Sorry to disagree with Marie, but Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band rocked my
little part of the world in their own peculiar way. One of the first CDs I bought was
"Trout Mask Replica", mostly to replace the LP that had grown scratched and worn.
I do agree that most of his later output was crap. His two classics were "Trout Mask
Replica" and "Lick My Decals Off Baby". LMDOB unfortunately still isn't available on
CD, or I'd have that too. You can get MP3s of the songs from LMDOB via the Captain
Beefheart Radar Station (http://www.beefheart.com/filtered/filtered.htm).
I just dug the humor behind his music. In 1969, when everybody else was singing about
peace and/or drugs, the Captain was singing about Big Joan, whose hands were too small
to go out in the daylight. His sound was dense, loud and cluttered, definitely not
for everyone. Maybe it appealed to me because I grew up on Frank Zappa and the
Mothers of Invention (my first LP was "We're Only In It For the Money"; my second was
"Sgt. Peppers". I thought the Beatles were doing a parody of the Mothers). Maybe
it's just the vibrations he set off resonated my geeky side. Anyway, I thought he was
tapped into something outside of himself. Through him I got into Albert Ayler and
Howlin' Wolf.
I got to see the Magic Band at the Whiskey A Go Go around 1981. It was a great show,
one of the best I saw that year. Captain Beefheart was and is a unique character.
np: Danny Gatton, Portraits
