The five o'clock news seems to have ignored the passing of Captain Beefheart, born Donald Glen Vliet in Glendale, California. To those of us familiar with the town, Don's quip "there wasn't much of a glen or dale left when I was born there." hits squarely on our funny bones. To those unfamiliar, it doesn't mean a whole lot of anything.
I guess the same applies to his art. Those of us who knew his beautiful, twisted, bizarre music as intimately as we know the layouts of our rooms or our favorite recipes feel his absence from an increasingly bland, unimaginative and unmusical world deeply; we felt it even before it was cemented by his passing.
It shouldn't surprise me, by now, that the fuckheads in charge of channel 11 decided his death wasn't necessarily newsworthy. These are people concerned with the Lady Gagas and flash floods of the world. The passing of a cult American figure who's most lauded work never exceeded 100,000 sales seems inconsequential. To me, it rends the skies.
Zappa said it best when introducing him at a festival in Amougies, Belgium; "Listen, be quiet and pay attention to this man's music. Because, if you don't you might miss something important - and we wouldn't want that to happen to you - because you need all the friends you can get..."
It would be foolish to try and say it better than Frank Zappa. His passing will give the critics a good opportunity to try, and, as a die-hard fan, it might be the only true enjoyment we get out of this sad but inevitable turn of events. If there is such a place as Heaven and two such irrepressible heathens as Don and Frank are allowed through the pearly gates, they are probably laughing their asses off.
And so, people with more polished writing skills than mine will wax poetic about his long, erratic and contentious friendship with Frank. Something alluding to their shared adolescence in Lancaster, CA, where they would listen to R & B records, eating stale pastries, Don yelling at his mom, "Sue! Get me a pepsi!". Send your mother home her navel, indeed.
They will touch on the birth of Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band out in the high desert, as a rough and tumble blues rock band that earned a reputation as a gritty, funky and unique live act that, at the height of the British Invasion, could quite frankly could put most of the English (and American) bands of a similar ilk to shame. Sacred cows such as The Rolling Stones, or The Yardbirds included. I humbly submit this lil' old radio hit from 1965, as evidence.
Safe as Milk, which features a 19 year old Ry Cooder will surely be mentioned. Geeks like me will remind you there is incontrovertible photographic evidence that John Lennon himself owned it, perhaps twice: He can be seen with two decals that were included in the original vinyl pressing behind him. Don't believe me?
In fact, I remember reading that the Beatles attended his London shows. Beefheart, ever unimpressed with sacred cows, responded by skewering them on the track "Beatle Bones and Smoking Stones" . John Lennon's feeling were reportedly pretty hurt. Now, I'm a big Beatles fan; I choke up a little bit every time December 8th rolls around. This still strikes me as pretty funny.
The album the track is from is Strictly Personal. An enjoyable album, no doubt, but nothing that looks nice on a review. What the Allmusic and Rolling Stone critics, tastemakers par excellence will tell you is what comes next is the most important. The Masterpiece. Shit, it made the (drum roll, please) 500 GREATEST ROCK ALBUMS OF ALL TIME list, presumably an honor. That conversation ruining website, Wikipedia, tells me it made it all the way to number 58. That's pretty good I guess, considering the magazines famously tinned ears and eroded taste.
I'm talking of course about Trout Masked Replica. Yep, I was nerdy enough to name my blogging alter ago after it. I couldn't resist adding the Philip K. Dick / Blade Runner reference, and it turns out the Captain gets name checked in Mr. PKD's existential and dense novel The Transmigration of Timothy Archer. This makes me laugh also.
This is where the writers will have the most fun. If any album in the history of rock lends itself to outlandish adjectives and fantastical description it is this beast. From the perspective of a person who has owned this album for perhaps a scarce eight or nine years, it's always the most fun to read about.
The well-worn adjectives seem to center around shapes and colors. Angular, jagged, dark, bluesy. I once described it to a shapely young blonde neighbor I had a crush on as similar, musically, to what Picasso did with painting. All the recognizable elements are there, but they have been expertly rearranged and distorted into something bizarre, an ugly, unseemly mess, which in turn has it's own weird beauty. She is long, long gone from my life, but I'm still proud of that description. Delta blues falling down the stairs is a close second.
