![\"i-love-boosters-keke-palmer\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thewrap.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/i-love-boosters-keke-palmer.jpg?fit=300%2C169&quality=89&ssl=1\")
\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\n\t\t\t'I Love Boosters' Review: Keke Palmer Steals Hearts in Boots Riley\u2019s Galaxy-Brained, Anti-Capitalist Romp<\/a>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
And now, many years later, a documentary called \u201cWe Are the Shaggs\u201d premiered at the South-by-Southwest Film Festival on Friday. It starts with an absolutely perfect first two minutes, as about two dozen different people listen to \u201cMy Pal Foot Foot\u201d for the first time and try to figure out what the hell they\u2019re hearing.\u00a0It\u2019s not a great opening sequence because it pretty much duplicates what I used to do; it\u2019s a great opening sequence because if you\u2019re gonna make a movie about the Shaggs, you simply must<\/em> begin it by sitting people down and playing them \u201cMy Pal Foot Foot.\u201d It\u2019s the only way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fortunately, director Ken Kwapis (\u201cThe Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants,\u201d \u201cThe Office\u201d) knows that. He would, because he\u2019s been listening to the Shaggs since 1980, when he bought a copy of the first reissue of the uber-indie 1969 album \u201cPhilosophy of the World,\u201d a slab of rudimentary and misshapen bashing and bleating that somehow manages to be both tuneless and timeless, baffling most listeners while it attracted fans as diverse as Frank Zappa, NRBQ\u2019s Terry Adams and, later, Kurt Cobain. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But the Shaggs \u2013 Dorothy (\u201cDot\u201d), Helen and Betty Wiggin, from Fremont, New Hampshire \u2013 didn\u2019t make music to impress Frank or Terry or Kurt or you or me. They made it because their dad told them to. Austin Wiggin Jr. was determined to fulfill a palm reading from his mother, who prophesied that he\u2019d marry a strawberry blonde (he did) and have three girls who\u2019d form a band (they did) and become successful and famous (well\u2026). He enrolled his daughters in a mail-order home school, prevented them from having any kind of social life and designed a draconian schedule of rehearsal and calisthenics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The result was songs like \u201cWho Are Parents?\u201d (\u201cWho are parents? \/ Parents are the ones who really care\u201d), which \u201cPhilosophy of the World: The Shaggs\u201d playwright Joy Gregory describes as \u201ca hostage message.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n As the movie makes clear, the story doesn\u2019t get any more normal from there. Austin Wiggin took his daughters into a small studio and paid for a one-day session to make a record, where the engineer told him their guitars were out of tune. \u201cI got these guitars at Sears Roebuck,\u201d Wiggin insisted. \u201cThey\u2019re guaranteed<\/em>. They don\u2019t need to be tuned.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n One thousand copies of \u201cPhilosophy of the World\u201d were pressed, and 900 of them promptly disappeared. A 45 rpm single of \u201cMy Pal Foot Foot\u201d was pressed and misspelled their name. (\u201cThe Shags.\u201d) Helen got married but was afraid to tell her father, so she continued living at home for three months until he found out. The band ended when their father died of a heart attack at the age of 47, then occasionally played again after a 1999 New Yorker story by Susan Orlean told the full story for the first time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe Are the Shaggs\u201d tells the story, too, but Kwapis is after more than a biography, as entertaining as that might be. Beyond the befuddled listeners at the beginning of the film, he\u2019s assembled a group of insiders, admirers and zealots to not only flesh out the tale, but also testify as to how awesome the Shaggs are and make the case for them as exemplars of outsider art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jesse Krakow, a \u201cShaggs absolutist\u201d who recreates their songs with his Shaggs tribute band, testifies as to how difficult their music can be to play: \u201cIt\u2019s like hieroglyphics. It never gets easier.\u201d Composer Eric Lyon insists that the song \u201cPhilosophy of the World\u201d (\u201cOh the rich people want what the poor people\u2019s got \/ And the poor people want what the rich people\u2019s got\u2026\u201d) is \u201cif anything, a call to arms for anybody who thinks more empathy would make things better in the United States.\u201d Musicologist Susan Rogers puts a feminist spin on the Shaggs conversation: \u201cThe knee-jerk assumption is we assume they don\u2019t know what they\u2019re doing, and that\u2019s why this turned out like this,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd I wonder, if they had been brothers and not sisters, would we make the same assumption? Maybe we\u2019d think, they\u2019re punk. They know better. They\u2019re just being contrarians. They\u2019re being rock \u2019n\u2019 roll.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n![\"Summer](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thewrap.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/summer-of-94.jpg?fit=300%2C169&quality=89&ssl=1\")
\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t
\n\t\t\t'Summer of \u201894' Soccer Doc Sets SXSW Premiere Ahead of World Cup 2026<\/a>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thewrap.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Diane-Warren-Relentless.jpg?fit=300%2C169&quality=89&ssl=1\")
\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t![\"WrapPRO](\"\/wp-content\/plugins\/newsletter-builder\/images\/wrap-pro-logo.png\"){kind=logo}
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n