Outsider music

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"Outsider music are songs and compositions by musicians who are not part of the commercial music industry who write songs that ignore standard musical or lyrical conventions, either because they have no formal training or because they disagree with formal rules. This type of music, which often lacks typical structure and is emotionally stark, has few outlets; performers or recordings are often promoted by word of mouth or through fan chat sites, usually among communities of music collectors and music connoisseurs. Outsider musicians usually have much "greater individual control over the final creative" product either because of a low budget or because of their "inability or unwillingness to cooperate" with modifications by a record label or producer."

I'm a big fan of Outsider musicians, such as Syd Barret, The Residents, The Shaggs, and Captain Beefheart.

moondog was very interesting.

Cheers! My wife's doing her doctoral dissertation on Jandek guitar tunings. They're fairly intuitive, as you might imagine. His overall artistic output--spoken word, purely instrumental, free-form jamming--is fairly diverse and unique. Some of Daniel Johnston's songs are among my personal favourites: Walking The Cow, Casper The Friendly Ghost, Some Things Last A Long Time.
The "outsider" label, like many before it, is kinda dubious. I mean, who wants to be known for being self-unaware and musically inept? On the other hand, what else would you call it? As much as many of the artists so labelled don't appreciate the fact, they don't seem to mind the attention it's brought to their music

Btw, I'm really happy you posted about outsider music here. It's nice to see two prominent aspects of my life converge outside of it. Thanks.

I have a net label that publish a ton of outsider music by a band called SFIAS.
I even did some work with him before he passed away last year.
not an aspie but definately not NT. it is kinda dark ambient?

sfias
and a video
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sE5sY4uXLmY[/youtube]

Yeah, I'd call that dark ambient. Great track, great video! I like the way the music and the images sync. I just checked out the SFIAS website and am enjoying what I hear so far, but it's not personally what I would call "outsider" music; it's too competent, not "wrong" enough ha ha. Definitely off the beaten path, though, and I'm going to check out more of it. Liking thesixtyone in general.

My wife and I perform as Tuna Mind Melt at free improv-friendly venues here in Toronto. This is an ambient piece I wrote for which she created a video:

http://chenilletartar.com/2010/10/29/odometer/

I like Daniel Johnston, Beefheart and Jandek. How about Half Japanese? Do they count? I'm also a fan of outsider art.

@jamieboy I guess Half Japanese counts as outsider music seeing as Jad Fair did an album with Daniel Johnston. Re outsider art: we rented a documentary on Henry Darger a little while ago and that just blew us away!

@jakobvirgil Collaborate like over the Internet? Yeah we should do that. I downloaded Procrustean Bed off last.fm and am wondering how your friend did all that with just a travel drive. I mean, I know it's possible, you can install Linux on one of those and some music apps, but it sounds like what he did was fairly labour-intensive.

well there's outside in every direction.

right now i love music from Central Asia, as well as various attempts to merge this with a more commercial sound (Irfan is one example). weirdness of all sorts, from Zappa to Mr Bungle, the Residents, John Zorn (especially Naked City); the extremes of exotica (The Three Suns--a nutty cover band from the 50's & 60's; Ruth Welcome & Yma Sumac) & modernism (Penderecki, Messiaen. Xenakis); & highly personal music (David Sylvian, Autechre, Diamanda Galas, Bjork--not to mention Harry Partch) that evades easy classification.

ours is a time in which official music is dead plastic, but a million fascinations thrive in obscurity. the blurring of genre boundaries is an active & amazing process, perhaps the only good thing to come out of globalization. for instance, when mid-nineties Japanese Pop (the "Shibuya-kei sound") decided that nothing was cooler than Brazil 66, a band i would've thought had little afterlife outside of garage-sale record boxes. or the California band Dengue Fever, which combines Cambodian pop & sixties psychedelica. or the black metal polka of Finntroll...

all it takes is a little curiosity.

m.

Has anyone here ever heard of Nick Drake? He was English, from the early '70s. Tragic life and underappreciated in his day. He had very clear signs of ASD.

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@Daryl_Bonder I love Nick Drake, am really only familiar with the Bryter Layter album. I'm a bit too lazy too learn his songs as he performed them, partly because of the tunings and I tend to prefer standard when I play guitar. I saw the doc about him on YouTube, in which his mother speaks about him. Yes he does seem to have quite a few Asperger traits: being withdrawn, eccentric, excelling in a particular field, not being comfortable with crowds (as in audiences)... I find that over the years I've got into the music of people who seem to have Asperger traits to some extent, such as David Byrne, Michael Stipe, Neil Young, Beck, Brian Eno. When I discovered a little while ago that Gary Numan was diagnosed a couple of years ago, it didn't surprise me much.

@graywyvern I've heard some Cambodian 60s pop and it sounds fantastic! I downloaded some Thai marching band music off the WFMU blog WFMU Beware Of The Blog. I check in once in a while to see what they have. But yeah, there's so much music of the "diamond-in-the-rough" variety on blogs like Mutant Sounds or Music For Maniacs (sometimes I dig the weeeeird stuff). On rotation in my personal collection of late: John Cale's Paris 1919, Charlemagne Palestine's Schlingen Blangen, C. Newman's Trackways Made By Two Dinosaurs. In the past couple years I've enjoyed downloading song-poems from WFMU's above-mentioned blog (there are a couple of series posted with some overlap), and about half of the 365 Days Project.

And yes, I agree, it does take a little curiosity (and a bit of free time, too!)