When I met this album I was referred to the Captain by a Brazilian friend of mine. I was going to music school and was feeling a hankering for new sounds. In a thick accent, he told me Beefheart was "one of the best." I bought a couple of albums (more on this in a bit), and enjoyed them. I bought Trout Mask Replica and gave it a whirl. Three of them. And then I went to tell my good friend Fernando: "This album you recommended me... it's shit." He laughed.
Two more spins and I still wasn't convinced. It sounded haphazard. unkempt, unrehearsed, noisy. There were a few nice moments but overall it just clanged around and sounded too fucking random, too fucking lo-fi and just plain too fucking weird. I mean I liked dissonance; after all, I was a big King Crimson fan, but this was just too much. And it just sounded... amateur.
The sixth time I heard it was the definition of an epiphany. Maybe it was critical mass. The right time of day. The right amount of cannabis. Who knows? But the album unfolded before me like a psychotropic drug experience. That Satori moment lasted for seventy-seven minutes or so and continued sporadically for the next few days as I ate the magenta pill over and over.
The kaleidoscopic effect of polyrhythms, polymeters and polytonality revealed itself; I felt this strange music take me into it's confidence. The genius of it was, all of the sudden, evident, and the humor also. The words had the playfulness and imaginative qualities of e.e. cummings or Burroughs, but also their very own personality. They were Dada too, though I had no idea what that meant yet.
I couldn't help but laugh at oddball punchlines like "I saw you baby walking in your X-ray gingham dress / I knew you were under duress / I knew you were under your dress / Just keep coming Jesus, you're the best dressed." or "a squid eating dough in a polyehtylene bag is fast and bulbous got me?". This shit was hilarious.
This drug come avant-garde rock n' roll experience called Trout Mask Replica was frequently in my portable CD player (remember those?), and it promptly proceeded to rearrange the contents of my head and it's close-minded perceptions of the possibilities of music. I finally stopped trying to listen and just listened. Like the guy on YouTube said, to this day, I still use those same ears. Thank you, Mr. Beefheart.
I also gained the ultimate "get the fuck out of my house" record. If the party's gone on too long at your house, play it. The jerks will leave, and your best friends will stay, although they will probably implore you to turn that fucking weird shit off, please.
I have argued for years that within the Beatles catalog are the seeds of most if not all rock to come, Beefheart notably excluded. If this were true for Trout Mask Replica, we would have the seeds for crazy, fucked-up, alternate world rock. There are echoes here and there, in Henry Cow, Primus perhaps, or Pere Ubu. XTC's Andy Partridge claims to have learned every guitar part. Sometimes I believe him. But this alternate world has yet to materialize, and probably, never will.
But hyperbole and description are pointless, says the man after twelve or thirteen paragraphs. Buy it. Listen. Next.
Lick My Decals Off, Baby cost me forty dollars at Amoeba. It was out of print on CD. Still is. Maybe somebody will be kind enough to re-release it, perhaps remastered. Just as good as Trout Mask, although it is, lyrically, just a little less brilliant. It's available on vinyl; I sent it by mail to one of my best friends in Mexico and he probably still hasn't taken it out of the shrink wrap. Ah well.
The Spotlight Kid and Clear Spot, respectively, come next. Indeed, they were the first album I bought, as they were packaged (and still might be) as a "twofer". I still have trouble listening to them separately.
The Spotlight Kid is swampy, dark, groovy blues. Beefheart affecting his best Howlin' Wolf mojo and voice, with Mark Boston and Bill Harkleroad, rechristened Rockette Morton and Zoot Horn Rollo, chug along ferociously, forsaking atonal skronk for dirty, near pornographic blues. I read it was recorded in miserable conditions. Bless them. Zappa collaborators Roy Estrada, Art Tripp and Elliot Ingber also appear, although they turn into Orejon, Ed Marimba and Winged Eel Fingerling. Love it.
Beefheart himself sounds great, confident, huge and funny. He was taking his first steps down a more commercial path. For the moment, it was paying it's artistic dividends.
