Every artist borrows (read:  steals) from other artists, past and present.  It is part of what makes the art of music so beautiful – this endless conversation between a musician and every musician who came before him.  Good musicians can sound exactly like their idols.  Great musicians can cover up those idols and make the listener believe that no one has ever done anything like them in the history of music.

The current issue of Thriller examines the second category – people we’ll call “Innovators.”  Two such innovators are Mark Mothersbaugh and Rod Argent . . . 

Mothersbaugh was a founding member of Devo, a group which should need no introduction.  There can’t be more than a handful of people who don’t know “Whip It” in this day and age, and those poor souls probably don’t have the Internet anyway.  However, Devo was and is more than just a kitschy song/video and a bunch of guys with flower pots on their heads.  Devo is a concept.  And a fairly revolutionary one, at that.  It is a concept based on the belief that we are witnessing not the evolution, but the de-evolution of the human species (thus the name Devo).  Mothersbaugh and company were early pioneers of the synthesizer and electronic music in the ’70s and ’80s.  Now, they are almost done with their first album of new music in 20 years.  During that break, Mothersbaugh has been busy making subversive commercial jingles, as well as writing for TV (”Pee Wee’s Playhouse”) and movies (Wes Anderson’s body of work, among many others).

Argent is a founding member of the ’60s group the Zombies.  While they never achieved quite the success as many of their contemporaries, The Zombies did give the world an enduring masterpiece – 1968’s Odessey and Oracle.  The album was recorded mostly in Abbey Road Studios literally months after The Beatles had completed Sgt. Pepper and Pink Floyd had completed Piper at the Gates of Dawn.  (How’s that for a year’s work?) Thriller contributor, Dante Lima, fresh from the phenomenal accomplishment of putting together the AM/FM Music Festival in Gainesville, recently spoke with Argent about Odessey and Oracle, and the string of sold-out London shows he recently did with the rest of the band, at which they performed the entire album. Those shows were captured on a DVD, released in April 2009.

As always, check out The Playlist for a carefully hand-crafted overview of the featured artists.  And, get on Thriller’s monthly mailing list to receive free music and win prizes! (Thrillermag@gmail.com).