Defining Outsider music has been a task that Rockists thus far have only fiddled with.  The term Outsider music or Outsider Rock was not a common term until the mid 1980s when the genre springboarded its way into cult popularity status through the work of three particular musicians:  Jandek, Daniel Johnston and Charles Manson.  Jandek, the unibomber of Outsider music, began to make his mark in 1986 when several late night radio shows in ....New York.... coordinated a "Jandek Across America" event in which nothing but Jandek was played from 1pm to 2pm on each station.  Meanwhile Outsider poster boy Daniel Johnston (the artist that has blessed us with such wisdom as: dont play cards with the devil cuz he'll deal you a hand thats awful) reached the national consciousness after being featured on Mtv's Cutting Edge (a 1985 profile of the Austin Texas music scene) while at that same time Charlie Manson's early recordings were faring well thanks in part to the 60's Rock Renaissance that had become so huge in the mid 1980s*.   In that same vein the Outsider-ish recordings of 60's Rock musicians like Brian Wilson, Syd Barrett, Roky Erickson, Skip Spence along with two Frank Zappa finds; Captain Beefheart and Wildman Larry Fischer (whose 1986 duet with Rosemary Clooney called "It's a hard business" became an instant Outsider anthem) were gaining notoriety.  But it was The Shaggs' Philosophy of the World that really sets the high score for Outsider Rock recordings.  The Shaggs were made up of four sisters from ..Fremont.., ....New Hampshire.... who were managed by their (some claim abusive) father Austin Wiggen.  Initially Philosophy of the World sold less than 100 copies upon its release in 1969, but when it was name-checked by Frank Zappa in a 1976 Playboy poll, it was suddenly put on the Rock map.  After that there was so much demand for the album that it was eventually re-released, this time by Red Rooster/Rounder (in 1980 as an LP and then on CD in 1988).  The LP was so well received at that time that it inspired Rolling Stone magazine to name the Shaggs as the "Comeback band of the Year" and has since been the bench mark of the unpretentiousness, the honesty and authentic, naïve childlike qualities that has come to define Outsider Music.....

But pinning down an exact definition of Outsider Music can be tricky.  If you define it as music that is outside the mainstream music industry then that could include anything from punk to polka.  If you define it as music that is recorded not for popular consumption, then that too is not exactly correct, since Outsider musicians often dream (perhaps delusionally) of mainstream success.  If Outsider music is defined in relation to Outsider Art then it has to be put in the context of music that is created by folks who are mentally imbalanced (for that is what Outsider Art was originally meant to define: the artwork made by mental home patients).  Jack Mudurian, whose musical repertoire was recorded in 1981 by the activities director at the Nursing Home where he was a resident, would be a classic example of this definition.  But not all Outsider musicians are mental patients.  Some seem more like novelty acts, but at the same time it is also wrong to define Outsider musicians as simply novelty acts because Outsider musicians are not necessarily "in" on the joke, so to speak.  The only undeniable unifying aspect of Outsider music is its genuine expression of feelings, ideas, emotions, etc that can't be effectively expressed otherwise.  Sometimes, often times even, these ideas, emotions etc come from the most demented reaches of the brain.  Which may make us wonder, "What is insanity anyway?"  Is it a disconnect with reality?  But then what is reality?  Afterall if someone can effectively communicate something that is insane, or something from the demented reaches of the brain, in such a way that it causes others to understand it, then isn't that a sign of Sanity?  Not insanity?  Isn't that connection a sign that these demented ideas, etc must be grounded in reality?  For otherwise no one other than the so-called insane person would understand these ideas, emotions, etc.....

In the mid 1990s when Kurt Cobain was seen on magazine covers wearing t-shirts designed by Daniel Johnston, Outsider music suddenly became cool.  By that time Indie Rock (or Alternative Rock if you will) had already become just another sprocket in the music industry machinery instead of the cog it had once been, and in a smaller version of that process, it wouldn't take the music industry long to manipulate Outsider music into a neatly packaged commoditized consumer niche either.  One blatant example of this was when one the Shagg's song "My pal Foot Foot" (which is about a lost cat) became the inspiration—along with outsider Tangela Tricoli's "Stinky Poodle"—for the song "Smelly Cat" that was sung by a character who was portraying an outsider musician on the number rated tv sitcom of the time, Friends.  To Outsider music aficionado's this act was not only very representational of how the mainstream belittles Outsider music instead of celebrating it, but it also a clear signal that corporate music industry was processing Outsider music into its fold.  ....

