Please note that some of the links in this archive will be to
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Archive 9: April 2003 - February 2004
Thursday 19.02.2004
There's so much to tell you about in the Beefheart world at the
moment (recent gigs, upcoming gigs, lavish box sets of Don's artwork
- see the news page for more info)
but this is just a hasty update to explain my recent absence.
My PC is about to be put in storage for a while, along with all
the rest of our possessions since we are technically homeless from
tomorrow afternoon. We sold our flat, agreed a date to vacate and
then things have gone wrong with the purchase of our new home, causing
the whole process to drag on a ridiculously long time.
For the next few weeks (hopefully no longer) we'll be staying on
friends' floors, in a holiday let, a B&B and possibly with family
too until our new house is vacated or we decide to give up and start
again to find another one. It's a worrying time and I appear to
have a dose of full-on flu for the second time ever right at this
moment. Things have certainly been better for us!
I'll still have email access on friends' PCs but won't be able
to spend much time responding. Steve and Derek will still be doing
great things with the discography
and news sections of the site,
and the Fire Party discussion
list will still be up and running should you want to chew the
cud with other Beefheart fans from all over the world.
I won't be able to update the Radar
Station's web-radio show over the next few weeks. To try to
compensate for this, you can listen to a 6+ hour Kosmische Krautrock
special. All you favourite Krautrockers including Amon Duul
(both I and II), Can, Golem, La Dusseldorf, Faust, Xhol Caravan,
Ash Ra Tempel, Guru Guru are featured and so much more.
So, all the best and I hope it's not too long before I can update
this page again!
Sunday 04.01.2004
I was planning to bring you a roundup of everything that's been
going on in the world of Beefheart online over the last month, but
it seems we've all been hibernating over Christmas and there's very
little to report.
I had a note from Russell Burn of late seventies / early eighties
Beefheart admirers The Fire Engines letting me know that they have
reformed and will be supporting The Magic Band for their Edinburgh
show later this month. Named after a 13th Floor Elevators' song
with band members later appearing in Win and Nectarine Number 9
(who covered "Frownland"), their Beefheart pedigree is
assured. You can currently hear some Fire Engines on our web-radio
show.
Those of you who keep an eye on beefheart.com's Beefheart
news page will already know that The Fall are supporting the
Magic Band on their London gig later this month. Anyone considering
arriving late or propping up the bar during the support act would
be wise to reconsider.
In their recent review of 2003's best releases, Rolling
Stone considers The Fall's Words of Expectation: The BBC
Sessions:
The leap from his opening harangue in June, 1978,
"Rebellious Jukebox," to the '96 cover of Captain Beefheart's
"Beatle Bones 'N' Smokin' Stones" affirms Peel's famous
loving description of the Fall: "always different, always the
same."
This cover of "Beatle Bones" does indeed fit Peel's comment
perfectly, being both a surprisingly faithful cover of the Beefheart
classic and also unmistakably Mark E Smith. Just in case they don't
play it when they support The Magic Band on their up
coming London dates, you can hear it circulating on our
web-radio show.
While on the subject of beefheart.com's
web radio show, I have recently given the format of the show
a complete overhaul. It now uses a higher bit-rate and thus has
a significantly improved sound quality. Hope you enjoy it.
Finally, all the best to our regular visitors for a happy new year
and many thanks indeed for your continued support over the last
year.
Sunday 07.12.2003
Dusted Magazine have a review
of the Magic Band's recent ATP show, including a pre-gig interview
with Gary Lucas and Denny Walley and lots of great photos. Denny
comments in the interview about their recent London show:
When we did our first [reunion] gig in London, we
didnt know what to expect. They didnt know what to expect.
They thought they were going to wheel out a bunch of wizened prunes
with IV units hanging off of them and wheelchairs and shit. We came
out and we ripped their heads off. The first five rows, it looked
like an AC/DC concert. A lot of people who hadnt ever heard
us before, and some who were the children of people that were listening
to us when we first started. You had people in their 60s to 15.
And they were digging it. We were laughing on stage. We didnt
know what to expect. You never knowthe English can be really
dicey if they want to be, they can rip your heart out.
Fast 'n' Bulbous: The Captain Beefheart Project which startled
New York gig goers last year with their inspirational new interpretations
of Beefheart's music are playing tonight in New York at Joe's
Pub, 425 Lafayette Street, East Village. If you're in the area with
a loose end, consider it fastened.
Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band, with its clashing
meters, crisscrossing melody lines vaulting over wide intervals
and precision timing, was always several steps closer to jazz than
to rock. And so the great intuitive artist of rock, Captain Beefheart
(real name: Don Van Vliet) who is said to be in poor health,
at home in Northern California after 20 years of forswearing music
for a successful second career in oil painting now has a
proper repertory project dedicated to his music.
A septet led by the guitarist Gary Lucas, who played
with Beefheart in the 1980's, and the saxophonist Phillip Johnston,
who played with the Microscopic Septet, Fast 'n' Bulbous is a studious,
energetic and reinterpretive band, a bit like what jazz-repertory
orchestras aim for these days. As an extra, the estimable improvising
guitarist Henry Kaiser is scheduled to sit in with the band.
Stewart Osborne and Nils Homme both wrote in to say they'd recently
got hold of a bootleg Beefheart DVD called Portable People
which is available at www.vvmo.com.
