Various Artists: Songs In The Key Of Z: The Curious Universe Of Outsider Music

So-called "outsider" music exists on a unique and awkward plane of appreciation. The artists who make it are often extremely eccentric, or even deranged in the clinical sense, so the music itself teeters on the brink of lunacy, genius, exploitation, and novelty. Nevertheless, Songs In The Key Of Z, a book and CD compiled by WFMU DJ Irwin Chusid, does a fine job displaying the genre's many different facets. The 20 artists on the disc cover just about all the bases, from music inspired by the muse of mental illness (Daniel Johnston, Wesley Willis) to otherworldly virtuosity (Captain Beefheart) to willful obscurity (Jandek) to just plain inept weirdness (The Shaggs). It's fitting that The Shaggs' "Philosophy Of The World" starts the set, as the band's story is relatively familiar and therefore helpfully illustrative of the genre's quirks. Formed in 1969, the group was encouraged to record before any of the three young girls had even remotely mastered their instruments, and the result is the sort of inimitable musical naiveté you might expect—if not necessarily expect to become a cultural benchmark. Similarly, the unhinged Johnston's pretty "Walking The Cow" shows how these songs have inspired such artists as Yo La Tengo, Flaming Lips, and Half Japanese, even if the likes of Lucia Pamela (who claims to have actually recorded her "Walking On The Moon" on the moon) and The Legendary Stardust Cowboy don't have such prominent descendents. The fact that some of hese songwriters have had any success at all is more a sign of random luck than any conventional talent; if it weren't for such savvy hipster collectors as NRBQ's Terry Adams, some of this stuff (especially the enigmatic and hysterical "song poems") might not have even made it to cult status. Since the stories often mean as much, if not more, than the music itself, it's nice to have the companion book on hand, as well: It's even more thorough and diverse than the disc it accompanies.