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Long before song before song blues Babbette baboon [repeat] abba zaba zoom Two shadows at Noon, Babbette baboon [repeat] Comin’ over pretty soon, Babbette baboon Run, run, catch her soon, draft of dawn, sunshine on Babbette baboon Mother say son, she say son, you can’t lose, with the stuff you use Abba Zaba go-zoom Babbette baboon [repeat both] Run, run, morning soon, Indian dream, tiger moon Yellow bird fly high, tabacco sky, two shadows at noon Babbette baboon gonna catch her soon Babbette baboon Song before song before song blues Babbette baboon abba zaba zoom [repeat both] Two shadows at noon, abba zaba zoom GonnaRead More →

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In: Safe As Milk, Song notes
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My musings on the meaning of the lyrics for that particular song aren’t my personal interpretation, I’m merely relaying what Don Van Vliet told me that the lyrics are all about. So, it’s the author/composer’s own interpretation of what the words mean, not mine. Meaning The words are about human evolution, which Don somehow seemed to feel took place on the Indian subcontinent – not Eastern Africa. He apparently wasn’t familiar with L.S.B. Leakey and his various progeny and kin – or their discoveries at Olduvai Gorge. “Babbette Baboon” is an ape-like creature on the brink of “comin’ over pretty soon” to a more humanoid existence – if she canRead More →

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In: The Dust Blows Forward
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Rhino’s Captain Beefheart career retrospective. Track list Disc one: Diddy Wah Diddy Frying Pan Electricity Abba Zaba Beatle Bones ‘ N’ Smokin’ Stones Safe As Milk Moonlight On Vermont Ella Guru Old Fart At Play Sugar ‘N’ Spikes Orange Claw Hammer My Human Gets Me Blues China Pig Lick My Decals Off Baby Woe Is Uh Me Bop I Wanna Find Me A Woman That’ll Hold My Big Toe Till I Have To Go The Smithsonian Institute Blues I’m Gonna Booglarize You Baby Click Clack Grow Fins When It Blows Its Stacks Little Scratch Big Eyed Beans From Venus Golden Birdies Disc two: Nowadays ARead More →

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4/9/98 Update From Dean Blackwood at Revenant: Hey guys. Things are still coming together nicely. John French is busy on the bulk of the notes and I am attempting to wrap up the recordings end of things. Some cool surprises in the works. We are looking for good quality versions of the following live performances from any era: Suction Prints Pompadour Swamp Peon Dali’s Car Old Fart Well Dust Blows Apes Ma Odd Jobs Best Batch Yet Owed T’Alex And, since the BBC has erased its tapes and Peel himself has no tapes, we are auditioning versions of the Peel Sessions (all 8 tracks) toRead More →

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My primal memories involve Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band, whose difficult masterpiece Trout Mask Replica came out the same year I did. My father was (and is) a Beefheart fan, and I vividly recall my response to that record. With its eruptions and churnings, its stops and starts, its self-interruptions and declamations, its epic unrelentingness-right down to the idiot stare of that top-hatted dead fish on the cover-it represented a chaotically phantasmal grown-up Wonderland, and my failure to understand it drove me to tears. It had none of the form or logic or triumph of order that my Disneyfied fairy tales did; no reassuringRead More →

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Since the 1969 release of Trout Mask Replica, the artist dubbed Captain Beefheart has incarnated the gold standard by which “weirdness” in rock has been calibrated. And with a suitcase like that to lug around, no wonder Don Van Vliet put out his 12th and final album in 1982, before retiring to the high desert or coastal mountains or wherever to paint his broad-stroke nature abstractions and fade away. Nevertheless, any band with stuttered beats, hyperactively ping-ponging blues guitars, and/or inscrutable lyrics growled by a veinbusting bohunk would henceforth be described as “Beefheartian” (I once foolishly bought a James record – a James record –Read More →

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Legend has it that before he reinvented rock music, Don Van Vliet, aka Captain Beefheart, sold vacuum cleaners for a living, wandering the scattered trailer communities of the Mojave Desert in search of potential customers. Once, a trailer door opened and Aldous Huxley, author and LSD pioneer, appeared before Vliet’s disbelieving eyes. Stunned, Beefheart pointed at the vacuum cleaner and uttered the immortal words, “This machine sucks” before disappearing into the desert to pursue his true vocation. The 78 “songs’, – and I use the word in its loosest sense – on Grow Fins are testament to both the singular quality of that vocation, and,Read More →

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More than any other artist, Don Van Vliet – aka Captain Beefheart – defined Surrealism in rock ‘n’ roll. Like Salvador Dali or Rene Magritte, his work was based on startling juxtapositions – a blues riff suddenly shifting into free jazz, three different rhythms playing against one other with vocals bellowing above. For almost 20 years, Beefheart released a series of brilliant, gleefully absurd albums that often hinted at deeper, far darker truths. “Dachau Blues,” for example, from his 1969 masterpiece Trout Mask Replica sounds almost laughable in its clattering cacophony. But listen closely and it’s anything but funny. Naturally, this music never found aRead More →

