MetaFilter posts tagged with Outsider

Wesley Willis's Joy Rides

kid ichorous — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 01:17:16 -0800

Wesley Willis's Joy Rides, one week only at Pitchfork TV. Dual-wielding a Technics KN and a microphone, breaking Chicago down to a vector space of magic marker; homeless busker, Napster celebrity, punk headliner and hellraiser: take your pick. The late Wesley Willis as remembered in Joy Rides.

The Uncle Floyd FPP!

not_on_display — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 14:01:28 -0800

Deep in the Heart of Jersey you'll find "Uncle Floyd" Vivino, roaming the streets of various towns and cities, kibbitzing with the locals. In Belleville. Nutley. Bloomfield Avenue and Ferry Street in Newark. Kearny. Cliffside Park. Main Street, Paterson. An abandoned lot in Paterson. What, you never heard of Uncle Floyd? From 1974 to 1998, Floyd Vivino hosted The Uncle Floyd Show, a low-budget mess of a parody/tribute to variety shows and kids' shows, at the same time championing many local and/or outsider musicians, and accumulating a wide underground following via the UHF airwaves--why, David Bowie even wrote a song about Uncle Floyd. Here's a link to the entire Uncle Floyd Show Album Floyd currently plays over 300 gigs a year. His booking website gives a few examples of his New Jersified vaudeville stylings (not to mention some great publicity photos): 1 2 3 [music automatically plays when page is loaded] Here's more of UF on the pee-yanner. The late CM "Mugsy" Calam was a favorite performer on the Uncle Floyd Show; archive.org has some footage neatly arranged for you; there's plenty more of Mugsy on YouTube. Some newspaper articles about Floyd: NYT 1/10/88 ...more by Anthony Buccino, reporter for various NJ newspapers: 3/3/77 visiting the set | 3/17/77, Uncle Floyd Meets the Mayor of Bloomfield | 11/3/77 Web presence? Yeah! Uncle Floyd on Facebook Uncle Floyd on Flickr Photos: Backstage with Uncle Floyd And, finally, Uncle Floyd's Web Site, with updates on what cast members are doing these days.

...and that little boy's smile... with that slow southern style

premiumpolar — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 16:42:44 -0800

With black velvet paintings of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Donald Rumsfeld, Jack Abramoff, Phil Spector, Jon Benet Ramsey, Jesus and a Big Rig, Erik Estrada, Charles Nelson Reilly, Wil Wheaton as Wesley Crusher, and everyone's favorite physicist, Stephen Hawking, velvet paintings aren't just of Elvis, Unicorns, and Aztec Indians anymore.

A man named Pearl

1f2frfbf — Wed, 16 May 2007 07:29:48 -0800

Pearl Fryar just wanted to win Yard of the Month back in 1984. Today his Bishopville, SC garden may be the most original example of outsider art in Southeastern America, and a tourist destination in it's own right.

Tokyo stories from curious outsiders

gen — Mon, 07 May 2007 00:13:29 -0800

Hitotoki.org (Japanese for 'a point in time') is a "new literary site collecting stories of personal, singular experiences in Tokyo." If you've visited Tokyo, please consider sharing a part of your Tokyo experience at hitotoki.org. If you plan to visit Japan, please peruse what will be an interesting collection of personal stories of life in Tokyo.

365 Days II: 365 MORE Days, The Bloodening

Rev. Syung Myung Me — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 10:54:34 -0800

It's BACK! Otis F. Odder (of The Bran Flakes and Comfort Stand Recordings is reviving his 365 Days project on the WFMU Beware Of The Blog! Hot damn! He opens it with the complete recordings of the Michael Mills Satanic Messages Radio Show and the complete Beatles Forever recordings (previously excerpted in the first incarnation). (Previously on Me Fi)

A futuristic instrumental classic rock fusion look at life.

zonkout — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 07:42:29 -0800

Mr. Frank J. Stola (flash): a self-described professional musician who mangles any and all genres he attempts. Don't miss his take on instrumental fusion rock classical jazz, revolutionary country n western traditional, or heavy metal instrumental on CD Baby. Equally marvelous are his strange, minimal videos. And don't forget to pick up Mr. Stola's myriad products at his Cafepress store. Is he serious?

Russian Psychoanalytic Art Mystery

themadjuggler — Sun, 03 Dec 2006 02:49:04 -0800

"This was painted by a person with a rare and severe mental disorder. He was constantly seeing his own fantasies all around him. He also had a certain phobia..." (via Digg). The image is an imperfect reproduction of a particular postcard dated 1972. A blogger (in Russian) claims his psychiatry professor found one aspect of this eerie painting that reveals the patient's disorder. Allegedly, only one of his students in the past 15 years has figured it out. The psychoanalytic mystery has piqued the interest (in Russian) of the online community. A number of supplemental hints from the professor and thousands of guesses later, the case remains unsolved. Skeptics have already decried the mystery as a traffic-boosting hoax, but a few signs still point to its authenticity. Most notably, the artist's reproduction of another classic painting contains the following note: "transferred in 1990 from Moscow mental hospital."

Get Your Dirty Barb Off Me, You Damn Dirty Stingray!!

jonp72 — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 16:16:19 -0800

An American troubadour pays tribute with a Steve Irwin death song, while the Australians blokes insist that stingrays must pay!!!

