Results: Musical Weirdos (First In A Series?)

Less adventurous jazz lovers may think bandleader/keyboardist/composer Sun Ra (born Herman Blount in Birmingham, AL) was a weirdo; but there were philosophical underpinnings to the music and accoutrements of the man who took Duke Ellington's innovations to avant-garde ends. Ra's insistence that he came from Saturn, elaborate costumes, Egyptological references, and invocations of outer space were part of the Afro-futurism---or insistence that dark- skinned folk of African origin find relief from oppression in the future and space---he espoused. It all With this question is a trailer for his 1974 movie. Space Is The Place. Would you like to visit outer space?

Houston, TX native Jandek (born Sterling Smith), started releasing his lo-fi music in 1978 and has amassed a sizeable catalog of work over the decades. The unifying element of his work may be a sense of claustrophobic isolation. That feeling has arguably been compounded by, until the current century, the man's low public profile and general indifference to press coverage and reluctance to play live. Regardless the uncompromising nature of his work, his amalgam of folk, blues, rock, classical and atonality has made enough of an impact for November 5, 2002 to have been declared Jandek Day in Houston. Apart from your birthday, perhaps, has anyone ever named a day in your honor?

Rev. Utah Smith is part of the lineage of guitar evangelists that blurs the line between soul gospel & blues. That in itself isn't weird, though the fact that the two singles he released in his lifetime were issued eight years apart (1944 and '53) may be. Stranger still, however is that he performed wearing on his back a pair of wings about 2/3 the size of his body! And two of his songs are about--you guessed?--wanting/having two wings. Depending on the material in his flightless appendages, I'd imagine Smith tired quickly playing shows on the gospel highway (circuit of churches gospel acts played). Whether or not they helped you to fly, have you ever worn wings?

Moondog (born Louis Hardin in Marysville, KS) didn't let going blind from a teenage incident with dynamite deter him from a long, productive career as a composer, musician, instrument inventor and busker. With over 80 symphonies to his credit and numerous other works, he skirted the borders of jazz and classical. His penchant dressing as a Viking came from his appreciation for Nordic culture, though he often wore a horned helmet in order to indicate that he wasn't trying to impersonate Jesus Christ, considering his generous beard. His musical sobriquet came from his once having a pet dog who liked howling at the moon. Has a pet you owned ever inspired a nickname or alias of yours?

I'd feel remiss were I not to end this first installment of a possible survey series with a question about (if only tangentially) about The Weirdos, a 1970's-'80's Los Angeles, CA punk rock band. They started out making artier music, but when a Time Magazine article about punk mislabeled them as making that kind of music, they leaned into it. Have you ever been mislabeled, misidentified, miscast, etc. and adapted to someone's misunderstanding of you?