Outsider musician Larry "Wild Man" Fischer caught his big break in the late '60s, when Frank Zappa discovered him singing original songs for 10 cents a pop on Sunset Boulevard, where he'd become something of an underground sensation. Fischer always brags about creating new songs on the spot, and his work has a quality that could charitably be described as "spontaneous," a little like the infantile ditties a 10-year-old makes up, only preternaturally catchy. Though he'll occasionally strum or beat on his guitar for good measure, Fischer belts out his songs in a flat, atonal yelp that couldn't be further from the polished sheen of radio pop, which probably accounts for why he had Zappa's ear for a brief, promising moment in an otherwise miserable life. A manic-depressive with paranoid schizophrenia—a toxic combination, to be sure—Fischer presented an enormous challenge even to his most well-meaning champions, but he fully expected Zappa to turn him into a rock star. When his Zappa-produced double album An Evening With Wild Man Fischer sold only 12,000 copies, those dreams were over and he continued on a steady downward spiral.