Nashville Singer's Career Immortalized by Blind Man's Penis

jonp72 — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 08:25:12 -0800

Ramsey Kearney was a teenage country music prodigy nicknamed the Dixie Farmboy, a rockabilly singer with the Jimmie Martin Combo, a songwriter for Brenda Lee, and a producer of the most cloying Elvis tribute single ever recorded. Kearney would have almost no connection to alternative music whatsoever until John Trubee, a notorious crank phone caller and sideman for Zoogz Rift, found an ad in the back of the Midnight Globe tabloid from Kearney's Nashco Records label, a song-poem company offering to put his words to music for a small fee. Trubee sent his own disturbing LSD-fueled lyrics to Nashco, but to his surprise, Nashco accepted the lyrics after taking a $79.95 fee from Trubee. Kearney tweaked the lyrics slightly in order to avoid a lawsuit from Stevie Wonder, but the end product was the cult classic novelty song, Blind Man's Penis. (more inside)

Ulillillia City

The Wig — Sun, 30 Jul 2006 14:58:20 -0800

Whether you love it or hate it, Ulillillia City is a fascinating site by fascinating person. It's a meticulously annotated, categorized and laid out record of one man's entire mental life: his colour coded daily life, his dreams (over 400!), his fears, his video game ideas (including the supernatural olympics), his unique personalized mind game, his extensive tips 'n' tricks, how he processes and listens to music, and far more...

Make me glad for everything I have

Scoo — Mon, 15 May 2006 10:28:09 -0800

David Hart: L.A. Public Access TV Legend left me flabbergasted (video).

Saint EOM

visit beautiful mount weather! — Sat, 01 Apr 2006 10:25:11 -0800

Pasaquan: Eddie Owens Martin, pot-smokin', homo hustlin' New York transplant, son of a Georgia sharecropper falls ill, sees visions, "becomes" Saint EOM, spends 30 years turning homestead into grand work of art, commits suicide, languishes in semi-obscurity...

Hi, How Are You?

rollbiz — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 15:39:38 -0800

A new documentary is about to be released about Daniel Johnston. Johnston is the mind behind Hi, How Are You?, a basement tape which has enjoyed a cult following since not long after he distributed it to strangers in the streets of Austin, TX. Despite a constant battle with mental illness, he has managed to assemble quite a discography as well as creating artwork. More on Johnston here and here. [ (not much) More Inside.]

Mingering Mike

dodgygeezer — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 04:29:44 -0800

Mingering Mike is the soul superstar you've never heard of.

What's the matter with wacky nutjob artists in Kansas?

gilgamix — Wed, 01 Jun 2005 08:39:23 -0800

J.P. Dinsmoor fought in the Civil War and had two children in his eighties. He was a die-hard Populist, the first resident of Lucas, KA to go electric and when he died he was mummified. Somewhere in there he had time to build The Garden of Eden, discussed in "What's the Matter With Kansas" and contrasted with this wing nut.
And they're both called Populists.

Musical Curiosities, Obscurities and other Unearthed Treasures

taz — Mon, 30 May 2005 05:48:00 -0800

Rummage Through The Crevices (Musical Curiosities, Obscurities and other Unearthed Treasures) is "a weekly community radio segment (Friday mornings, 2SER-FM, Sydney, Australia) devoted to offbeat and outsider music, less travelled paths of global pop, interesting re-issued treasures, music-sharing activists, notable and unusual online mp3 repositories, etc. This webloggy thing is its online companion."

Women on Brown Paper Bags

madamjujujive — Thu, 06 Mar 2003 22:08:36 -0800

The eccentric art of Lewis Smith - a man who lived alone in the woods with no amenities, at age 60, he began drawing all day, every day. His themes included muscular and wrestling women drawn on brown paper bags, and diner scenes drawn on cracker boxes. He drew or painted on every surface including the walls of his home and his barn. If he were alive today, he would probably be amazed to learn that many of pencil and crayon drawings sell for upwards of $1000.

vacapinta — Sun, 18 Aug 2002 15:47:13 -0800

Harry Stephen Keeler has been called one of the strangest writers who ever lived. He has also been called the Ed Wood of Mystery Writers. His plots are labyrinthine, convoluted, insane, built on coincidences. There's a Harry Stephen Keeler Society. His works are now being re-printed. And, if you're feeling brave, you can read many of his works on-line. Keeler created, and was seemingly the sole practitioner of, a genre he called the "webwork novel." This is a story in which diverse characters and events are connected by a strings of wholly implausible coincidences

jonmc — Mon, 01 Jul 2002 11:53:51 -0800

Outsider Music. From a mailing list, here's a concise description of what is really more an idea than a genre, per se. The Hip Surgery Music Guide has some info on the essential artrists of the phenomenon. If you wanted to stretch the definitions of the form you could include, some better-known artists as well. Unspoiled genius in the rough or merely crude freakshow appeal? The answer I believe is somewhere is somewhere in between. But in an age where most music is either a copy of what is currently popular or a revival of what used to be popular, Outsider Music is a place to go for a "Wow! What was that?" musical experience.

y2karl — Fri, 25 Jan 2002 18:03:37 -0800

The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, as caused by the Child Slave Rebellion.

The story recounts the wars between nations on an enormous and unnamed planet, of which Earth is a moon. The conflict is provoked by the Glandelinians, who practice child enslavement. After hundreds of ferocious battles, the good Christian nation of Abbiennia forces the 'haughty' Glandelinians to give up their barbarous ways. The heroines of Darger's history are the seven Vivian sisters, Abbiennian princesses. They are aided in their struggles by a panoply of heroes, who are sometimes the author's alter-egos. The battles are full of vivid incident: charging armies, ominous captures, alarms and explosions, the appearances of demons and dragons.

Details within.