The track listing is as follows (complete with errors!):
The Artist Formally [sic] Known As Captain Beefheart
- BBC special 1997
Cannes Music Festival, France 27 Jan 1968
Electricity / Sure Nuff 'N' Yes I Do
Beat Club - Bremen Germany 1972
I'm Gonna Booglarize You Baby
Psychomania - clip 1974
Upon The My-O-My
French TV 1974
Mirror Man / Upon The My-O-My / Full Moon / Crazy Little Thing
/ Improv / Peaches / Take Me To Your House / You're Gonna Need
Somebody
Saturday Night Live - Nov 1980
Hot Head / Feel Like An Ashtray Heart
Stewart also sent along a scan of the sleeve and the following
comments:
There's a professional-looking menu screen (although
it only actually offers the one option!) with a picture of the TMR
band that's familiar from the Grow Fins box; sound quality is pretty
good throughout.
Picture quality is not bad either - the red's a little
faded and displaced slightly to the right on TAFKACB, which makes
Drumbo, Zappa and Ry Cooder look a little washed out in some of
the interview footage and creates some ghosting. The Cannes footage
is particularly poor (especially when compared with the extract
in the documentary) alternating between too dark and too bright
and so lacking in colour as to be almost monochromatic.
Over all definitely worth having 'though - although
I can't help but wish that they'd found room for the ICFC video,
even if it meant cutting some of the '74 footage.
Incidentally, I love the bit which says "duplication is a
violation of applicable laws", proving that bootleggers have
a strong sense of irony.
Thanks to Stewart and Nils for the info.
Name-droppers' corner:
Familiar as we all are to every strand of vaguely left-field music
being compared to Captain Beefheart, one journalist has recently
taken things to a new level and started comparing musicians' hair
to Captain Beefheart. Writing about the absurdly great shambles
that was Rocket From The Tombs, Peter
S Scholtes states:
Old photos show a group almost suspended out of time,
a diverse set of individuals cobbling their fashion sense - a leather
jacket here, Beefheart hair there - before punk became a uniform.
What next? A band with Beefheart skin secreting a Beefheart aroma?
William Whitmore provides journos with a much better opportunity
to drop the Captain's name. An obvious Beefheart admirer, this tattooed
skateboarding banjo-playing hard-core fan has nicely lifted elements
of "Orange Claw Hammer" and "Dust Blows Forward"
style Beefheart and made it his own. Tunes from Whitmore's new album
Hymns
For The Hopeless are currently circulating on our web-radio
show. See also recent pieces from The
Courier and lawrence.com
The sixth disc compiles sermons, including "That
White Mule of Sin" (1929) by the Rev. George Jones, a confounding
mishmash of prayer and parody. The so-called reverend sounds more
than a little like Captain Beefheart, and he ascends to absurd heights
of incomprehensibility ("Saddle up the road every whichaway
and every whichabout," he declaims) while Sister Jones offers
an updated version of the Lord's Prayer: "Our Father, who art
in heaven/ The white man owed me 10 dollars, and I didn't get but
seven/ Thy kingdom come, thy will be done/ I took that or I wouldn't
have got none/ Amen."
Although priced way beyond my pocket, my curiosity is pricked,
my appetite whetted and this is something that I have to hear!
Our last instance of Beefheart name-dropping for this update was
sent along by Gene Hopstetter who wrote about a recent gig he attended:
Robyn Hitchcock, during a performance at Maxwell's
this Halloween, did an impromptu recitation of "My Human Gets
Me Blues" and "Neon Meat Dream Of A Octafish". He
asked his audience, "You don't know that one? I'll have to
buy you all a copy of Trout Mask Replica for Christmas."
star-telegram.com
has a piece responding to Rolling Stone's latest 500 greatest
albums of all time list in which they consider the current lack
of a musical generation gap. Apparently our children are now just
as likely to listen to Pink Floyd as we are - I'm hoping this means
sales of The Wall and Dark Side of The Moon are plummeting
but suspect they didn't quite mean it like that.
They also set the following challenge:
Whistle a tune by the band called Love. Try "Bummer
in the Summer".
Now name a favourite Zombies song. How about the
one that goes, "What's your name? Who's your daddy?"
For the final test, hum a bit of Captain Beefheart's
Trout Mask Replica. Anyone who can do all three is either
approaching retirement or an avid reader of Rolling Stone.
I'd take issue with this comment since my retirement day is sadly
still dim and distant, and Rolling Stone seems more concerned with
celebrity gossip than with good music journalism. It seems that
we don't need a mountain of spam in our inbox to enable us to see
Britney Spears naked nowadays, we just need to glance at the cover
of Rolling Stone. How this helps us to know anything about the Zombies,
Love or Beefheart is beyond me.
Finally, Steve and Derek have been updating the Beefheart
news page, including a host of details about two Beefheart /
Zappa film nights on the 25th and 26th January at The National Film
Theatre in London.
Sunday 23.1..2003
News about a new Beefheart cover has come in from Anchorage
Press:
Another import-only treat comes from Screaming Trees'
vocalist Mark Lanegan, with his new EP entitled Here Comes That
Weird Chill(Methamphetamine Blues, Extracts and Oddities).
As a teaser for his upcoming Bubblegum album the set features a
cover of Captain Beefheart's Clear Spot.
I was never a fan of Screaming Trees' music which I always ignorantly
assumed was just a watery reflection of Nirvana without the integrity.
This faithful and pleasing cover, along with Lanegan's charming
version of "Cripple Creek" from the Skip Spence tribute
album, may prompt me to rethink.
A relatively new electronica compilation features Captain Beefheart
doing some entirely non-electronic music. An Anthology of Noise
and Electronic Music Second - A Chronology 1936-2003 features
"She's Too Much For My Mirror" and "My Human Gets
Me Blues", recorded live at the Belgian Amougies festival (also
available on Grow Fins).
