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John French’s new album City of Refuge has been gathering some very good reviews, as well as attracting the inevitable comparisons to Captain Beefheart albums. The Independent review commented, 12 new songs voiced by Drumbo himself in full Beefheart pastiche mode. How can it work? Reasonably well, as it goes, given the absence of the Cap himself. Guitars cut and thrust, time signatures jerk around and the songs stand up for themselves. Uncut magazine’s full page piece about Drumbo’s album included this, Does it add up to more than left-overs from a bygone era? If nothing else City of Refuge strikes a blow for musicalRead More →

Trout Mask Replica sleeve photo

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..the secret, really, to understanding, to dwelling within, Trout Mask Replica is to make sure it’s the first record you ever hear.. Marcello Carlin wrote some excellent music appreciation in his now defunct blog. He dealt with subjects from Laura Nyro to Gnarls Barkley, but what he wrote about Trout Mask Replica at The Church of Me in April 2006 will be of most interest here. ..Trout Mask Replica is really a set of hallucinatory nursery rhymes, thus “Ella Guru” and “Sweet Sweet Bulbs” and “Sugar ‘N Spikes” somersault their way through mathematical rods and make you want to slide down banisters and pass theRead More →

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Congratulations to Sandy Dillon and Ray Majors on their recent wedding, which took place on an antique carousel on the seedier side of the beach in East Overshoe. At their reception they entertained the guests by singing Captain Beefheart’s ‘This Is The Day’, Ray on guitar and Sandy playing piano. Sandy Dillon has often performed ‘This Is the Day’ and I would have liked to have linked here to the BBC video of a full Sandy Dillon concert which includes this song. That recording, made in 2001 at The Ocean in Hackney for Radio 3’s ‘Mixing It’ programme, seems no longer to be available atRead More →

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Alison Mosshart of The Kills has again been committing her thoughts about Captain Beefheart to the media. This time, in The Independent, she fantasizes about Captain Beefheart dueting on Harry Irene with Kim Gordon, Moe Tucker on drums and Guy Picciotto on guitar. He sounds haunting, forceful, confident and humorous, of the future and of the past, all wrapped up in one whip of the tongue. The Black Keys version of Her Eyes Are A Blue Million Miles will appear on a new compilation of classic songs taken from Warners back catalogue and covered by present-day Warners artists. Covered, A Revolution in Sound: Warner Bros.Read More →

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Two more entries have appeared at John French’s blog.The third and final part of his story about his new album City of Refuge is supplemented with news about his new band which will soon be touring to promote the album. Go to his MySpace page for all the details. City of Refuge will be released in Europe on November 10th and in North America on November 18th. Meanwhile, Sebstian Palmer got in touch to promote an interview he did with John ‘Drumbo’ French during the 2005 tour of the reformed Magic Band. He has made it available at Sounds From the Funky Goat.Read More →

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The Smithsonian Institution investigates the meeting of pop culture and palaeontology in a new blog at its website. In one of the first entries Captain Beefheart’s song The Smithsonian Institute Blues (or the Big Dig) has its skeleton made good by a dinosaur expert. For all you need to know about La Brea Tar Pits and what they contain see the entry Dinosaur Blues at Smithsonian.com‘s blog Dinosaur Tracking.Read More →

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Mikko Kapanen, lead singer and guitarist of Helsinki, Finland based “psychedelic hard rock” band Spektriis wrote in. The band is currently finishing up work on its debut album which they are hoping to have released some time in the first half of 2009. “The reason I’m telling this,” Mikko wrote, “is that we had the immense pleasure of getting Bill Harkleroad to record a guitar solo for one of the tracks. We have uploaded five out of the ten tracks on the album to our MySpace profile at http://www.myspace.com/spektriis including the track in question, called “Black Hole Eyes”. We made a point of not mentioning Harkleroad’s participationRead More →

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That Don Van Vliet’s compositions are danceable is without question. Two German comedians, Ulan & Bator, have formalised that pleasure by getting close to a diamond (or a rabbit) at YouTube. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8qS9RpSL-c]Read More →

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A review at IGN.com of a new HD version of WipEout, a Play Station game, contains some tantalising information about the custom soundtrack, “which is a cinch to port over, though from our experience Captain Beefheart doesn’t make the best accompaniment to the world of anti-G racing and homing missiles.”Read More →

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Some time ago Barry’s Imaginary Publisher produced a poster to be used as a prop in the documentary film, Freak Out in Cugamonga. There is a short illustrated article about the making of the poster, Captain Beefheart vs. The Grunt People, at moonbug.org. Copies of the poster are now available from Cafe Press, priced at $19.99.Read More →

