The first time outsider music made an impression on me was when a hipster I was working with at Second Story Books in Bethesda, Maryland, put on the Moondog album from 1956 on Prestige. Moondog set the blueprint for the reception of outsider musicians. The hip and avant garde, in Moondog’s case classical composers and jazz musicians, would take a street performer or other artist performing outside traditional venues and they would take this real estate of the eccentric imagination and turn it into a boutique novelty store for the squares to browse in. The story of Moondog is the story of artisticgentrification. It is a story as old as the art market itself. A primal scene.
Probably before Moondog, I had heard Tiny Tim sing “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” and later I would hear Daniel Johnston. Outsider music, like outsider art (Henry Darger for example) or outsider literature (as featured by Jonathan Williams of Jargon Press), has been on the fringes of my radar.
Andy Warhol was the ringleader of this kind of thing. Discovering oddball talent which he would then thrust in front of a camera hoping to make a spectacle. A form of Warhol’s car crash silkscreen. Frank Zappa was the Andy Warhol of music. Captain Beefheart and Alice Cooper were Zappa’s most important and influential discoveries, but his roster of talent included his daughter Moon Unit and the GTOs. Zappa was an outsider musician Phil Spector.
Frank Zappa discovered Wild Man Fischer (Larry Wayne) performing on the streets of Los Angeles, particularly on the Sunet Strip. In 1968, Zappa produced a double album An Evening with Wild Man Fischer that became a cult classic of the time. Fischer appeared on Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In and opened for the Byrds, Iron Butterfly and Bo Diddley. Diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, Fischer was as unpredictable as he was entertaining and in a psychotic episode Fischer threw a bottle that nearly hit Moon Unit. That was the end of Fischer’s relationship with Zappa. In fact, when Zappa died his wife, Gail, refused to allow the reissue of Fischer’s double album, claiming it was beneath Zappa’s talents.
For years I had heard of Wild Man Fischer, but I had never actually heard him, until a copy of Pronounced Normal, issued by Rhino Records, and produced by novelty duo Barnes & Barnes with assistance from Dr. Demento. In Fischer’s heyday, Dr. Demento along with John Peel would feature the Wild Man’s songs. There is a history of Impulse Records entitled The House That Trane Built, which tells in part the story of John Coltrane’s importance to that label. There is a book to be written entitled The House That Wild Man Built about Wild Man Fischer’s importance in the rise of Rhino Records. In 1975, Fischer’s single “Go to Rhino Records”, put Rhino on the map and demand of copies of the single spurred Rhino into producing records full time, and Rhino returned the favor by releasing three Wild Man Fischer albums, Wildmania (1977), Pronounced Normal (1981), and Nothing Scary (1983).
Listening to Pronounced Normal was a pleasant surprise and as good as advertised. I hear An Evening is even better and a much more accurate representation of the real Wild Man experience, but I was happy with Pronounced Normal. “Watch Out for the Sharks” and “It’s a Money World” are classics and demonstrate that Fischer understood the economic forces of exploitation that circled around him.
Wild Man Fischer is often described as a novelty act. He is not. He is an outsider musician, like Henry Darger is an outsider artist. Barnes & Barnes, who produced Pronounced Normal, are a novelty act. Their version of “Fish Heads” versus Fischer’s version highlights this fact. Weird Al Yankovic is a novelty act. Moon Unti Zappa was a novelty act. They may be satirical, but they are safe and fun. Fischer is dark and dangerous. There is a sense of menace and scarcely contained mayhem in his songs. He is really scary (look at the cover of his debut album), despite what the 1983 LP assures you. That bottle can fly at any minute. Bill Mumy of Barnes & Barnes could tell you the difference between novelty and outsider based on his harrowing experience in dealing with Fischer in the early 2000s.
Like most outsider artists, Wild Man Fischer was always on the outside looking in, but in the history of music he is an interesting and complex footnote. He appears in the most unlikely of places, like in the novels of Thomas Pynchon and on the Jimmy Kimmel show. In 2005, Derailroaded: Inside the Mind of Wild Man Fischer premiered at the South by Southwest Festival. Josh Rubin, the co-director, said it was “the most arduous, trying time of my life.” No one ever said that about Weird Al Yankovic. Wild Man Fischer is that dark continent of the mind that the music industry is always trying to develop into something titillating but be careful that territory is truly scaryand you might get hurt. In any case, whenever you listen to Wild Man Fischer you are going to feel something, which you can’t say about a lot of more popular and acclaimed mainstream musicians.
Suggested sites and sounds:
Wild Man Fischer on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh In: Wild Man Fischer on NBC 1968 - YouTube
Wild Man Fischer on Jimmy Kimmel Live: Monkeys vs. Donkeys
Wild Man Fischer on Dr. Demento Radio Show: Wild Man Fischer Interview On Dr. Demento (11 May, 1980)
Wild Man Fischer Documentary: Larry "WILD MAN" Fischer" - full DOCUMENTARY - Derailroaded (Inside The Mind Of Larry Fischer)
Go to Rhino Records: Wild Man Fischer - Go To Rhino Records
Wild Man Fischer New Story: Wild Man Fischer, early 1980's - YouTube
— Lou Waxman