ABSTRACT
This chapter examines avant-garde approaches to rock music by focusing on what can best be described as the 'freak out' recordings of chaotic sounds and free form improvisation that reject conventional notions of song structure, lyric meaning and technical competence. The freak out suggests a kind of madness, either invoked by musicians as a countercultural weapon against the sanity of mainstream culture or perceived by listeners who sometimes explain away such unlistenable records as temporary madness by their favorite musicians. John Lennon is the most well known pop musician to be thoroughly condemned for extreme avant-garde recordings and his work with Yoko Ono during the late 1960s provides some insights about the use of avant-garde strategies and techniques in popular music. Yoko Ono's notion of unfinished music offers a useful way to understand how freak out recordings function as a strategy of resistance by rock musicians.