Two of the biggest names in Outsider music during its process of being conformed into the mainstream were Chicago native Wesley Willis (the Tiny Tim of the 90s) and B.J. Snowden a laid-off music teacher whose 1989 demo tape (released in 1996 by the DeMilo label as Life in the USA and Canada) is considered a classic of the Outsider genre.  Other than the fact that Willis and Snowden are both African-American and that both of them would have never been discovered if Cobain hadn't made Outsider music cool, Willis and Snowden seem to be exact opposites.  Willis who commonly peppers his speech with profanity has several twitchy physical gestures that may have been the residue of child abuse he withstood from his parents.  He became homeless at a young age, wandering the streets of Chicago scrounging for loose change wherever he could find it, and is basically considered to be one sandwich short of picnic.  Snowden on the other hand lives peacefully with her mother and her son, has a degree in music, was under long-time employment throughout the 90s and wouldn't utter a curse word if you pounded her big toe with an oversized hammer.  Willis's music is considered Outsider Music because it seems to be created by a madman.  Snowden's music on the other hand seems to be created by a very happy, caring, forgiving woman.  The music of both artists however seems to be off somehow, although neither musician notices it one bit.  In Snowden's case that is part of the charm, while in Willis's case is part of the humor.  This dichotomy would suggest that the unifying equation in modern Outsider music then is simply that the music must kind of suck in terms of the technical aspect or at least be almost childlike in the fact that it appears to be unconscious or uncaring in regards to musical convention and etiquette.....

Today, in the age of MySpace Rock and ProTool Cowboys, in which any pimply-faced Middle-class teenager or lovelorn office worker in ....America.... can easily have their music cast to hundreds and even thousands of listeners the world over, all at the click of a mouse, Outsider music has become more accessible than ever.  But that is causing even more of a problem in terms of defining it.  Outsider music has now become a part of the Industry.  MySpace pages for the Beatles or the Stones are just as accessible as the MySpace page for Joe the Drummer or Tammy Faye Bakker and the gulf between Outsider and Insider is shrinking every day.  Which means that the time has now come for the defining of Outsider music to be left to Rockists (and the Ideology of Rockism).  So that my fellow Rockists is your assignment for the day.                   

*For example Sonic Youth's "Death Valley 69" off of their 1984 Bad Moon Rising LP expresses their intrigue in Mansion, while their co-hort Lydia Lunch had this to say about Uncle Charlie:  "You could not not love Charlie...You could not not love what he stood for.  Yes, it's got to come down.  Yes, this was injustice.  The guy's a brilliant spoken-word artist."

©2006 Rockism 101. All Rights Reserved  

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     After distributing five thousand copies of an official looking letter to hundreds of area schools (a mock memo from the Arizona Department of Education that announced a student essay on the topic of "Why school is a waste of time") Frank Discussion of the Arizona Hardcore/Situtionalist group The Feederz had to elude arrest from Federal Agents by fleeing Arizona.  He escaped to a safehouse occupied by his Alternative Tentacles label mate (and newlywed) Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedys and recorded the album Ever Feel Like Killing your Boss? (which was packaged in a sandpaper cover).  After almost a year Discussion decided to take off with all of Biafra (and his brides) cash along with the new BMW that the bride's parents had given them as a wedding gift.

http://www.researchpubs.com/books/prank2exc9.php

Who is the Greatest Serial Guitar-Killer of all-time?
Vote Now:

Drummer Dale Crover:
I told them [Nirvana]--what ever you do, do not jump into my drum set.  DO NOT...I'd seen them do it [smash guitars] before and I just thought it was anticlimatic.  Kurt trying to break a guitar - it takes him about fifteen minutes.  By the time its over, it's like big deal.  I think that's guitar murder.  I think guitars have souls--why would you want to murder a guitar?  I think it's pointless.  Haven't you seen the Who, guys?