Despite the slightly misleading title, An Anthology Of Noise
and Electronica (the second part in a series) makes an attempt
to pin down a specific musical attitude rather than a certain genre
or mood. Other contributors include Autechre, Luc Ferrari, Yoshihiro
Hanno and Sun Ra.
Speaking
of Sun Ra, his film Space
Is The Place is now available on DVD in the US (fortunately
region 0 which means we can buy
and watch it here in Europe too). Like his music, the film takes
a scenic and devious route in explaining his unusual and fascinating
philosophy through a blaxploitation-esque mix of the Arkestra's
music and science fiction.
This DVD edition also contains some home video shot in Egypt.
Although I haven't seen this extra bit of film yet, I imagine it
as being equally odd and revealing as the home video sequences of
the Magic Band around the time of Trout Mask Replica where,
among other things, we see Don "playing" a sax while wearing
his carp head and shuttlecock during the album cover photo shoot.
The prospect of seeing Arkestra members getting up to high-jinks
in Egypt - their natural Earthly setting - is just as winsome.
Since I'm one of those people who searches for my own name on the
web, I naturally checked out Earth first and looked at the break-up
of the world's largest iceberg as seen from space. Funny that
this can be seen from beyond our atmosphere, yet such phenomena
are invisible to George Bush and his fellow global warmers.
Erich Geis kindly emailed to let me know that a bootleg Beefheart
DVD and VHS video are available in NTSC format from the horribly
designed but well stocked www.vvmo.com
This
week's non-Beefheart discovery comes courtesy of Julian Cope. Cope's
new album, Rome
Wasn't Burned In A Day, comes with a limited edition bonus
CD of some of the acts which played at his recent weekends of barbarian
rock in London and Liverpool. The first track on this bonus disc
is by The Sunburned Hand Of The Man and I'm hooked. It's a tremendously
shambolic mix of electric Miles, Faust and the kind of music which
Cope should be making himself.
The Sunburned Hand Of The Man's music is available in a series
of CDR releases from Byron Coley's www.yod.com
and you can catch the epic "Jaybird" from Rome Wasn't
Burned In A Day on beefheart.com's web-radio
show. Copey also reviews
the album Jaybird on his own site.
I've had no further news at all about Don's possible health scare
as mentioned below, and, in the absence of any real information,
have comfortably assumed that it was nothing serious.
Wednesday 19.11.2003
Sunday 16.11.2003
Some of you may have already seen a worrying message
which I sent to the beefheart.com discussion
list concerning Don's health. I was sent the following fragment
from a very reliable source about some events which occurred at
the Van Vliet home on Thursday:
At 4 PM today, the local CDF truck came roaring into
the Van Vliets with sirens going and then an ambulance came, also
with sirens. 20 mins later the ambulance left, sirens again, and
then Jan in the black Mercedes, with the CDF truck waiting to go
out last.
I would like to stress a couple of things about this fragment of
a story. Firstly, there has be no further word since then about
this matter and if it was serious, I am certain that some more
news would have been heard by now, three days later. It may not
even concern Don at all, I have absolutely no further information.
Secondly, I would like to reassure anyone reading this who may
suspect that the Van Vliet home is under surveillance by obsessed
Beefheart fans that this is not the case. It is an eyewitness report
from someone who was in the area legitimately. I would never include
information on this site which had come from any such "spy
network" as I know how much the Van Vliets value their privacy,
and I would strongly discourage anyone from personally invading
that privacy.
If people want to be left alone in peace then I believe that should
be their right. Consequently I also feel very uncomfortable about
putting this news up on beefheart.com, but it just didn't seem right
to sit on it and ignore it.
We all know that they just want to be left alone to get on with
their lives, so please do them a favour and cancel any plans which
you may have for a trip out to their home. Sincerely, thanks.
On a more upbeat note, the Magic Band played at the LA All Tomorrow's
Parties festival last weekend. The general consensus in all the
press reviews that I've seen are that the Magic Band towered head
and shoulders above the already impressive line-up.
Michael Traylor, the band's drummer for the tunes in which
Drumbo sang, seems to have hit the spot and sent the following few
words to beefheart.com:
Well, what can I say.... it was a beautiful night
on Long Beach harbour and the moon was in eclipse mood. The stage
faced out over the audience and then to the Queen Mary in the not
so far distance.
Matt introduced us to the mostly too-young-to-remember
crowd and The Magic Band took them to a place and time that only
a few musicians would dare go, cracking open the sounds of an artist
that is admired and misunderstood.
After several masterfully performed instrumentals,
John invited me to the drums to back him and the rest of the guys
in bringing Don's words back to the fore. John did him honour by
his honest performance of songs that spanned the bulk of the Captain's
career.
I would like to thank the Magic Band and the old
(and hopefully some new) fans of Don's contribution to the music
world, for allowing me to be even a small part of this musical experience.
Groening also took it upon himself to introduce the
act that inspired him to curate ATP. The reformed Magic Band is
basically an all-star cast of musicians who played with the indomitable
Don Van Vliet, a k a Captain Beefheart, now retired as a fine art
painter.
Once again, Mississippi Delta blues was gleefully
mixed with knotty, free jazz and bizarre lyric imagery, thanks to
John French (who sang Beefheart's lyrics in almost the same Howlin'
Wolf-like growl as the Captain), Gary Lucas, Mark Boston and Denny
Walley. It was a rare and happy opportunity to see these elder men
tear into music with disciplined glee.
