He was famous, but he was broke.<\/p>\n
Don’t equate fame with riches, certainly don’t equate it with quality.\u00c2\u00a0 But the best artists just don’t understand the system, all they can do is create.\u00c2\u00a0 Which is why they get ripped off and become disillusioned, like the two guys in Badfinger who committed suicide.<\/p>\n
Wild Man Fischer was an institution.\u00c2\u00a0 A club you became a member of in high school or your college dorm.\u00c2\u00a0 Someone cool but friendly, not a football player or a cheerleader, would start talking about a record, with a smile on his or her face, and begin singing… Huh?<\/p>\n It all came down to Frank Zappa.\u00c2\u00a0 Who didn’t kowtow to the mainstream, rather barged in upon it.\u00c2\u00a0 He didn’t wait for mass success to create a vanity label, signing acts that sound nothing like him to get rich, like Madonna did with Maverick, rather early in his career Frank started two labels, Bizarre and Straight, to sign acts that aligned with his sensibility.\u00c2\u00a0 Those that were just a little bit different.\u00c2\u00a0 That caused the audience to think.\u00c2\u00a0 That could not be ignored.\u00c2\u00a0 There was Captain Beefheart.<\/p>\n And Larry "Wild Man" Fischer.<\/p>\n You remember the cover of that initial double album.\u00c2\u00a0 With his electric hair?<\/p>\n Maybe you don’t.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe you’re just too young.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe you equate music with money, learning about the riches of Led Zeppelin or seeing all those acts on MTV.<\/p>\n But once upon a time, it was about music.<\/p>\n And it was certainly about creativity.<\/p>\n Could you question convention?<\/p>\n There was an irreverence that doesn’t exist today.\u00c2\u00a0 Even SNL, it winks at not only its audience, but its network.\u00c2\u00a0 Really, we’re safe, we want to go on to movie careers.<\/p>\n But once upon a time, SNL was dangerous.<\/p>\n And when Belushi imitated Cocker we all got the joke.\u00c2\u00a0 Because we’d all seen the "Woodstock" movie.\u00c2\u00a0 Because we were all beholden to music, the hippest medium.<\/p>\n Actually, we’re at the beginning of a new golden era.\u00c2\u00a0 You don’t need a tastemaker or a bank or a label to play.\u00c2\u00a0 Then again, not only have we not yet found the new Frank Zappa, we’ve got tons of barely talented wannabes, doing it for a while before they sell out to the corporation, hopefully.<\/p>\n Zappa was a lifer.\u00c2\u00a0 He made music, that’s what he did.\u00c2\u00a0 He didn’t want to be broke, but he didn’t change careers because music did not pay enough.<\/p>\n Wild Man Fischer was a lifer too.<\/p>\n Until now.<\/p>\n Larry "Wild Man" Fischer just died.\u00c2\u00a0 Read the below obituaries, they’re pretty good.<\/p>\n And it’s not so much his music we mourn, but the era.\u00c2\u00a0 When music surprised you, when it was peopled by the best and the brightest, when instead of trying to get in bed with the man, you didn’t trust him.<\/p>\n Frank signed Alice Cooper.\u00c2\u00a0 The GTOs.\u00c2\u00a0 It was all outrageous.<\/p>\n But not without meaning.<\/p>\n It’s the end of an era…<\/p>\n
Merry-go<\/span>
Merry-go<\/span>
Merry-go-round<\/span><\/p>\n\n