creativity, what is the difference between ‘intentional’ and ‘accidental’?” Kwapis consulted with composers, musicologists, record producers, and culture writers to provide commentary for the film. Their insights, he says, made him admire the Wiggins even more. “What began as a straightforward telling of their story evolved into something much more personal and philosophical,” he says.
Dot (left) and Betty Wiggin
In a 2016 interview with Rolling Stone, the Shaggs’ Dot Wiggin said she took negative criticism of her band in stride. “We started reading all the negative stuff on the internet for a while but then I said, ‘Everybody is entitled to their own opinion,’” she said. “My motto, from Bambi, was always, “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say nothing at all.” I’m not sure everybody feels that way. So I just blocked it out.”
