I’ll just throw out:
Throbbing Gristle, receiving blowjobs onstage and whatever.
Einstürzende Naubauten, with the whole “jet-engines on a frequency no human can hear” thing.
Early Butthole Surfers, touring with the shitwoman and stalking Lou Reed, dropping acid left and right.
Captain Beefheart.
Die Tödliche Doris.
You have this not-quite-right.
Mark Hollis was the driving force in the band; he (along with producer Tim Friese-Greene) wrote all the songs and it was his musical vision that drove them.
Mr. Hollis semi-retired after 1992’s Laughing Stock, Talk Talk’s first album since the band was released from their contract with EMI. His stated reason at the time was to spend more time with his children and in fact, he wouldn’t deliver the 2nd album to Polydor until 1998’s solo Mark Hollis.
But you are completely correct that Mr. Hollis does not give a fuck what you think; he makes the music he wants to make.
Wesley Willis. A real outside artist who didn’t even know how to give a fuck.
Wow! I’m actually surprised that anyone knew anything about this band, let alone be able to correct my only partially accurate recollection of what happened. I am impressed.
Eminem explicitly says that he just don’t give a fuck.
He don’t give a fuck. He whupped a llama’s ass!
RIP.
Touche! 
Zappa, as usual, is the exception that proves the rule.
Ask any minor league player. They make half that, if I have it right. Sure, some of them are there for a shot at the majors, but many of them know that door isn’t ever likely to open for them.
The audience is part of the game, just as the audience is part of the show when a musician plays. Regardless, most musicians often play without an audience.
Ditto.
I was a fan of the band all thru their career.
With their 2nd album, it became clear that Mr. Hollis, despite not knowing anything about music when he started his first band, had picked up quite a lot and that he definitely had his own distinct sense of things.
By the time The Colour of Spring was released, it was clearly his band. This album was difficult to categorize. The individual songs were difficult to categorize and even tho it spawned a couple of college radio hit, I think the album clearly gave radio programmers the idea that Talk Talk were better off left alone, lest some listener (or worse, an advertiser) get uncomfortable somehow.
Spirit of Eden was Mr. Hollis’ talent in full bloom as he presented an album that is both unique and perfect. It defies categorization as anything other than “Mark Hollis-style music” and it is a perfect example of that genre, if you get my meaning.
That he would follow it up 3 years later, long after most of his college fans from the mid and late 1980s had moved on, with another perfect album was astounding.
And then he simply stopped.
(Except for another nearly-perfect album in 1998, but that was released under his own name, so for purposes of talking about Talk Talk, it doesn’t count eh.)
It’s one of the greatest examples of artistic vision, execution and integrity I’ve ever personally witnessed (from however far away) and I applaud & thank Mr. Hollis for it all.
We can never know if an artist “doesn’t care.” We can only look at his choices and decide whether they reflect any real concern for what his fans want to hear.
By that standard, Robert Fripp qualifies. He’s broken up King Crimson every time it appeared the band was on the verge of popularity, and has invariably come back with a totally different band and a totally different sound.
Frank Zappa definitely cared what SOME people thought- he just didn’t have any special craving for mainstream success.
But he cultivated a select audience that got him and appreciated him, and he worked hard both to keep them happy and to make it easy for them to buy his music.
Unless he’s independently wealthy, no artist of any kind can afford not to care what ANYBODY thinks. You need either wealthy patrons (as Haydn and Raphael had) or a large base of paying fans. Zappa wrote complicated music that often required top notch classical musicians. That’s EXPENSIVE. A guy who doesn’t care about his fans will never make enough money to hire those musicians.
Zappa cared about his hardcore fans because he couldn’t afford to alienate them.
I know nothing about Frank Zappa’s true feelings for his fans. And frankly, neither does anyone else. But I would think and hope that he cared about them, not simply because he couldn’t afford not to, but because he recognized that without them, both would have just a little bit less of a reason to live. I would also contend that anyone who uses a bicycle as a musical instrument is the very definition of someone who believes humor belongs in music. And how posing the question “Does Humor Belong In Music” equates to him believing that it does not, I have no idea.
Zappa on being remembered.
I’ve been a huge fan of Frank Zappa’s work up to the mid 1970’s, don’t care for his later music. Having said that, I’ll voice my heretical opinion.
When someone maintains they “don’t give a fuck what people think” but makes a public fetish out of that professed indifference, they do in fact give a large fuck about what people think.
I don’t think FZ was a hypocrite, only that he was human and could be unaware of his own self-contradictory behavior.
This isn’t something I feel strongly about, so I don’t care to argue the point.
I’m not trying to make Zappa look hypocritical- just pointing out that certain art forms require a lot of money, even if you TRY to operate on a shoestring budget.
A poet or novelist doesn’t need anything but a pen and paper (or, these days, a laptop). A painter doesn’t need much overhead, either. But if you’re a filmmaker or an opera composer or a playwright, you need a lot of talented people and a lot of equipment to bring your work to life. That isn’t cheap!
So, what does the artist do? There are only a few options:
Ask rich people for money. That’s what Renaissance painters and sculotors did. It’s what Tchaikovsky did. It’s what opera companies still do.
Try to achieve mainstream success, hoping to make enough money to bankroll your less commercial efforts later.
Cultivate a small, loyal audience, and market stuff to them constantly.
Frank Zappa did both #2 (profits from the occasional “Dancing Fool” or “Valley Girl” helped him hire the London Philharmonic) and #3 (he knew the demographics of his fans, and he went to great lengths to sell them everything he did).
He never deliberately wrote anything with the intention of having a hit- but the occasional hit allowed him to do what really interested him.
That video was extremely difficult to masturbate to (but I did it in the end).
Sid Vicious was pretty ambivalent to the well being of anyone, including himself.