I agree with Steve Albini's message that major labels are in general run by fuckheads, but I disagree with the innacuracies he uses to propagate his message.  For example, here is an excerpt from Dean Wareham's book Black Postcards pointing out the inaccuracies in Albini's famous 1993 article "The Problem With Music" in the Baffler (nevermind the fact that Wareham is possibly even a dumber asshat than Albini):

...Albini lays out the math for a fictional band that has agreed to a $250,000 deal with a young A&R guy who has them sign a deal memo on the spot after seeing them perform.  I've never heard of that happening, because the A&R guy usually needs permission to commit a quarter of a million dollars to a project, but maybe that's how it happens in Chicago.
     His math will demonstrate "just how fucked up they are."  Albini uses some rather bloated figures--$8,000 for recording tape (I am quite sure we never spent more than $2,000 on tape), $10,000 for mastering (the most we ever paid was $4,500...).  He lists the manager as taking $37,500 off the top of the deal (all the managers I have worked fwith take their commission AFTER recording costs are deducted from the deal, not before).  And he has included a $30,000 video budget (in my experience, the video budget doesn not come out of the artist's advance...).  He also includes $7,000 for artwork and photographs (again these expenses are generally covered by the label, not taken from your advance).
     The end result of Albini's math shows that each band member would earn $4,000 after completing their album and first tour, while their manager haas earned $51,000, the producer $90,000...and the recrod company $710,000

   Albini's article was written in 1993.  Some say it helped move along the downfall of the glory days for the major labels--although anyone with half a brain realizes that it was the internet that led to the downfall of the major labels.  Artists today dont have to play the major labels game.  Today artist can spend all morning recording songs, post them on the internet after lunch and have thousands of people listening to their work by afternoon.  In alot of ways this is a good thing, but in alot of ways it produces alot of crap.  And the question of how do you decipher the quality from the crap is just as relevent today as it has ever been.  The major record labels want to tell the consumer what is quality and what is not.  They want to do the taste testing for you.  But they cannot be trusted.  No one can be trusted, except for you.  Only you know what you will like and what you wont.  So it is up to you to do your own homework and find what you like.  A lot of people are too lazy to do this, but alot are not.
But what seems so hypacritical about Albini's dis of the corporate Rock industry is that at the time of his writing that article, he was largely a part of that industry.  He had just recorded Nirvana's In Utero for the nicely sum of $100,000 and had recorded albums for big name bands like the Pixies, the Breeders for large sums as well. 

Here are the three best bands of each decade (60s to 90s):

1960's

1970's

1980's

1990's

 
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CHICORY TIP's single "son of my father" is considered the first SynthPop hit, as it went to 1 in the UK in 1972.

The Telharmonium
The first synthesizer ever, built in 1895 by American Thaddeus Cahill, weighed over 200 tons, used the telephone network for amplification and worked on mechanical motors. Cahill called this machine the Telharmonium and marketed it to Hotel owners. He put on well-publicized demonstrations of its use in which a musician (much like an organist in a movie house) would play enjoyable music that filled the entire hotel. However the $200,000 price tag prevented the machine from catching on and in 1950 the last remaining Telharmonium was dismantled and thrown into the Hudson River.

Technical Manifesto of Futurist Music
In 1911 the Italian composer Balilla Pratella wrote the Technical Manifesto of Futurist Music which insisted music must represent "the spirit of crowds, of great industrial complexes, of trains, of ocean liners, of battle fleets, of automobiles and airplanes." He also wrote that music must add the cacophony of the industrialized urban landscape ("the machine and the victorious realm of electricity") to the musical language. Italian Futurists went on to invent music machines like the Howler and the Burster in an attempt make these sounds.

http://www.analogue.org/network/manifestmusic.htm

The MiniMoog

Not long after the final Telharmonium found its way to the bottom of the Hudson River a Cornell graduate and theremin kit salesman named Bob Moog developed a synthesizer that would come to be called the MiniMoog.

Zapple
The Beatles, fascinated by Stockhausen, set up a label in which to manifest albums that documented their sonic electronic synth experiments. John Lennon had already entered the bizarre electronic noise landscape with the 8 minute "Revolution 9" that appeared on the White Album. The Beatles also were among the first to put the MiniMoog to use when they included it on "Here Comes the Sun" and "Because" from their Abbey Road disc. But in 1969 George (Electronic Sound) and John (Unfinished Music No.2) both released entire Synth/Electronic albums on their Zapple label.

A Clockwork Orange
Musician Walter Carlos (who had a sex change operation in 1972 and was renamed Wendy Carlos) had worked with Bob Moog creating synth music throughout the 60s. Then in 1969 Carlos recorded an album of synthesized songs by Bach called Switched-On Bach. Carlos went on to also record the music for the brilliant soundtrack for Stanley Kubricks film A Clockwork Orange.