The LA Times featured a picture of John French and Gary Lucas (scanned
and made available at Gary
Lucas' site). The portion of the review about the Magic Band
stated:
There were some special attractions too, and Groening
himself introduced the one that initially inspired him to take on
the job: the reunion of the Magic band, the group that backed the
visionary Captain Beefheart on his blazing forays to rock's wild
frontiers in the 60s and 70s.
The reunion actually gathers players from different
eras, with the heavier mystique borne by drummer John French and
bassist Mark Boston, known respectively as Drumbo and Rockette Morton
when they anchored Beefheart's legendary 1969 album Trout Mask
Replica. Guitarists Gary Lucas (Mantis) and Denny Walley (Feelers
Reebo) were later, short-term members.
The strangely structured set opened with a long stretch
of the band's more difficult instrumentals, but when French came
to the front of the stage (Michael Traylor taking over on drums)
to fill in for the retired Beefheart on vocals, the show took off.
Strange though was the complete absence of any mention
of Beefheart, the man who conceived and designed this music. It's
understandable that the players may want to shed their reputation
as Beefheart puppets who simply followed orders. Maybe it was an
oversight. In any case, it cast a slightly unpleasant light on an
otherwise wondrous hour.
Considering the eloquent and often touching tributes which all
members of the band have repeatedly expressed for their retired
leader both in interviews and from the stage in recent months, I
have to wonder how much longer the band will be expected to trot
out the same platitudes before we can all allow ourselves to just
enjoy their great music.
The spirit of Captain Beefheart was felt as forcefully
as the inspiration of the Velvet Underground on the first day of
All Tomorrow's Parties, "curated" by The Simpsons creator
Matt Groening. Featuring not a reunion but a kind of Magic Band
all-stars, their performance was a testament to Beefheart's visionary
mix of Delta blues with free jazz.
The one must-see group was the Magic Band, comprised
of members of Captain Beefheart's former backing crew. While it's
safe to say that the music of Captain Beefheart can be a required
taste [sic!], it can also be marvellously demented, and few can
play it.
While the Captain himself has officially retired
from music, those who played with him at various points throughout
his career, which at ATP was John "Drumbo" French (drums/vocals),
Gary "Mantis" Lucas (guitar), Denny "Feelers Reebo"
Walley (guitar), Mark "Rockette Morton" Boston (bass)
and Michael Trailer (drums), recently reformed.
The 60-minute set began with the more avant-garde
side of the group, where free-jazz crashed into the blues to create
a perfectly orchestrated mess. Compositions were created out of
what were seemingly fragments of songs, in which a guitar may etch
out paranoid squiggles one second and tauntingly flirt with a recognisable
melody the next, and all of it was held together by a constant rhythmic
force.
When French took over on vocals, he provided an adequate
substitute for the Captain, pounding on the Son House-inspired riff
of "The Floppy Boot Stomp," growling through the blues
breakdown of "Circumstance" and singing "Electricity"
as if the lyrics were pulsing through his blood.
Judging by the wide-open field, it was far from the
largest draw of the day, and that was a shame. The Magic Band gave
a surprisingly frantic set that illustrated just how far rock's
boundaries can be stretched. With much of the afternoon relying
on what Groening determined was the path to Sonic Youth, it was
a rag-tag group of '60s revivalists who served to remind that there's
plenty of musical territory yet to be explored.
The Fire Party's own eyewitness,
Angel, said it was:
Awesome
Awesome
Awesome....
The Magic Band KILLED, they SMOKED, they SHREDDED...
I had a huge grin on my face from start to finish! I had goose-bumps
during "Big-Eyed Beans". I closed my eyes for a moment
and let the chords penetrate every cell of my being. I nearly cried.
Matt Groening introduced them lovingly, saying that
as a special treat, he was going to sit in on every song on cowbell!
(he didn't) And a miraculous thing happened: a lunar eclipse was
just beginning as the Magic Band took the stage.
John French explained about how he was up high on
a ladder and fell about 6 feet onto concrete a few weeks back. It
was apparent he was in some pain and he said he was on morphine.
Still, they played for an hour and gave it their all. The crowd
was reverent and still the whole time, all except for me, bobbing
around excitedly, totally unable to stand still.
After the band was done, I wandered around to see
if there were people I knew and I saw Richard "Midnight Hatsize"
Snyder standing by the side of the stage. I said hello and he gave
me a big hug and was effusive. He was hanging with his pal Ace,
from their band the Mystery Band, waiting to see if they could gain
access to the MB. Well we all hung out for about 15-20 minutes and
the security guard had overheard that Rick was an ex-band member
and said, "look, I'm not supposed to do this, but you guys
just slip on in."
So we bound in and one of the first people we see
is Matt Groening. We head on over and Rick introduces himself as
a former MB member and then introduces Ace and me. I shake Matt's
hand and thank him for getting the MB to play. He said, "it's
like going to the store and picking out a greeting card, you want
the best one to show off." I tell him that hearing "Big
Eyed Beans" live was brilliant and he replied "WASN'T
it?"
Then we see Rockette Morton and Gary Lucas. Gary
is just a doll, real sweet and chatty. I listen in as Rick and Gary
talk Beefheart tales. John French rushes by preoccupied but stops
to say hello to Rick, then bounds up to the stage to clear his gear.
While I was thoroughly enjoying all of this, I was
also absolutely starving. I'd thought that I would arrive with plenty
of time to grab some dinner before the MB started, so I hadn't eaten
since morning. So I hesitatingly tore myself away to find sustenance,
floating on a cloud!
