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Underground > Radio & Music >

Outsider music - appreciating eccentricity or mocking the afflicted?

16:28 / 22.03.06

i can't enough of it at the moment.
i absolutely genuinely LOVE the music of shooby taylor, bob vido, tangela tricoli, and the shaggs (among many others)

is there a dark side though?
sometimes i feel the lack of musical ability and (apparently) low intelligence is being mocked and enjoyed rather voyeuristically, am i being oversensitive?

lord nuneaton savage

10:21 / 23.03.06

Thing is with "Outsider Music" is that there's a lot of it and it's all very different. Do The Shaggs suffer from low intelligence or are they just very young and not very good at their instruments?

The Legendary Stardust Cowboy is often held up as an example of OM but he's a very together guy with a massive vocal range and a definite vision of what he wants his music to sound like. That puts him in line with Captain Beefheart rather than the genuinely disturbed Wild Man Fischer.

Certainly, when it comes to listening to the more disturbed "outsiders" (Fischer, Wesley Willis etc) you do have to examine your reasons for listening, but I do feel there is something genuinely moving about these guys.

Certainly with Willis the feeling I get is that he LOVES rock'n'roll. Lives it and breathes it, and that is something that me and this guy, who most would class as simply a nutter, have very much in common. If you like, the act of listening to him sing brings me closer to someone whom I would normally feel no kinship with whatsoever and who, on a bad day, I might cross the street to avoid.

14:51 / 23.03.06

I agree that "outsider music" is a very broad church, and it is probably unfair to lump many of these artists together. However, I knew that a dedicated thread on, say, Shooby Taylor would get zero responses so ... here we have this thread instead.

I do feel there is something genuinely moving about these guys.
Agreed, and I like your point about music being something you have in common with people you would otherwise see as completely removed from your world, I've never thought about it in *quite* those terms before.

The thing that really inspires me with a lot of outsider music is the singular vision behind it and the complete artistic integrity maintained in the face of all conventional musical wisdom/good taste/common sense.
I love how someone like Shooby has absolutely NO agenda, no eye on success or any adherence to how others approach making *their* music. The only reason he needed for making his music in the way he did was that that was how he wanted to do it.

I guess there comes a point where concepts like "integrity" and "artistic vision" become so extreme that they qualify as mental illness and it fascinates me to see people crossing this line in one way or another and I feel that in seeing this happen, I am seeing something that is vital to all creative endeavours, something that all "artists" in all media and genres must do in some way.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

15:07 / 23.03.06

Anyone who had the pleasure of seeing Wesley Willis live will testify that the guy LOVED music. To be brutally honest, yes, I went in part for the novelty value. But I stayed for the whole uplifting-ness of it. The guy was a joy to watch, and nobody was taking the piss.