Genres are inescapable. We feel a need to classify stuff, so we create stuff to classify stuff with and call it good. I think there is one seriously good dead genre of music that, if revived, would make people today freak out and would give today’s music the soul it so desperately needs.

That genre is, by name, outsider music. Outsider music is, at its most basic level, music that is not commercially successful. Hip, right? Wrong. The hipster rock of today, while not commercially successful, is  incredibly aware of its lack of commercial success. Don’t get me wrong; who doesn’t enjoy a good session with a favorite vinyl by The Books, Pond or Foxygen to set the mood? Indie music of today is, by and large, great stuff — certainly of a higher caliber than the mass-produced, EDM-laced arenapop variety a la Katy Perry and Miley Cyrus.

The point is, today’s indie musicians could learn a great deal about dropping expectations and making music for music’s sake from the freewheeling outsider music tunemasters of yore, such as Captain Beefheart and Roky Erickson. As a side note, two out of three of the recent reissues of Roky’s solo albums got Best New Reissue on Pitchfork. I read Pitchfork only ironically, of course. See Anthony Fantano at The Needle Drop channel on YouTube for wholesome album reviews.

The Captain and Roky both had one thing in common: they did not care what anyone thought of their music. Consequently, they made some of the most interesting, bizarre, and captivating music of all time. Captain Beefheart’s vivid epics sound like spastic, severely twisted bedtime stories told by a schizophrenic gnome on a heroic dose of LSD. Roky Erickson’s frantic ramblings about zombies and monsters call to mind something along the lines of the Cars do Edgar Allan Poe on an even more Herculean dose of LSD. Check out “Trout Mask Replica” by Captain Beefheart and “The Evil One” by Roky Erickson. Seriously.

Essentially, the musicians of today that appeal to the audiophile’s palate would be wise to focus more on the passion behind their craft than the washed out images of themselves smoking cigarettes in obscure locations — with the exception of Mac DeMarco, because he is single-handedly resurrecting the grooves of Steely Dan and the combination of cigarettes and obscure locations are inseparable from his aesthetic; see “Ode to Viceroy.”

Instructions on resurrecting outsider music: take an average Urban Outfitters playlist, pick a band at random and throw it in the mud. Then drop its instruments down a flight of stairs. Then kick it around and make it listen exclusively to obscure 60s albums for a year. Then let it make music. Move on to next Urban playlist band. Repeat.