The Shaggs

One of the earliest and most vivid examples of outsider rock & roll was the short-lived and deeply polarizing trio the Shaggs. The group's atonal singing, amateurish playing, and confusing approach to melody and song structure were seen by many as abysmally bad. However, enough listeners were moved by the band's singular sound to keep their mystique alive and their recordings in print decades after the group's 1975 disbandment. Along with instrumental compositions so strange they seem accidentally avant-garde, the Shaggs' 1969 debut, Philosophy of the World, was marked by lyri...