BBC Radio 7 has just broadcast an excellent 3 hour John Peel memoir and tribute in which Peel talks extensively about his life, influences, passions and family. We also hear an episode of Home Truths and his son's eulogy at Peel's funeral last year. It is a wonderful 3 hours for those of us who continue to miss his voice, humour and character on a daily basis and I'd heartily recommend you give it a listen on the BBC site while you can.

Peel's voice has also been cropping up regularly in the BBC Radio 3 show of his friend and colleague, Andy Kershaw. Listeners have been sending in snippets of old recordings from Peel shows past of amusing stories / blunders / anecdotes etc. Kershaw recently commented that there was enough material in the archives for Peel to have his own posthumous radio show.

Radio 7's Purely Peel is available online for one week so will disappear on Saturday 3rd September - don't miss it.

Posted by Graham Johnston at 1:43 PM  - 1 comments - post a comment

The New Haven Advocate reviews the appearance at the Zappanale festival in Germany of Doctor Dark. Doctor Dark are notable not only for being a Captain Beefheart tribute band, but also, apparently, for featuring "the only person in [New Haven's] history to run for mayor in drag" in their line-up.

The same paper also interviewed Doctor Dark in late 2003 about their previous appearance at Zappanale.

Posted by Graham Johnston at 10:24 AM  - 1 comments - post a comment

A Mongolian "throat-singing heavy rock band", Yat-kha, have released an album of cover versions featuring Captain Beefheart's "Her Eyes Are A Blue Million Miles", along with tunes by Joy Division, Bob Marley, Kraftwerk and Hank Williams.

A recent article in The Independent newspaper said:

Kuvezin's growling vocal harmonics emerge from his deepest regions, resonating around the changing shape of his mouth-cavity. In the case of Captain Beefheart's number, this is not too far removed from its original practitioner's approach, but these techniques sound quite startling when imposed on the likes of "Man Machine" and "When The Levee Breaks".

You can hear a couple of mp3s from the album on Yat-kha's website. The Beefheart tune is not available to download, sadly, but the version of Motorhead's "Orgasmatron" which is currently rumbling throughout my house and vibrating the foundations is very impressive.

Posted by Graham Johnston at 10:02 AM  - 3 comments - post a comment

I'm sure many visitors will already have heard of the sad passing of Dr Robert Moog, inventor of the MiniMoog synth. As with so many great innovators, there's a Beefheart connection to be made.

In a 1980 interview with John Piccarella Don Van Vliet was asked about the process of teaching his music to his band and he replied:

You can do it on the piano... you can do it on guitar some times.. Sometimes on the Mellotron.. Sometimes on the Moog. I like MiniMoog, I think that's a real sensitive instrument.

Also in 1980, this time to Lester Bangs, Don said he recorded his music to tape from:

... a piano or a Moog synthesiser. Then I can shape it to be exactly the way I want it, after I get it down there. It's almost like sculpture; that's actually what I'm doing, I think. 'Cause I sure as hell can't afford marble, as if there was any.

See the moogmusic website for a tribute and biography. You can leave your own tribute to the man who changed music forever for everyone at the Bob Moog blog.

Posted by Graham Johnston at 6:30 PM  - 2 comments - post a comment

I've always tried to avoid taking a train-spotter approach with this site over the years (not that you would think it from my blog entries) - it would be an easy road to travel with an artist like Captain Beefheart who seems to attract obsessive detail-noters. However, we at beefheart.com are endlessly amused by the frequency that Captain Beefheart rolls of the tongue of musicians and journalists, some using it to gain reflected credibility, others to provide an all-too-easy frame of reference, instant but ultimately meaningless.

In the absence of any real Beefheart-related news, here are just a few recent ones from the web, all from the last couple of weeks:

Los Lobos interview:

When Los Lobos' David Hidalgo turned 50 earlier this year, he decided to heed the advice of his friend Captain Beefheart. "I talked to him one time, and he said when he turned 60 he just started dropping the zero," Hidalgo says with a laugh. "I figure that's a good idea."

I spoke to Rod Hull and Emu once but I probably wouldn't describe them as friends, though I do, of course, talk about it at every opportunity.

Review for Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir:

It's never wise to compare yourself to other bands, especially when they're stand-alone geniuses like Tom Waits and Captain Beefheart. It's kind of like saying your car is a cross between KIT and Airwolf - if it doesn't have vertical lift and give me advice on women, I'm going to be a little disappointed. So when the Delta blues and mountain music-inspired Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir named the aforementioned pair as bedside companions, I was inclined to put my hand on my gun when I walked into the saloon.

Not only do the Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir have a great name, their music really kicks the sawdust too. The above reviewer is won over and even goes on to compare them with RL Burnside. Check out the mp3 samples on the AMGC website.