KrautRock
Tangerine Dream are considered to be the first all-synth Rock band, known for performing LSD-influenced concerts in thousand seat cathedrals they would be on the first wave of the German KrautRock genre of the early 70s.
Kraftwerk would be the best and most popular of the KrautRock bands. Their two seminal albums Autobahn and Trans-Europe Epress set the stage for the SynthRock/NewWave/Post Punk/Dance Pop explosion of the 80s that was so well documented on early Mtv.

The 80s
There's really nothing else very interesting about SynthRock unless you are into big hair, make-up and nursury rhymes put to synthesizers. Eventually synth rock became asinine ambient rock and post-Rock. During its heyday however there were a few SynthRock acts of note including: Gary Numan, Flock of Seagulls, Heaven 17), Vince Clark (of Depeche Mode, Yaz, and Erasure), Orchestral Manuevers in the Dark, Devo, the Eurytmics and the Frenchman Jean Michel Jarre, not to mentin the rash of the SynthPop-romantiCouples that included the Eurythmics, Berlin and Missing Persons and the Human League.

©2006 Rockism 101. All Rights Reserved

In 1965 Gregg Allman told people he was going to shoot himself in the foot to avoid being drafted.  So his brother Duane held a foot-shooting party for him, dosed Gregg up with speed and whiskey and painted a target on his moccasin so that he'd know exactly where to shoot.  Gregg started backing out, but then Duane called him a 'chickenshit' in front of some pretty girls, so Gregg did it.  Later Duane had to sneak into the hospital and grab the bloody moccasin so that the Allman's scheme wouldnt be figured out or reported to the government authorities.  The next day Gregg showed up for his military physical and was disqualified for service.

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Here's another gun story: As a young kid Kurt Cobain bought his first amplifier from money he made from fishing his step-father's guns out of the Wishkah River and selling them.  Cobain's mother had found out his step-father had been with another woman and initially she planned on shooting the unfaithful man, but couldn't figure out how to load the guns so she got revenge by dumping the guns in the river instead.  If it werent for the money Cobain made from selling these guns he wouldnt have been able to afford an amplifier until he was much older.
 

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...continueing with the 'gun' theme:

       John Lennon and Paul McCartney once decided to come up with a secret word in case one of the them died so that the survivor could contact the deceased from the 'other' side (if such a thing exists).  This was prior to the "Paul is dead" scandal of the early 70's.  The word they came up with was 'Revolver' the title of the famous Beatles album.  Morbidly ironic, Lennon was killed by a handgun in December of 1980, afterwhich there was a noticable increase in Beatles songs that McCartney would play at live shows--especially from the Revolver album.  Many believe these songs were played so that John would contact paul from the afterlife and perhaps have the ghost of John Lennon jam with PMac on stage one last time.

***BONUS BIZARRE FACT:
Two days after the killing of Lennon someone who worked at the NYC morgue snuck a camera in to work, pulled out the drawer that Lennon was in, uncovered his face, snapped a picutre and put him back in. This guy then sold that photo to the New York Post (owned by MySpace's very own Rubert Murdoch).

***The above photo is of John Lennon signing an autograph for Mark David Chapman, few hours before Chapman blew Lennon's brains out...

   Allright, I'll make this simple for everyone here.  Answer the three following questions, and I will tell you whether you are a HIPPY, HIPSTER, YUPPIE OR YUPSTER.

Q1:  Before Johnny Cash made an album with Rick Rubin and there was a movie about him, you:

a~ already had several Cash albums (on vinyl) and would stop flipping through the channels anytime you saw him on TV (you have a special fondness for his roles in Little House on the Prarie and Columbo)

b~ had a 'greatest hits' collection of Cash on CD and remember watching his TV show once when you were little while being babysat by your grandparents

c~ Is rick ruben related to paul rubens?

d~ thought johnny cash was a redneck who only sung to inmates and truckers

Q2:  The first time you smoked pot you were listening to:

a~ a 'how to get rich quick' casette in your VW bug tape player

b~ either a beatles or dylan...8-track

c~ the Jerry McGuire soundtrack

d~ a guy in dreadlocks playing a dejeridoo outside a grateful dead show

Q3:  When it comes to sex and going to church

a~ youre usually drunk when you do either

b~ they are one in the same
 
c~ sex is something you do with people you love and going to church is something you do with people you hate

d~ you think about church while having sex and you think about sex while at church