I wasn't around in 1969, so I can't really tell you what the cultural zeitgeist looked like when Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band put out Trout Mask Replica. But I have this sneaking suspicion that for all our nostalgia about the hipness of the counterculture, Trout Mask Replica was outsider music even back then.
I'm not about to bang on about people under-appreciating good art when they hear it. Hell, I'll even agree with you that Beefheart and his ragtag band of weirdos would make a shitty soundtrack to a party.
But that's not to say I don't believe that it holds value. I think that Beefheart, Zappa and other outsider musicians were key in advancing music as an art form.
When you first throw on Trout Mask Replica, you are greeted with a cacophonous mess of sloppy, atonal, arhythmic crap... And a crazy man yelling nonsense.
But around "Moonlight on Vermont", track 6, something clicks... It's not that these guys don't know what they're doing. This is all intentional. The Magic Band, with Beefheart at the helm, are deconstructing rhythm and blues before your ears. The album tightens and loosens in waves, revealing the structure of the beast. It becomes clear that the players are perfectly capable of playing the blues with all the technical proficiency and soul you could hope to hear. The gimmick is that they're choosing not to at key moments, in an effort to unravel the structure of the music.
This musical deconstructionism is sometimes termed "avante garde," a telling adjective in that is supposes the subject is ahead of its time.
But I'm not suggesting that a time will ever exist where Beefheart would tear up the charts. He'll always exist on the musical periphery. The power of his particular brand of outsider music lies in its ability to expose the structure of a genre, rolling it over so that its soft underbelly is exposed. From here, other artists can sink their teeth in and take it in another direction entirely.
In some ways, the outsider musician is a catalyst consumed in a chemical reaction. Nobody in their right mind would tell you that Beefheart was more important than the Beatles or the Rolling Stones. But without him, we might never have moved past those bands. We might have remained mired in rock n' roll homogeny.
By deconstructing the genres he played in, Beefheart exposed areas ripe for innovation. Steve Huey puts it better than I could when he writes of Trout Mask Replica, "its inspiring reimagining of what was possible in a rock context laid the groundwork for countless experiments in rock surrealism to follow, especially during the punk and New Wave era." (source)
"So what?" the critical reader might say.
Well, Beefheart stopped making music in 1982. Where are our outsider musicians now? I'm sure lots of stuff is happening below the surface of the innumerable electronic genres that have been popping up since the 80s, but I'm more concerned about Rock and Pop. Has the ship sailed on these venerable genres?
We're at a historically interesting point in the music industry. Technology has made it easier than ever to record an album and release it to the public. Pitchfork, Stereogum and The Hype Machine are spitting out new music faster than we can reasonably consume it. The radio is choked with generic, pre-fab bands that while often pleasing to the ear, staunchly refuse to move genres anywhere, let alone forward.
You could make an argument for Lady Gaga as an innovator, and while I agree that she has been invaluable in deconstructing the Pop Diva image, particularly by exploring stardom through surrealist and feminist lenses, I'm not convinced that her music innovates.
So where does that leave us? Maybe we have innovators. Maybe 40 years down the road, everybody will be touting some alt-rock weirdo that I don't know from a hole in the ground today as the next Beefheart. Under appreciated, maybe, but invaluable in advancing the genres we hold dear today.
For the sake of rock music, I certainly hope so.
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