Now that we're all feeling a bit nostalgic, I thought I'd pass
along Kerry Frye's account of a recent visit to the Trout House
where Trout Mask Replica was endlessly rehearsed:
As I write this message I am sitting in my hotel
room in Marina del Rey, California. Thanks to your "A
Trip to the Trout House" page I was able to make a personal
pilgrimage to the legendary site earlier this evening. The house
is still there, jackhammered between what are surely million-dollar
homes all around it, and it occurred to me that it still holds it
own in this neighbourhood, being the landmark that it is.
I pulled up outside the house as the sun set over
the hills. I was nervous as I got out of my car, as I didn't come
to the site to be a disturbance to anyone or thing, but rather to
bask in the appreciation I have for what happened there over thirty
years ago. I stood gazing up to the house for quite some time, and
quietly observed, looking, listening, smelling. The house is in
an obvious state of decay, and for a time I wondered if it was still
inhabited, a thought that was confirmed when I saw a cat scurry
across one of the front windows from the inside. As I was carrying
a camera, I so badly wanted to walk up the narrow steps to the front
of the house and get a closer view, but I couldn't muster up the
courage to do so. I snapped several shots from varying angles out
front, walked about a bit more, then left.
I think the Trout House bears historical significance
on par with Big Pink (where Bob Dylan and The Band recorded so many
of their seminal works) and other landmarks of rock history. Reading
John French's narrative
of his return to the Trout House made me appreciate even more my
own experience.
Many thanks Kerry for sending this along.
Beefheart trivia spotted on the web:
Robert Plant briefly drops Captain Beefheart into conversation
while talking about Arthur Lee in an interesting
new interview in tomorrow's New Zealand Herald:
Asked to name the most arresting person he has met
this year, Plant opts for Arthur Lee, the American singer and songwriter
best known for fronting esteemed 60s acid-pop band, Love.
Both Plant and Lee played at the Canterbury Fayre
this year, and their paths crossed in the lobby of a Holiday Inn.
"It was a brief encounter," says Plant. "Arthur looked
up at me over his dark glasses, and I put my hands on his shoulders
and said, 'I'm really glad for you. Glad that you're back.'
"There were so many things I wanted to ask him,
but sometimes it's fantastic just to stay a fan and not have your
bubble burst. I mean, do you want to meet Captain Beefheart in Waitrose?
Of course not.
Funnily enough, I saw Arthur Brown in The Crazy World of Waitrose
a short while ago, wearing a pointy hat with a big floppy brim and
carrying a huge wooden staff with a giant snake carved into it while
he rummaged through the fruit and veg. Far from bursting
any bubble, that image inflated it.
Anyone considering going back to college may be interested to learn
that Indiana University offers a course entitled "Beach
Boys, Beefheart and The Residents" in which items such
as Mike Barnes' Beefheart biog, the BBC documentary and Lick My
Decals Off baby are required texts. It actually took place earlier
this year but if anyone reading this attended the course, please
do drop me a line.
Danny Baker interviewed Wreckless Eric a couple of months ago on
his BBC
London radio show and you can hear his amusing
tale about meeting Beefheart. The Beefheart segment crops up
about 14 and a half minutes into the clip and an intimidated Eric
refers to Don as being like "a monument, twice his size"
at a 1980s art exhibition.
This
week's non-Beefheart musical discovery: Iron and Wine's stunningly
fragile The
Creek Drank The Cradle from earlier this year. If you like
either Elliott Smith or Bonnie Prince Billy then this is an absolute
must. The Sub Pop label had given us something autumnal, raw, vaporous
and very pretty. An acoustic album featuring only guitar, slide,
banjo, the delicate voice of Sam Beam and catchy hooks aplenty.
Finally, to return to the item which kicked things off with this
update, I would like to wish Don and Jan Van Vliet my very best
and hope that they are both well and happy. They have a lot of old
friends out there who care very much about both of them and wish
them well.
Wednesday 05.11.2003
Here's an unexpected update primarily to let you know that you
can now read Derek's interview
with the new Magic Band drummer Michael Traylor. Many thanks
to Derek for his time and effort giving us this excellent bit of
background.
Please see the reunion
page for all up to date news about the Magic Band's gigs and
a host of exclusive material about the shows.
Rhino Handmade have announced that their "Internet only"
releases will now also be made available
in retail outlets. Among the initial releases to benefit from
this distribution deal is their excellent Beefheart album, I'm
Going To Do What I Wanna To.
Since there were only 5,000 copies of this legitimate, quality
live recording pressed up and this site gets up to 3,000 unique
visitors every day there must be an awful lot of you out
there who haven't yet bought this album. Really, it's worth it.
Thanks go to a couple of you who have written about earlier comments
I posted on this page. Firstly, Andrew Bowsher wrote in response
to the item below about John Peel:
Good day fair crew,
No misleading paraphrasing on Don from Mr McNeil.
I was elated to hear 'Hot Head' on Peel's show, and insisted upon
total silence from everyone at the party I was at to hear Peel's
commentary at the end of the song.
He did indeed say that he dreaded Don's conversations,
given he doesn't talk much (wouldn't you dread a conversation from
someone you hadn't seen for 10-15 years who was really quiet?).
However, filter the words through Peel's droll delivery and it just
seemed like a natural harmless aside, with a lot of reverence for
Don.
Personally I dread the the "damned gleaming white bone"
ringing, period. Why I also carry another one around with me everywhere
is a source of constant confusion - I haven't even installed the
"Electricity"
ringtone on it yet, either!
As a veteran fan of the Captain and a visitor of
your site for many years, I must tell you that since my last visit
in Brazil in 2001 during my long trip in South-America, I fell in
love with the magical music of Tom Zé, who I can easily compare,
both in his creativity and originality to Beefheart.
