{"id":2126,"date":"2015-04-04T15:56:00","date_gmt":"2015-04-04T20:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/?p=2126"},"modified":"2015-06-10T15:03:13","modified_gmt":"2015-06-10T20:03:13","slug":"chicago-artist-wesley-willis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/?p=2126","title":{"rendered":"Chicago Artist : Wesley Willis"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>Wesley Willis<\/b>\u00a0(May 31, 1963\u00a0\u2013\u00a0August 21, 2003) was an American\u00a0<a title=\"Singer-songwriter\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Singer-songwriter\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">singer-songwriter<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a title=\"Visual arts\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Visual_arts\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">visual artist<\/a>\u00a0from\u00a0<a title=\"Chicago\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Chicago\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Chicago<\/a>. Diagnosed with\u00a0<a title=\"Schizophrenia\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Schizophrenia\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">schizophrenia<\/a>\u00a0in 1989, Willis began a career as an\u00a0<a title=\"Underground music\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Underground_music\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">underground<\/a>\u00a0<a title=\"Singer-songwriter\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Singer-songwriter\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">singer-songwriter<\/a>\u00a0in the\u00a0<a title=\"Outsider music\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Outsider_music\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">outsider music<\/a>\u00a0tradition, with songs featuring his bizarre, humorous and often obscene lyrics sung over the\u00a0<a title=\"Electronic keyboard\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Electronic_keyboard#Concepts_and_definitions\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">auto accompaniment<\/a>\u00a0feature on his\u00a0<a title=\"Technics (brand)\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Technics_(brand)\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Technics<\/a>\u00a0KN\u00a0<a title=\"Electronic keyboard\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Electronic_keyboard\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">electronic keyboard<\/a>.<sup id=\"cite_ref-joyrides_1-0\" class=\"reference\"><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Wesley_Willis#cite_note-joyrides-1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">[1]<\/a><\/sup><sup id=\"cite_ref-alttent_2-0\" class=\"reference\"><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Wesley_Willis#cite_note-alttent-2\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">[2]<\/a><\/sup><sup id=\"cite_ref-ymarks_3-0\" class=\"reference\"><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Wesley_Willis#cite_note-ymarks-3\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">[3]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n<p>Willis gained an enormous\u00a0<a title=\"Cult following\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Cult_following\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">cult following<\/a>\u00a0in the 1990s, mainly upon the release of\u00a0<i>Greatest Hits<\/i>\u00a0in 1995 on the<a title=\"Alternative Tentacles\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Alternative_Tentacles\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Alternative Tentacles<\/a>\u00a0label. The album was released at the urging of punk rock pioneer\u00a0<a title=\"Jello Biafra\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Jello_Biafra\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Jello Biafra<\/a>\u00a0who compiled its tracklist.<sup id=\"cite_ref-alttent_2-1\" class=\"reference\"><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Wesley_Willis#cite_note-alttent-2\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">[2]<\/a><\/sup><sup id=\"cite_ref-ymarks_3-1\" class=\"reference\"><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Wesley_Willis#cite_note-ymarks-3\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">[3]<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0In addition to a large body of solo musical work, Willis fronted his own\u00a0<a title=\"Punk rock\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Punk_rock\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">punk rock<\/a>\u00a0band, the\u00a0<a title=\"Wesley Willis Fiasco\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Wesley_Willis_Fiasco\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Wesley Willis Fiasco<\/a>.<sup id=\"cite_ref-ymarks_3-2\" class=\"reference\"><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Wesley_Willis#cite_note-ymarks-3\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">[3]<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0He was also a visual artist long before his forays into music, producing hundreds of intricate, unusual, colored ink-pen drawings,<sup id=\"cite_ref-ymarks_3-3\" class=\"reference\"><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Wesley_Willis#cite_note-ymarks-3\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">[3]<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0most of them of Chicago streetscapes and\u00a0<a title=\"Chicago Transit Authority\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Chicago_Transit_Authority\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">CTA<\/a>\u00a0buses.<\/p>\n<p>(source wikipedia)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wesley Willis\u00a0(May 31, 1963\u00a0\u2013\u00a0August 21, 2003) was an American\u00a0singer-songwriter\u00a0and\u00a0visual artist\u00a0from\u00a0Chicago. Diagnosed with\u00a0schizophrenia\u00a0in 1989, Willis began a career as an\u00a0underground\u00a0singer-songwriter\u00a0in the\u00a0outsider music\u00a0tradition, with songs featuring his bizarre, humorous and often obscene [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2127,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-loop"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2126\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}