Shaggs' Own Thing

Shaggs' Own Thing
Compilation album by The Shaggs
Released	1982
Recorded	1969, 1975
Genre	Outsider Music, Pop/rock
Label	Rounder
The Shaggs chronology
Philosophy of the World (1969) Shaggs' Own Thing (1982) The Shaggs (1988)

Shaggs' Own Thing is a 1982 compilation album featuring the music of The Shaggs, containing tracks from a 1975 recording session that had gone unreleased due to the death of Austin Wiggin (the band members' father and manager) and the band's subsequent disbanding. The album includes a rerecording of the song "My Pal Foot Foot" from the band's first album, Philosophy of the World, which is in a decidedly more commercial arrangement.

Unlike Philosophy of the World, which contained all original content, Shaggs' Own Thing includes several covers of popular songs of the early 1970s, in addition to new original songs. In contrast to Philosophy of the World, in which the then-novice musicians performed in a distinctive, amateurish style, the songs on Shaggs' Own Thing were comparatively professional; as the band had been playing as a band for several years, had learned the basics of popular music, and had more physically mature voices by the time the session took place in 1975, they were able to emulate pop music styles of the time more closely. (For this reason, a large number of the band's fans, who had taken a liking to them for their earlier style, tended to disregard this album.)

The two male singers in Shaggs' Own Thing are Austin Wiggin Jr. and his adolescent son Robert.

Track listing

1. "You're Somethin' Special to Me"
2. "Wheels" (The String-A-Longs cover)
3. "Paper Roses" (Anita Bryant/Marie Osmond cover)
4. "Shaggs' Own Thing"
5. "Painful Memories"
6. "Gimme Dat Ding" (The Pipkins cover)
7. "My Cutie"
8. "Yesterday Once More" (The Carpenters cover)
9. "My Pal Foot Foot"
10. "I Love" (Tom T. Hall cover)
11. "Shaggs' Own Thing (vocal version)"