I know some of my friends might think it's nonsense
and even attack me, but please give his 1972 and later albums a
try and you will not regret it. His earlier stuff is more conservative,
but beautiful as well. I was at his live show in Sao-Paulo and it
was thrilling. And I do not speak Portuguese.
Many thanks for the recommendation. Arnon also sent along some
links to Zé sites which you may be interested in visiting
at www.slipcue.com
and www.luakabop.com.
A couple of great interviews with Magic Band members have appeared
online.
...jumping up and down, trying to get out of my
skin because it's just not big enough, I am too busy humping the
air and wanting to lick and rut ANYTHING and run naked, unafraid
and free in the streets screaming newly invented words at the top
of my lungs because the old ones I know just wont do. Its
so good I dont know what to do with myself and it makes in
depth intellectual analysis redundant.
Secondly, Ben Tausig has recently interviewed
John French about the Magic Band reformation in which French
comments:
"I heard that Don was 'grumpy' about the reunion.
However, he's actually being given a high compliment by all of us
and by me, the highest form of flattery. I may not have been
too happy with Don's rather bizarre approach to leading a band,
but artistically speaking, I'm still his biggest fan."
My
non-Beefheart discovery of the week: I've just stumbled across an
album from last year by Kelly Stoltz called Antique
Glow which is so beautiful I thought it worth mentioning
here.
Finally, if you spot anything online which should be mentioned
on this page, drop me a line.
Sunday 02.11.2003
Last Sunday's Observer has an interesting
article about Julian Schnabel, the artist who befriended Don
Van Vliet when he first moved into the art world and later made
some unreleased recordings with him after he retired from the music
business.
Labelled as "vulgar, arrogant and the epitome of 80s excess"
Schnabel likens hearing such criticisms to "a rhinoceros with
birds shitting on its back. It stopped me getting comfortable but
it never worried me."
I've just stumbled across the following Beefheart
reference in an edition of the Daily
Telegraph from the summer, in an article about Brazilian sampa
nova music. Those Beefheart comparisons just get stranger and stranger:
If sampa nova had a precursor, it was perhaps the
work of the veteran Tom Zé, who was born in Bahia, in the
north-east of Brazil, but has lived in São Paulo for more
than 25 years. As one of the founders of the rebellious, psychedelic
Tropicalismo movement of the 1960s, alongside Caetano Veloso and
Gilberto Gil, Zé is the connecting link between generations.
While Gil and Veloso became superstars, Zé retreated into
obscurity, making his own instruments and using household sounds
such as blenders and saws to create music.
Zé credits former Talking Heads singer David
Byrne with reviving his career, after Byrne found one of his old
records in a bargain bin in a record store and signed him to his
Luaka Bop label. His most recent CD Jogos de Armar saw Zé
making some of the best music of his career. Zé gets fed
up being called an eccentric, although he is clearly marching to
a different drum from anyone else. He's a South American equivalent
of Frank Zappa or Captain Beefheart, a genuinely original composer
and lyricist; references jump from Fidel Castro and Jesus Christ
to Luis Gonzaga, a local country-style forro singer.
Familiar as we probably all are with everything under the sun being
compared with Captain Beefheart, this one seems like quite a stretch
by anyone's standards. That's no criticism of the artist, however
- Zé's first two albums, Grande Liquidacao (1968)
and Tom Zé (1972) are well worth buying if you stumble
across them.
Although this idea has been done badly before, it
hasn't deterred a further gathering of Captain Beefheart neophytes
from paying their own personal homage to their hero and mentor.
On Neon Meate Dream Of A Octafish: A Tribute To Captain Beefheart
and His Magic Band (Animal World Recordings AWR020 CD), the
full spectrum of Beefheart and The Magic Band's musical legacy is
rudely ransacked by a bunch of ageing punks, art hippies and experimental
goofballs who try their hardest to fashion something new from the
ripped remains. Culprits include Mike Watt, Jad Fair with Daisey
Cooper, Don Fleming, Azalia Snail, Electric Eel's Brian McMahon
and Trumans Water, whose version of "Hair Pie:Bake Two"
is one of the more inspired slices on a fractured, freaky and creaky
set.
Personally I rather liked this creaky set when I first heard it
and as soon as I can track down my copy I'll stick some tunes from
it on beefheart.com's radio show.
Most of my CDs and vinyl are currently stashed away in disorganised
towers which threaten to engulf us all following a potentially disastrous
leak from the flat upstairs. Unnoticed for hours, it dripped away
all over them but very little real damage has been done, incredibly.
I count myself lucky and look forward to the day when they're all
back on the shelves (alphabetised by artist and each artist's works
in date order, naturally) and order is restored to my currently
chaotic life.
The Wire's website features
an mp3
of their recent broadcast (51MB) on Resonance FM, which includes
a couple of tunes from the new Beefheart bootleg, Dichotomy.
This archived show will be available for about 3 weeks to download,
many thanks to Derek for pointing this out.
I should stress in big letters that Dichotomy is a bootleg,
regardless of the claims put about by those manufacturers of aural
snake oil, Ozit. Mike Barnes recently sent along a persuasive argument
outlining why we should all avoid it like the plague (or like Bluejeans
and Moonbeams at the very least):
I just got an advance copy of the new Ozit/Morpheus
Beefheart compilation Dichotomy - an outtakes, demos and
rarities album "from the 60s and 70s".
