About Me

jessica handler
Atlanta, Georgia, United States
My first book, "Invisible Sisters: A Memoir" (Public Affairs Books) is in bookstores now! I would love to visit your bookclub, either in person (in the South) or through the magic of electronics. My writing has received a "Special Mention" for a 2008 Pushcart Prize. I was awarded a merit scholarship to the Inaugural "Writers in Paradise" conference, an honorable mention for the Penelope Niven Creative Nonfiction Award, and enjoyed a Fellowship at the Hambidge Center for Creative Arts in Rabun Gap, Georgia, and have been honored with the 2009 Peter Taylor Nonfiction Fellowship at the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop. Locally, I teach workshops in creative writing, memoir, and feature journalism, and am a member of the faculty of an art college, where I teach screenwriting, media history, and other courses of that stripe. I hold an MFA in Creative Writing from Queens University of Charlotte (N.C.) and a B.S. in Communication from Emerson College, in Boston. I used to work in television. I did not push the broom behind the elephant. Usually, I served as mahout - I drove the (allegorical) elephant. If he was SAG or AFTRA. Rock stars do not scare me.
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Saturday, October 31, 2009

Because every Halloween, you need The Shaggs!


Give a listen here, to New Hampshire's very own Dot, Betty, and Helen Wiggin, The Shaggs !

A little background can be found here.

They're awful. That's the point. Consider it outsider-rock. Or folk art. Or 1969 at its most earnest.

It's Halloween It's Halloween.

4 comments:

Dave Stallard said...

No. That was NOT recorded live. The guitar, drums, and vocals were recorded as separate tracks, and deliberately mixed together at a random lag from one another.

No.

jessica handler said...

Did I say it was live? I don't actually know. I've seen videotape of the song being performed, and it looks like it sounds...

jessica handler said...

Never even mind the fact that the tunings are a train wreck!

Dave Stallard said...

What I can't believe is Cub Koda's thoughtful fluent prose in the liner notes below. Cub Koda wrote this??? Mr. "Smokin' in the Boy's Room" and "Jailbait"??? Cub Koda?? It's blowin' my mind.

I have to say I have *loved* SITBR ever since it came out, and that was a long time ago. One of my fav 70's singles.

"There's an innocence to these songs and their performances that's both charming and unsettling. Hacked-at drumbeats, whacked-around chords, songs that seem to have little or no meter to them ... being played on out-of-tune, pawn-shop-quality guitars all converge, creating dissonance and beauty, chaos and tranquility, causing any listener coming to this music to rearrange any pre-existing notions about the relationships between talent, originality, and ability."