SHILLING: Darren Finizio For Silk City

RELATED: What Darren creates could be loosely defined as outsider music, the audio equivalent of outsider, or naive, art–a guileless tradition of untrained far-flung visionaries creating homespun works that defy the precepts of the academy and fly below the radar of the gallery circuit. Unschooled, idiosyncratic and often drug-damaged or clinically insane, outsider musicians are also blissfully unaware of the limitations of pitch, rhythm and melodic order–a freedom that sometimes enables them to break on through to new realms of sonic expression. Planting their freak flag in deep left field, outsider musicians command tiny yet rabid cults of fandom with their funny ideas about what sounds good. For more than 15 years Darren has toiled in relative obscurity, suffering the snickers, barbs and invitations to fisticuffs in the parking lot that his “identity bands,” as he calls them, engender from surly drunks at shitty bar gigs. Finding musicians willing to bring his zany ideas to life has been an ongoing challenge, and early on he was forced to make do with a motley crew of suburban metalheads. His recordings sell in the tens, and proceeds from live performances are equally paltry. A recent gig netted him $7. MORE