The Outsider Music Mailing List is devoted to those songs that make you stop in dumbfounded wonder. Drawing partly on the art world concept of outsider art (or art brut, naive art, self-taught art, take your pick), outsider music includes all manner of incompetent but sincere recordings, music by the mentally challenged, industry rejects, eccentrics, singing celebrities (& don't they always sing?), lovable oddballs, grandiose statements, etc. The list is to encourage discussion of these artists, news of findings and even trades of recordings.

Anybody *trying* to be strange is not an outsider. Classic outsider music artists include--don't worry if these are unfamiliar names--The Shaggs, Florence Foster Jenkins, Jandek, Shooby Taylor, Wesley Willis, Brute Force, Ya Ho Wha 13/Father Yod, Little Marcy, song-poem singers, T. Valentine, Lucia Pamela, Fran Baskerville the Singing Psychic, Peter Grudzien, Arcesia, Anton Maiden, certain school bands, some street musicians and a host of others few people have ever heard. And of course the list of celebs inadvisedly essaying songs includes William Shatner, Jack Webb, Telly Savalas, Leonard Nimoy, Joey Bishop, Xaviera Hollander, Ed McMahon, Sebastian Cabot and even opera great José Carreras who did some stupefying Christmas recordings.