musical genius

[EliteNinja]

Mason Williams.

Classical Gas.

[astroglide]

hey i have an old mp3 of me playing that song fast. i'll upload it now here ya go guitarists www.badbeat.com/tmp/classicalgas.mp3

[Duke]

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Prince is horrible.

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Thank you, Mr. Knows Nothing About Music.

Prince plays, well, all of the instruments at an expert level. You might not like his music, as I don't, but to say he's horrible as a musician is pure ignorance.

~D

[Duke]

Here's a guy who changed music: Liberace.

Without him, there is no Billy Joel, Elton John, and hell not even an Axel Rose playing a piano in November rain. The guy made the piano a mainstream instrument.

All his shortcomings aside, he did a lot for music, especially popular music.

~D

[Chah Ngo]

Frank Zappa

[Duke]

[ QUOTE ]
Frank Zappa

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Another great call. I've been recently introduced to this guy's music, and he's ridiculous. Excellent choice.

~D

[ilya]

how about...oh, I dunno...Beethoven? Bach? Mozart? Wagner?

[Chah Ngo]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Frank Zappa

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Another great call. I've been recently introduced to this guy's music, and he's ridiculous. Excellent choice.

~D

[/ QUOTE ]
TY sir.
Tom Waits is pretty good too.

[Enon]

A few names nobody has mentioned and some general info courtesy of Allmusic:

John Fahey

One of acoustic music's true innovators and eccentrics, John Fahey was a crucial figure in expanding the boundaries of the acoustic guitar over the last few decades. His music was so eclectic that it's arguable whether he should be defined as a "folk" artist. In a career that saw him issue several dozen albums, he drew from blues, Native American music, Indian ragas, experimental dissonance, and pop.

Brian Eno

Ambient pioneer, glam-rocker, hit producer, multi-media artist, technological innovator, worldbeat proponent and self-described non-musician — over the course of his long, prolific and immensely influential career, Brian Eno was all of these things and much, much more. Determining his creative pathways with the aid of a deck of instructional, tarot-like cards called Oblique Strategies, Eno championed theory over practice, serendipity over forethought, and texture over craft; in the process, he forever altered the ways in which music is approached, composed, performed and perceived, and everything from punk to techno to new age bears his unmistakable influence.

Serge Gainsbourg

Serge Gainsbourg was the dirty old man of popular music; a French singer/songwriter and provocateur notorious for his voracious appetite for alcohol, cigarettes, and women, his scandalous, taboo-shattering output made him a legend in Europe but only a cult figure in America, where his lone hit "Je T'Aime...Moi Non Plus" stalled on the pop charts — fittingly enough — at number 69.

And finally, one album of genius that just came out last year and a short review from pitchforkmedia.com:

The Books - Lemon of Pink

The Lemon of Pink is the cerebral world of thought, feeling, and idea made sound. Arbitrary, disconnected soundbytes rattle around beneath swells of fiddle, banjo, and other antique strings like half-remembered moments of clarity. The otherworldly samples and vocal snippets could easily be relegated to the status of novelty, or worse, distraction, in less perfectly arranged music, but here the spoken interludes and melodies work in beautiful concert: otherwise distant, sepia-toned nostalgia is lent emotional resonance by eggshell-fragile plucking and triumphant crescendos, and with the album's very first utterance, "The lemon. Of pink," amid its first hesitant tunings, hits like a blast from the Reading Rainbow past, making it plain that this album is less reality than fairytale.

[Zeno]

There is a Zappa Biograhpy out that was just released. I saw it in the book store the other day. Probably worth getting.

Frank Zappa wrote a book (with some help) called: The Real Frank Zappa Book, back in the late 1980's, (OK 1988, I just looked). It's a very interesting read, some parts are extremely funny and very informative. I recomend it if you are at all a Frank Zappa Fan.

And Zappa was close to being a musical genius.

-Zeno