Trollheart

Yeah, the Eno Twins were really great!

Look, you know I'm all gonna say it, so I'm gonna say it.
Waits has used everything from German carnival music to jazz and from electronica to folk and gospel to barber shop, almost inventing some new genres along the way. He's made his own instruments and made things work together that have no right to, so if he isn't an innovator I don't know who is.

Surprised you haven't mentioned the Captain, Frownland, and yes of course Zappa, but I'd also like to mention JMJ, who pioneered the use of synthesisers in the seventies and almost single-handedly invented ambient electronic music. That's obviously an overstatement, but he was certainly instrumental (hah) in making such music popular...

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Frownland

I think somebody mentioned Zappa somewhere along the way. I'd say that Beefheart is the most innovative as far as rock music goes, but I'm sticking with my original answer of John Cage as the overall most innovative.

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Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth.

Chula Vista

Zappa, Beatles, Beach Boys, Cage, Bowie, Les Paul, Waits, and Hendrix are all way up there.

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“The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well,
on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away
and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.”

bob.

^she changed music for ever

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A kiss is the beginning of cannibalism.

Reach out, pierce the fine fabric of the sheltering sky, take repose.