Musical artists who bridged the gap...

Les Paul wasn't exactly experimental in the context of written music, but his equipment developments and his recording and performance techniques were experimental and innovative. They ended up being widely used successfully in the mainstream by him and others.

His development of the solid-body guitar was experimental at the time. His technique of using multi-track layering of vocals and instruments in the 50s would be used by pop groups in the 60s and later.

 

Frank Zappa is the first to come to my mind. He kinda bridged Experimental music to rock music. By mainstream do you mean notorious ? Because if not, tons of prog rock band are linking experimental to rock in their own way, and lots of free jazz artists, like John Zorn are doing a mix of experimental and jazz and other stuffs ('jazzcore') or even techno artists that make weird tracks. Bill laswell's dub albums can be considered as a sort of experimental-dub.
I mean name any musical genre you know, put "experimental-" before it or "prog-" and you'll find artists doing it.
But most of the time in these cases, labels don't matter anymore

 

Deerhoof comes to mind, although they aren't exactly approaching household name status. Kraftwerk, Sonic Youth, Lou Reed, John Lennon, and Ornette Coleman are a few that I can think of.

 

I think Peter Gabriel is a good example, also Kraftwek and Sonic Youth. Radiohead's Kid A too. Pink Floyd is the obvious response.

Talking Heads?
Bjork in an experimental pop kinda way?

I can't think of anyone else right now. I like the idea of this thread.

 

I agree Kraftwerk were way ahead of their time and paved the way for moderm dj's and the birth of EDM.

 

I can't believe that Pink Floyd and Bjork didn't occur to me! I did think of Talking Heads, but didn't post them because I actually had in mind Brian Eno, but figured he never actually was recognized as mainstream for his own pop music, only through the music of others that he worked with and produced.

I also thought of Fripp, because just the other night I was revisiting Evening Star.

By the way Meagain, have you heard of the band Upp, produced by Jeff Beck? If you haven't, think of his Blow By Blow album, but with synthesizer solos instead of guitar solos (although Jeff Beck does show up on guitar for a few songs) and some really truly amazing mellotron throughout, almost on every track. I don't know if it was because of a genuine love of the mellotron, or lack of funding for actual orchestration, but either way it's wonderful, I picked up their debut album on a white promo last weekend and have listened to it almost 10 times already!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kM4RUYmlJs"]Upp - Jeff Beck - Bad Stuff - YouTube


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyu5L-NxKFQ"]Upp - Jeff Beck - Count to Ten - YouTube


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVwwLbe-A4Y"]Upp - Jeff Beck - Give it to You - YouTube

 

I always thought the band Television bridged the gap of making punk listenable.

 

Television were one of the early examples of post-punk. Not quite punk, though they had their roots in punk.

 

If we can count the Ventures and Duane Eddy why not Link Wray?

 

It's weird that you said that because last night I had a dream were I had my own talk show and Brian Eno was in it and I was telling him how he was one artist that has definitely bridged the gap between experimental and mainstream music and I was going to post about it here, until I was telling my friends Lindsay and Carla about my dream and I asked them if they knew who Brian Eno was and they both answered no and I realized that most people have no idea who he is.

 

Rudimentary Peni.

 

Run DMC were early poineers who bridged the gap between rock and rap, paving the way for later bands like Sublime, Korn and Rage Against the Machine.

 

Sometimes, I wish I had your dreams, instead.

 

10CC....One Nite in Paris is an experimental masterpiece. Listen to it and you can see where Queen got many of their ideas.

Pink Floyd, of course...their work with Barrett (before Gilmour) was experimental in every sense.

Deep Purple, experimenting with the Hammond organ as a heavy rock instrument (achieved by plugging it into a wall of Marshall plexi amps)

Yes

Bowie, who experimented with sexualising his characters and also with making them androgynous.

Zappa of course