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In: Grow Fins
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Although it was their third released album, Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band arrived with 1969’s sprawling Trout Mask Replica. The ability to appreciate its seemingly random, all-but-impenetrable 2LP length seemed beyond the ken of all but the most hardcore weirdos. Those who were able to decode Trout Mask felt that they had passed a grueling test. Few who were able to successfully complete this mission could resist the impulse to become missionaries of the Beefheart cause. The prevailing notion was that Don Vliet (as his mother knew him) had descended to earth from a planet very near Sun Ra’s, and that the music heRead More →

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After spending over a quarter of a century sitting in cardboard boxes, being furtively traded between dedicated fans; at long last the secret history of Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band is now available on the record shop shelves, jostling for space with Ricky Martin. The Magic Band only produced 12 albums in its 15 year existence, and now suddenly we have an extra five CDs of hidden treats, complete with unseen photographs, a selection of live videos on an enhanced CD, and extensive revealing notes in a 112 page book. The package itself is extraordinary. Designed as a miniature replica of an old 78Read More →

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“We’re in the luxurious position of putting out eactly what we want,” says Dean Blackwood. The Nashville attorney, along with guitarist John Fahey, is the co-proprietor of Revenant, a re-issue label dedicated to what he calls “raw musics.” During the last year, they’ve unearthed treasures by avant-garde improvisors, Cecil Taylor and Derek Bailey, rocabilly legend Charlie Feathers and the white country blues man, Dock Boggs. How does Revenant pay the rent? “John came into some money through an inheritance,” says Blackwood. “Instead of doing something sensible like buiding a house, he decided to put out CDs.” What do Charlie Feathers and Cecil Taylor have inRead More →

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Since Smithsonian Folkways’ ballyhooed reissue of Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music, many of our world’s duller knobs seem to have been reborn as experts in roots music. So it’s a safe bet that spasms of delight will greet the latest release on avant-acoustic guitarist John Fahey’s label Revenant: Dock Boggs’ Country Blues (RVN 205), which collects the complete early (circa 1927-29) recordings by the dark godfather of all banjo-wielding Appalachian form destroyers. All of Boggs’ music (including that of his ’60s “rediscovery” period) is mind- blowingly great, and the packaging of Country Blues is equally amazing. Lyrics, pics, and essays are bound intoRead More →

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The cover for the Grow Fins promo, featuring the magic man himself. If his vacuum cleaner sales routine was as impressive as this then who could blame Aldous Huxley for being tempted? This was released by Revenant in March 1999 as a taster to the Grow Fins set, and is very tasty indeed. Track list Below is the track-listing as it appears on the inside front sleeve. Sampler review from April 1999 The sound quality is by far superior to the majority of the bootlegs circulating which feature this material, and the material itself is stunning, boasting many gems which I have never heard before.Read More →

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Captain Beefheart likened making music to going to the bathroom – it’s not something he wants to look back on. Here, Mike Barnes grills the Revenant label on the ethics of its ‘unauthorised’ CD retrospective that claims its rare unguarded moments reveal the true Beefheart. “Some of the most compelling moments in Captain Beefheart’s recorded legacy have been heard by just a handful of people.” So says Dean Blackwood, co-founder with John Fahey of Revenant Records, on the motivation behind the label’s forthcoming five CD collection, Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band Grow Fins: Rarities (1965-82). Comprising acetates, demos, concert recordings and radio broadcasts, itRead More →

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In: Grow Fins
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The Grow Fins sleeve. Beautiful, isn’t it? The official Revenant blurb Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band set rock on its ear from 1965 until 1982, when leader Don Van Vliet retired from music. Engineering a mutant strain of musical DNA (tuff-ass garage punk R-n-B, extraterrestrial field hollers, austere “classical” miniatures, loping sea shanties, scorched-earth delta blues, free-blowing skronk, fat-bottom groove and post-everything clangor all found their way into the soup), CB&HMB are now regarded as one of the most original and consistently compelling bands ever waxed. The closest to a Best Of collection as we are likely to see, this career-spanning set corrals rare tracksRead More →

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A special vinyl edition of Grow Fins was released on Table Of The Elements containing six LPs, a small poster (pictured above) and a 24 page libretto (pictured below). The six LPs were released over a period of time as three double vinyl sets. The vinyl set libretto features all the notes and most of the pictures in the CD book and the CD set will not contain the poster. Each volume of the vinyl edition contains the same libretto printed in different colours – useful for anyone who only wants one or two of the volumes. The first pressing of the first volume wasRead More →