It seems that since Grow Fins it's been open
season for anyone with some old tapes to stick out a CD and pass
if off as 'official', such as Ozit's Dust Sucker version
of the Bat Chain Puller bootleg. Dust Sucker was
shoddy to say the least and its appearance in record stores has
possibly led to the postponement or cancellation of a properly mixed
and mastered release by the Frank Zappa estate, who own the master.
I entered into e-mail correspondence with Ozit as
I didn't believe all their story about it being "Don's own
mix" (and later found out it was never mixed beyond the commonly
heard rough mix version). I also disbelieved their story that Don
gave it to the late Roger Eagle (an English DJ Don knew since the
60s), imploring him to release it. No one who I spoke to involved
in the Magic Band at the time gives this story any credence. I questioned
this in my e-mail to Ozit and asked about royalties. They assured
me Beefheart would be getting his dues. I then asked what arrangements
- like Revenant - they had made to give royalties to the group members
involved. I received no further replies to that or queries about
the veracity of the Roger Eagle story.
Then, to preserve the company's level of achievement,
along comes Dichotomy. The compilation has got some great
music that deserves to be heard - but this is mostly stuff that
fans have anyway and not any better quality. There are no sleeve
notes and some of the stuff is taken from the Trout Mask
house sessions heard in far higher fidelity on the Revenant Grow
Fins set. It seems they haven't even got the wit to nick them
from that source.
The version of "Key To The Highway" from
rehearsals with Zoot Horn from 71-72 is as hissy as my old bootleg
tape and is still slightly too fast. There's also the early version
of "Seam Crooked Sam" (w/Drumbo tap-dancing although Ozit
seem to be unaware of its provenance calling it "Harmonica
Blues Rehearsal"). "Moody Liz" is here (from I
May Be Hungry But I Sure Ain¹t Weird), there's a Shiny
Beast demo and some tracks from the 1966 Avalon Ballroom boot.
There are also a four instrumentals from the extensive post-Spotlight
Kid Record Plant sessions (loads of bits and pieces recorded
to use up the time that had been booked). These of course aren't
the masters that someone (you know who you are although you
probably aren't reading this) copied from the Warner Bros vaults,
as the snowstorm of tape hiss on these attests. And the titles
from these sessions are all wrong here, with a single exception.
Excellent!
What looked to be a 'different' version of "Neon
Meat" [sic] raised an eyebrow. I was almost 100% per cent positive
that there were no Trout Mask outtakes and I can confirm
that this 'alternative' version is in fact just the version from
Trout Mask but of dreadful quality. Astonishingly, the
'version' of "Hot Head" is unquestionably the Doc At
The Radar Station version again dubbed from a primitive source
and missing the first few bars. Absolutely incredible! What a bunch
of clowns!
The problem of Dust Sucker's appalling sleeve
notes is circumvented by this issue having none and this hotch potch
of cuts isn't even in chronological order. Who would get anything
out of this? You'd have to be a fan to figure out what's going on,
in which case you'd probably have better versions of these recordings
anyway. It seems Ozit/Morpheus feel they can go on putting out this
shoddy stuff with impunity. There must be enough old tapes in their
drawers for ten more.
Don¹t buy this record, you can easily get the
recordings elsewhere.
A new book "guest edited" by multimillionaire Beefheart
admirer and Simpsons creator Matt Groening, the somewhat unimaginatively
titled Da
Capo Best Music Writing 2003, is now available.
I'm not sure yet how much Beefheart (if any) is in the book but
that's no matter - there's plenty of Tom Waits, a piece on the refreshingly
grimy Fat Possum Records, James Brown and even a contribution from
satirical news site, The Onion. Consequently my copy is speeding
its way to me as I type.
Another Beefheart tribute compilation should be seeing the light
of day soon, entitled Mama
Kangaroos. This stands head and shoulders above the rest
(with the possible exception of Eugene Chadbourne and Jimmy Carl
Black's convivial Pachuco
Cadaver) and features an entirely female take on Beefheart's
music. Project co-ordinator and token male Mike Villers has been
sending not only regular updates on progress, but also tunes form
the album as and when they've been recorded.
It's inspirational stuff - each artist has taken their own personal
approach to Don's music and has done so highly successfully. The
latest tune to be sent over is a splendid version of "Orange
Claw Hammer" by Mrs Bob with the Kings of Siam which sea-shanties
things up a notch or two with fiddles and penny whistles. It's a
keeper and is currently in rotation on beefheart.com's
radio show.
Mike recently sent along the following update on the project:
Essra Mohawk - www.rockersusa.com/EssraMohawk/
- who you know from Zappa days past and much other wonderful music,
has agreed to assume the vocalist's spot in EDO's version of "Party
of Special Things To Do".
Though Essra makes her home in Nashville these days,
she is a Philly native, so we're still sticking to the rules of
all Philly women doing the singin'. I also expect to very shortly
send you a lovely, "Strawberry Fields Forever" inspired
version of "Her Eyes Are A Blue Million Miles" by another
pair of Philly ex-patriots - the highly respected jazz musician
and composer Skip Heller, along with newcomer Faye Davis. They're
old friends of mine who I thought would be right for the gig, so
I called them up out in LA and they came through big time. They're
finishing up the mix and I expect to have it within a week or so.
I'm unlikely to be able to update this page again before the Magic
Band play at All Tomorrow's Parties in LA next weekend so hope any
of you going have a great time with their gloriously spiky music.
If you haven't already seen them and haven't heard their recent
album, you're in for a very pleasant surprise. Incidentally, ATP
Recordings has some good information about their Magic Band album
on the official
ATP website.
The only sad note is that Elliott Smith won't be playing at ATP
as originally intended. My stereo seems to have became a monument
to the dead after 5 - 6 weeks of solid Johnny Cash following the
great man's death, and now Elliott Smith has replaced him in heavy
rotation.
