"This is punk about enjoying yourself and fuck everyone else. These bands had no delusions or even hopes of grandeur. Like the aliens who built Stonehenge."- David Cross
NEUROTICA
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Intentions of mine/Why this exists : The fact that I could spend the duration of my life, and that's assuming I live a whimsical, lengthy life, scouring the dregs and bowels of the internet, zines, milk crates of records and I wouldn't be close to even scratching the surface. Yes, it's frustrating that there's so many (bands) I'll never see, never hear, never be able to use it. to let it save me when i need to be hear and be saved. But that's also what compels me to it. The possibility that I could stumble upon something life changing on the most mundane, dreary, uneventful winter afternoon with nothing to my name but a few cigarettes, a library card and 45 minutes on the internet their.
Music (along with several other things) make something within me surge and bubble. A catalyst for something, an aural elixir. I've used music to travel through time. It's been a compass, in the sense and tradition of Tarot, hypnosis, telepathy, what have you. I've lived many lives, vicariously of course, but it doesn't feel that way. Some songs, well many songs, evoke visceral memories that could have me sitting in the shower crying, watching dish water colored filth dribble clockwise down a drain to where i feel as if i belong. It can also teleport me to a time where "you can get away with anything when you're young" (Jamie, R.I.P., of The Lazer, Tender Wizards, Bossy, Radio Faces, Bent Outta Shape).. high school, my punk bands playing and I'm hanging with the guys in the back room. We go into the band room. We're drunk already. I piss into a tuba. We laugh. I had spent weeks tweaking the set-list. Thinking of what songs seemed to transition more smoothly, contemplating dynamics, etc. However, we just got fucked up and played punk rock and whatever song we thought the bass player was playing, or whatever some drunk talking head in the audience shouted out and I just remember feeling like it wasn't my guitar plugged into the amp, that it was me, and the electricity and all it's secrets we've yet to learn, yet to harness, surged through me. However, this is a digression, albeit an inevitable one. I can't talk about such things without interjecting some anecdote of my own. It felt nice to feel alive. More than alive. Anyone who's stood on a stage, or more likely ground level on a basement floor with the audience encircling you like hypnotized followers. The synchronicity is palpable. It's a force that is certainly far more dynamic than the collective sum of it's parts. But this isn't about live music. Well not exactly. Let me explain.
Suppose Kurt Cobain never wore that iconic Daniel Johnston T-shirt. Or on a more global level, I think of those who lived and died, either leaving music in the crypt of their cranium, or perhaps they were institutionalized and didn't have access to record. Or maybe an individual never had the chance to pick up an instrument. Didn't know that people did the things that they wanted to do. didn't know there was something you could do, called taking a risk, and throwing everything you have out there, pouring every sentiment and bead of secretion into a song and sing it to perhaps just one other person. I want to try to find them. The bizarre, the forgotten, the "island of misfit toys" armed with homemade instruments.
It is the holiday season, and the sentiment it's better to give than to receive bears some weight at times (I like presents. things. I'm not the best example). Whenever I discover a new artists, I instinctually want to share it with friends, internet acquaintances, anyone. How can I not get excessively fascinated that I stumbled upon the "Legendary Stardust Cowboy" born Norman Carl Odam on Sept. 5th, 1945, Lubbock Texas. Considered one of the pioneers of the genre that came to be known as pyschobilly"?
Life can wrestle one into a firm and submissive headlock and make it difficult to find time to create. And then of course there's the little conundrum (myth perhaps?) of madness being a prerequisite, as if a teardrop produces an almost alchemist reaction. I will be doing what I've always done, exist as a metaphysical journalist. Watch, observe, report. I would prefer to find street musicians, preferably with schizophrenia (not to exploit. Just to validate a little theory that they may be more evolved than us, perhaps have an extra sense, and if you can filter out the parrot phrases they repeat from institutions, they are very intuitive and use outlets like music/art to express what torments and transcends from within out to this spectral, nightmarish, unflinchingly vulgar world. ) However, in between interactions with "real life" individuals who I brush shoulders with at various institutions and public transit I'll be making an earnest attempt at giving an "outsider artist"a day some due credit. Artists that, according to David Cross, " bands that have no delusions or even hope of grandeur. Like the Aliens who built Stonehenge."
Let me back track a bit. " Outsider music is the term used to describe songs and compositions by musicians who are not part of the commercial music industry who write music that ignores standard musical or lyrical conventions, either because they have no formal training or because they disagree with conventional rules. This type of music, which often lacks typical structure and may incorporate bizarre lyrics and/or melodies, 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,
Very few outsider musicians ever attain anything resembling mainstream popularity; the few that do generally are considered novelty acts. This notwithstanding, there is a niche market for outsider music, and such musicians often maintain a cult following. Irwin Chusid claims to have coined the term in the mid-1990s (although it was already current in connection with jazz as early as 1959, with rock as early as 1979,[ and by the late 1970s had become a "favorite epithet" in contemporary music in Europe)." That being said, the outsider genre incorporates a plethora of genres from unconventional opera, invented scales and instruments, algorithmic composition, etc..
I know I can say with blind confidence that I'm not the only one who sometimes when I can't find a reason to get out of bed on a bad day, it helps to know that I could stumble across, say, Moondog, a blind street musician who fashioned his own instruments and viking costume. My heart melts hearing Bingo Gazingo croon ""I Love You So Fucking Much I Can't Shit"
Feel free to send any and all art, music of your own, musicians who suffer from mental disorders, have absurd idiosyncratic eccentricities,
Create, If you can't play an instrument, pick it up and play with it like you would as a child. listen close. we all have some music within us, it's just often lost in translation.