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Some of Don Van Vliet’s drawings are now on show at Michael Werner Gallery in New York until October 25. An exhibition there, called Series Drawings, juxtaposes historic and contemporary works on paper by artists including Georg Baselitz, Joseph Beuys, Marcel Broodthaers, Aaron Curry, André Derain, Peter Doig, Jean Fautrier, Jörg Immendorff, Per Kirkeby, Markus Lüpertz, Henri Michaux, A.R. Penck, Francis Picabia, Sigmar Polke, Eugen Schönebeck, Louis Soutter and Don Van Vliet. Michael Werner, 4 East 77th Street, New York, NY 10075 Tel: +1 212 988 1623 Fax: +1 212 988 1774 info@michaelwerner.comRead More →

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The Times divided music fans into two camps in today’s paper: critics who love music which nobody else likes (trouts, named after you know what) and those who love music which the critics don’t like (bats, named after a multi-million selling album by Meatloaf). Read the full article, Music critics love albums that the public hates, on the Times website, should you so desire.Read More →

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This item has been updated with a new post, Even more treats at The Knit, 2 April 2008. Update – 9 March 2008 Wednesday 9th April at The Knitting Factory Main Space, 74 Leonard Street, New York City. Gary Lucas curates Beefheart Night at the Knit, a salute to the Music, Poetry and Art of Don Van Vliet, a/k/a Captain Beefheart. Proceedings beginning at 8:00pm with a screening of rare Beefheart videos and documentaries and the spinning of unreleased tracks. This is followed by a reading of Don Van Vliet’s poetry, and reminiscences by special guests including: Lee Ranaldo Alan Vega Roswell Rudd Kurt LoderRead More →

The Idler: Lie Back and Protest

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The latest edition of The Idler magazine contains a nice piece about Captain Beefheart accompanying a series of quotes from the man himself. It’s only a smallish piece and many of the quotes may already be familiar to you, so just consider this a flimsy excuse to plug one of my favourite things. The Idler is undoubtedly the finest publication I have ever had the pleasure to read. Published approximately twice a year in colourful nice-smelling A5 soft-back book format it extols the virtues, pleasures and techniques of a more contemplative, less pointless existence. I’ve been an avid reader for almost all of my adultRead More →

Anton Kern Gallery, NY

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A new exhibition of 15 of Don Van Vliet’s paintings opens today and runs until 6 July at the Anton Kern Gallery in New York. There is a catalogue of the exhibition and it includes a preface by Polly Harvey. More information, a press release and nine paintings from the exhibition can be viewed at the Anton Kern Gallery website along with a press release. How I would love to attend – if you make it to the exhibition please do let us all know by posting a report to this blog.Read More →

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Don is 66 today and so we would like to wish him felicitations, congratulations and commendations for many happy and healthy returns. All of us here at beefheart.com would like to express our thanks to Don for his great art which will never be forgotten as long as there’s a fly’s eye to see it with. Our smiles are most certainly stuck. If you need a soundtrack for your evening, there can be only one choice – break out the urine coloured lights and sing along to “Happy Birthday.”Read More →

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I’ve received a note from Mike Bugbee who provided us with his excellent eye-witness account of Don and Jan’s wedding a few years ago. He’s got a book coming out soon (unrelated to the wedding) and Michael Bugbee is the author of a soon-to-be-published novel, Notes from Hotel Misterioso, from Mline Books. The official publication date is April 1, 2007, but beginning in January 2007 prepublication copies are available through www.mlinebooks.com, $14.95 U.S. or $17.95 Canadian plus shipping. Inquiries to: info@mlinebooks.com. If you haven’t read Mike’s wedding account yet, you really should – it is one of my very favourite items here on beefheart.com andRead More →

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I’ve just received the following message from Spencer Pope: Big Eyed Beans from Venus, the Athens GA based Captain Beefheart tribute band, are playing in Atlanta GA on November 16th. We will be joined by Rockette Morton and Denny Walley. The show is at the Five spot, starts at 9:30 and costs 7 dollars. Many thanks for the tip-off Spencer, if any beefheart.com visitors make it along to the gig please do post your comments here.Read More →

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I have just received the following statement for the site from John French: Well, all good things must come to an end as they say… After a lot of painful deliberation, we decided to no longer pursue the Magic Band reunion project. There are a lot of reasons, but rather than going on about booking agents not collecting deposits, promoters who didn’t pay, fraudulent contracts etc., I thought it would be a good idea just to say “thanks” to some of the people who made things possible. Pre – 2003 Graham Johnston (beefheart.com founder, great friendship and support) Derek Laskie (webmaster, beefheart.com) Steve Froy (veryRead More →

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A nice feature about Captain Beefheart has just gone online in one of The Guardian’s podcasts. Beefheart fan Jon Dennis chats to John Harris (author of the Guardian’s recent Mission: Unlistenable) about how best to get into Beefheart and why people should bother. Their conclusion? Leave Trout Mask Replica to the hardcore weirdos, Clear Spot is one of the greatest albums ever recorded and everyone should be listening to it. It’s hard to disagree. I have often felt that our tendency to bang on about Trout Mask Replica as a pinnacle of artistic achievement in music (which I think it is) has probably done BeefheartRead More →