If you're still in the land of the living and are going to see
the Magic Band, please do let me know what it was like.
Finally for today, Robert
McNeil, while lauding John Peel's Radio 1 show and dissing his
Radio 4 show, Home Truths, states:
Most heartening, he played Captain Beefheart, a genius
from a golden age (i.e. my youth), and revealed he regularly received
calls from the artist ("I always dread these. Hes not
very chatty at all, but its a great honour to be called by
him.").
It's surprising to hear John Peel refer to "dreading"
calls from his old, absent friend who I'd understood he was no longer
in touch with. I suspect a bit of misleading paraphrasing has been
going on here. Or has it?
Friday 24.10.2003
Hello, still here?
I refuse to begin another update with an apology for the lack of
updates, so instead the Radar Station has done the decent thing
and expanded it's team, bringing on board a news editor, Derek
Laskie.
Derek has sent me mountains of snippets of information over the
last couple of years and seemed like the ideal person to bring you
all the news about Beefheart related events, publications and releases.
He will be working with Radar Station discographer Steve
Froy on all news here at beefheart.com and between the two of
them I think we can just about guarantee the most comprehensive,
informative and entertaining Beefheart news service that you're
likely to find. Can you tell that I'm pleased?
You can contact Derek by emailing derek@beefheart.com
- please send any news items that you think should be added to the
news pages to him.
Derek and Steve have kicked things off by bringing you some long
overdue news about Don's first recording for 9 years (or first musical
recording for over two decades, depending on how you want to look
at it), the upcoming Magic Band live dates, and a new Beefheart
bootleg release from the same label of dubious honour which brought
you Dust Sucker. Soon to come is an interview with Drumbo's deputy
drummer for the new shows - Michael Traylor.
For all these items, and more as they emerge, please check out
the Beefheart news page.
The page you are on now, Up Sifter, will continue to carry info
about this site's other updates but will also become more of a weblog
affair, in which I'll point you in the direction of all kinds of
Beefheart related items elsewhere on the net and you can see who's
currently name-dropping the good Captain.
To kick things off, The Observer considers Captain Beefheart the
third
greatest rock eccentric while it's sister paper joins the rest
of us salivating at the prospect of some Fresh
Beefheart.
Jason Pierce from Spiritualized likens the experience of listening
back to the early takes of his Amazing Grace album to hearing
the Magic Band or the Elevators for the first time. Lovely as
Amazing Grace is, it reminds me more of hearing Spiritualized
for the first time.
The Village
Voice reviews William Parker's Scrapbook and considers
the Parker / Morris / drake album Eloping With The Sun to
be a Beefheartian "ethnographic homily" similar to "The
Dust Blows Forward". While we've all heard meaningless Beefheart
comparisons a million times, I was struck by this album's similarity
to Eugene Chadbourne and Jimmy Carl Black's Beefheart covers album
Pachuco Cadaver.
In Peter
Hill's pleasing new book about the joys of being a hippie Scottish
lighthouse keeper in the 1970s, he recalls the qualities which made
him suitable for the task: "My hair hung well below my shoulders.
I had a great set of Captain Beefheart records and I walked about
with a permanent grin on my face as I had recently, finally, lost
my virginity. I rolled my own cigarettes, was a member of Amnesty
International and had just read Kerouac's Desolation Angels. In
short, I was eminently suitable for the job."
More soon, I'm off back to my lighthouse for a while.
Sunday 10.08.03
The postponed All Tomorrow's Parties festival featuring
the Magic Band has finally been rescheduled for 8th / 9th November
2003 and will take place at Queen Mary Ship in Long Beach, California.
Full information and tickets can be found at the ATP
website.
Wednesday 30.07.03
Many thanks to those of you who prodded me into activity (of a
sort) by enquiring if there was still life to be found at beefheart.com.
Since I've been silent throughout your excitement about the magnificent
new Magic Band album I can well understand why some of you may think
the only possible explanation was that I'd snuffed it.
I apologise for the lack of updates but, as ever, life gets in
the way sometimes. Frankly I've been so exhausted (but very happy)
recently that I'm completely unable to summon up anything other
than the dullest comment which really wouldn't do the album justice.
Better keep quiet, I felt.
That LA Magic Band gig is still due to be rescheduled for later
on in the year, more news as and when there is any. I've added a
few more links to the reunion
info page as well to press articles and reviews.
I'm very pleased to learn that the classic and highly sought after
film Some Yo Yo Stuff will be released on 8th September
in the UK on DVD.
Anton Corbijn's illuminating and charming short film Some
Yo Yo Stuff is a highly recommended glimpse into the world
of Don Van Vliet circa 1994 and is absolutely not to be missed.
Pre-order now from amazon.co.uk.
The US / Canada region 1 version is still available from amazon.com.
More soon.
Wednesday 04.06.03
John French has just sent along the following message.
The Magic Band is sad to announce that the LA ATP
concert scheduled for June 22nd, 2003 had to be postponed. The new
concert date is tentatively scheduled to be September 27th 2003.
Although disappointed, we're determined to make the
September performance be even BETTER than the June show would have
been. Thank you for your support and we apologise for any inconvenience
this may have caused.
More news as it arrives.
Tuesday 30.04.03
John French has very kindly sent along his
thoughts about playing Beefheart's songs live for the first
time in 20 years, and singing them live for the first time ever.
Find them on the still-expanding reunion
info page.
View the complete Up Sifter archive for everything that has ever happened
here at The Radar Station: