'60s experimental jazz and, well, really anything goes, record label, ESP-Disk label founder Bernard Stollman passed away this week at age 85. He had been fighting colon cancer and pneumonia. Stollman's ESP-Disk label began in 1963, after he released an album of Esperanto music, Ni Kantu En Esperanto (Esperanto was shortened to "ESP" for the label's name), but his drive to release records changed in late '63 after he experienced Albert Ayler. ESP then became the label weird-music lovers know, as Stollman filled the catalog with the coolest avant-garde/experimental, free-jazz, spoken-word, and even weirder '60s freakout jams. He didn't put out records to be commercially successful and is quoted as saying, “Art is anarchistic, and when it becomes categorized, it loses impact. I wanted people who were innovative and inspirational.” Um, I'd reckon he succeeded in doing exactly that. The label issued records by folks we would have never heard otherwise, from Cromagnon to Emerson’s Old Timey Custard Suckin’ Band! Stollman's legacy is, regretfully, slightly marred by his tendency not to pay his bands royalties—a stock problem with nearly ALL record labels, of course. However, it has been said he kept ESP alive with an inheritance and there were no real profits. Anyway, he shuttered the label in the '70s, but reactivated it in '05. I really should give thanks to Mr. Stollman for the providing the soundtrack for thousands of freak parties; I couldn't imagine a world without the Fugs.