If there is a Beefheart album that could ever be termed sexy, 1971's Clear Spot is it. Funky, sleek, well arranged and, for the first time, well produced and mixed. Those of us familiar with it wonder why it never attained a place among the classics of rock n' roll or at least the charts. It even has the Captain wearing his heart on his sleeve for the ballads "Her Eyes Are A Blue Million Miles", "Too Much Time" and "My Head Is My Only House (Unless It Rains)".
I would go into detail for the album's other cuts, but it's getting late. I must get this thing out of me tonight, or it will turn into a dissertation and I want something more pure. A catharsis. Tomorrow will be the first day I wake into a world where my greatest idol and influence is dead. The mind requires perspective before sleep sets in.
Then, two disgraceful albums that me and the critics will gloss over and ignore. Nothing worth rescuing from Unconditionally Guaranteed or Bluejeans and Moonbeams, save perhaps a few embarrassing tunes that have crept into my playlist and the phrase "Love Over Gold", ironically pasted on his most blatantly commercial, bland, vacant work. Cheesy, vapid, unoriginal. Not Beefheart. Not canonical. Next.
Two songs on a collaboration with Zappa. They ended up hating each other for a few years. Amazing songs nonetheless, the Captain foreshadowing in fine form, backed by some of the finest musicians of the era. Bongo Fury, indeed.
Shiny Beast. A magnificent return to form. Not much new terrain explored, but perfectly played, well recorded and joyous. "Bat Chain Puller", "Tropical Hot Dog Night", "Owed T'Alex (Carson City)" are all great, but it's "Suction Prints" that will kick your ass. Five stars from Downbeat magazine... talk about hip, man! Can't be topped, except by...
Doc At The Radar Station. Immaculate Beefheart, smack dab in the middle of punk and new wave. Contemporary, yet out of this fucking world. I listened to it for most of the writing of this blog. I'm going to spin it again in a second. If you have the balls, this is the perfect introduction; Beefheart's magic band as refined and accurate as it's going to get, with some absolutely stellar playing from all involved.
The copy I'm playing is a pristine promotional copy that cost me a cool twenty-five dollars. Appraises for seventy-five. Bought it in front of my girlfriend, big mistake. I probably shouldn't be wearing it out with my roommates shitty turntable but I don't care. I'm hurting. I need this right now. And I'm not selling it... I don't care how many diapers it could buy tomorrow morning.
Ice Cream For Crow. The sad end of his career. A low budget creation but laden with great playing and amazing ideas. Still a bit dense and perplexing and daunting, even for a junkie like me. Don living in the desert, probably already trying to slow down the Multiple Sclerosis that would eventually kill him. The title track, as well as the Thousand and Tenth Day Of The Human Totem Pole and Semi-Multicolored Caucasian are still among my favorites. No matter.
After 1982, musically at least, silence. Don going into painting and finally getting the big bucks and recognition that so eluded him (still does) in his musical life. Bono, hearing of Don Van Vliet (Don Glen Vliet just don't ring quite the same) living in the desert, offering the Cap a place on the U2 tour. The response: "Dear Bongo, I have no idea who you are but please don't ever write to me again...". Classic.
1991, a short by Anton Corbijn, Some Yo-Yo Stuff. Something's wrong with Don's body but his mind is still there. "I keep in touch with the world very gingerly - the world touches too hard."
A resurgence of popularity in the last few years, no doubt, and yet Don disowning his musical past. Perhaps the need to be accepted as a painter. Might have been painful too, to be reminded of a career lost forever due to a deteriorating body. Chronic, deadly illness encroaching on Don as he paradoxically flourished like never before, artistically. Perhaps none of these things. If only one could step into the mind of a genius...
The Magic Band "reforming", playing a magnificent show under a full moon in 2003 in Long Beach within sight of the Queen Mary, changing my life. Indeed the best concert I've been to and Don wasn't even there. I can only imagine when I hear the stories of people who saw him live.
And now, this.
So, I guess I'll have to add December 17th, 2010, two days after my 30th birthday and less than a month before Don's 70th, to that list of black dates I keep in my dusty mental rolodex. Ah well. You will be sorely missed Captain. You never knew me but you changed me so. Go up in your glider and give us that Sun Zoom Spark. We the residents of God's Golfball, humbly beseech thee.
Rest In Peace.
Don Van Vliet,
January 15, 1941 - December 17, 2010
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