The Shaggs’ " Who Are Parents " may be the least likely rock anthem ever. New Hampshire sisters Dorothy, Betty, and Helen Wiggin were more or less press-ganged by their creepy stage dad Austin into being a rock band, despite their having no aptitude for it; they called themselves the Shaggs. In March 1969, they recorded their debut album, a small wonder called Philosophy of the World. It’s remained a cult item, and it’s a remarkable document, both despite and because of their total inability to keep a beat, play in synch, tune their instruments, or work around lead singer/songwriter Dorothy’s problems with pronouncing the letter " r. " (Dorothy and Betty manage to sing in unison a lot of the time. No one has ever figured out how.) The songs just sort of dribble out of them, painfully earnest and gamely inept.

" Who Are Parents " is one of the pinnacles of Shaggitude. A song of abject filial submission, it teeters on the verge of utter collapse, insisting over and over that " parents are the ones who really care/Parents are the ones who are always there. " Everything about it is a little off. " What are parents? " might be the question for their answer; asking who parents are and then insisting on their omnipresence starts to sound like the " I am that I am " answer that God gave Moses.

Four covers of " Who Are Parents " have appeared over the last few months. Kilopop! is a project masterminded by Chris Butler (the guy behind the Waitresses, of " I Know What Boys Like " fame); the joke premise behind their Un Petit Goter (Future Fossil) is that it’s a greatest-hits compilation by a veteran Europop band. The liner notes for " Who Are Parents " claim that " our label hated it, but the tune actually charted in Estonia. " Uh-huh. Their unsuccessful but amusing attempt to turn its leaden cadences into airy pop includes boy/girl vocals, free-range clarinet, and gently rolling drums — there’s actually no way to play the song with a consistent beat, so the whole thing is paced like the introduction to a longer song.

Then there’s a version of " Who Are Parents " credited to Jima on the Web site dictionaraoke.com — one of 75 songs " sung " by the robotic pronunciation programs included with some electronic dictionaries. Jima’s instrumental track for " Who Are Parents " matches the original pretty accurately, which is not an easy feat given its irregular rhythm. Eliminating the word-to-word flow of a human singer doesn’t do the lyrics’ sense any harm, but half the fun of the original is trying to guess whether Dorothy Wiggin actually meant what she was singing or whether she was fighting it on some level.

That question is better addressed on the Shaggs’ very own tribute album, Better Than the Beatles (Animal World Recordings), which, named after a notorious comment by Frank Zappa, includes two covers of " Who Are Parents. " The first, by long-running Bay Area weirdos Thinking Fellers Union Local 282, plays up the song’s shattered submissiveness and the way it passes off its creepiness as comfort. The only instrument you can hear for most of the song is a woozy organ; it’s joined at one point by a guitar that’s been lovingly adjusted to the Shaggs’ own mistuning. Anne Eickelberg sings the question in the tone of someone who doesn’t know the answer and has barely worked up the nerve to ask; the answer comes back with weird, echoing effects behind it, as if from a possessing demon that hasn’t chosen to tip its hand just yet.

The other version is by the Danielson Famile, who are naturals for the job — this band of New Jersey siblings have a strong Christian bent and are devoted to their parents. Their solution is to sing " Who Are Parents " as if it were both a joke and not a joke. They twist it around a little to give it a gentle, stable groove; they stretch or cram in syllables to make them fit. At one point, they can’t control their giggles (singer/guitarist Daniel Smith even pronounces the hook as " who awe pawents " ), though it’s clearly affectionate laughter. The Shaggs put it a little weirdly, the Danielsons’ interpretation suggests, but what the Wiggin sisters were struggling to express through their limited means was basically right, and their idiosyncrasy was a testament to their devotion.