Interview with Mark Mothersbaugh from Devo:

It's kind of fun to play on the same bill with (younger bands). I feel like we are in a place now for those bands where guys like Captain Beefheart and Chuck Berry were for me when I went to see them at Kent State or the Draft house and tried to get backstage to see them.

If that quote came from anyone other than Devo I'd have to put a snide comment in here. It entertains me greatly to think that Beefheart + Chuck Berry = Devo.

Review for Three Day Stubble:

As Captain Beefheart once said, "A squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is fast and bulbous." This also applies to TDS.

Unless a squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag has a tendency to light its farts and urinate on itself when on stage then this comparison is as spurious as they come. If you're as bored and curious as I was you can see some alarmingly strange video clips of Three Day Stubble in action on their website.

Review for Helion Magister:

Spongebob Squarepants meets Captain Beefheart in a bowl of Green Jelly

Forget Captain Beefheart vs the Grunt People, I want Spongebob Squarepants vs Captain Beefheart. If the Beatles, Josie and The Pussycats and Gorillaz can have their own cartoon, why not the Magic Band? In fact, such a thing is hopefully not too big a stretch of the imagination. As soon as the artist has completed this mammoth task, beefheart.com hopes to bring you the comic strip version of Zappa's Captain Beefheart Meets The Grunt People. More news about that as I get it - suffice it to say, the previews have been excellent.

Finally, to end this shameless display of rock-snobbery, I thought it worth referring to an ironic entry in the recently published and entertaining The Rock Snob's Dictionary: An Essential Lexicon of Rockological Knowledge which tells us that the brilliance of Trout Mask Replica "will reveal itself after you've listened to it 6,000 times or so."

If it's this good already after just one or two hundred listens, I can't wait.

Posted by Graham Johnston at 10:17 AM  - 2 comments - post a comment

It is said that Fairport Convention did for real ale what the Grateful Dead did for acid.

Fairport's annual Cropredy Convention is being held in the heart of Middle England this weekend. Along with the traditional folk music festival, the Fairport versus Cropredy Village cricket match and the Saturday night community singing of 'Meet on the Ledge' there should also be plenty of real ale.

About twenty different acts will appear at this English pastoral scene, from The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain, Richard Thompson and Fairport Convention themselves, to...........what's this......The Muffin Men featuring Jimmy Carl Black "play scintillating arrangements of Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart material."

Now you got that down? You got that down?

..... later .....

Apparently unaffected by the plentiful real ale at the festival (was Old Fart available I wonder?) The Muffin Men compiled this report of their appearance.

Posted by derek@beefheart.com at 3:56 PM  - 0 comments - post a comment

A friend started off a blog a while ago featuring a gallery of his doodles and abstract photographs, entitled Elbow Room.

I used to work with Norms, the author, and witnessed the creation of his "biro on lined paper" works first-hand during many otherwise uninteresting meetings in the council offices. Like a visual equivalent of Robyn Hitchcock's most surreal songs, they offer a pleasing and often hilarious idle browse.

Norms is a Beefheart admirer and consequently a Beefheart theme has crept into a few of them. Check out Sea of Negativity, What A Moon Can Do, No H On My Faucet, Devil's Red Wife, Archaic Faces Frenzy, Hill Of Ladders, and Zigzag Wanderer.

Don't just stick to these few, however, dive into Elbow Room and nourish yourself. It's a great source for desktop images to befuddle your work-mates.

Posted by Graham Johnston at 12:06 PM  - 0 comments - post a comment

Walt Michelson mailed with news of his 50 synesthesia-musicboxes. Each of these pays homage to a different musician.

His Beefheart musicbox, Ant Man Bee Massacre in Beeftroutwinter, is currently on show at Galerie Otto Schweins in Köln.

Which particular Beefheart music you hear when you look at it is, I suppose, entirely up to you. For further explanation see Dr Michelson's email.

Posted by derek@beefheart.com at 11:14 AM  - 0 comments - post a comment

In his memoirs, the concert promoter Freddy Bannister tells his version of why Captain Beefheart formed a new Magic Band just to play Knebworth Festival in 1975. According to Bannister, Beefheart's manager Herb Cohen was so impressed by the $15,000 fee offered for the performance that he replied, "We'll put a band together even if it means my mother will have to play."

Be that as it may, the latest Knebworth memorabilia to be offered for sale by the Bannister family is a reproduction 1975 stagecrew tee shirt. "We weren't very 'merchandise' oriented in those days and didn't have any T shirts to sell to the general public, but just gave these to everyone working backstage as quick check for the security staff."

£12.45 plus postage is the price, and if you order this month you'll receive a free compilation CD of performances from Bath and Knebworth Festivals, including Beefheart and Zappa tracks. info@rockmusicmemorabilia.com

Posted by derek@beefheart.com at 10:21 AM  - 0 comments - post a comment

My inbox most days contains links to newspaper and magazine articles referencing Beefheart. New bands love to drop the Beefheart name. Music journalists likewise. I send about 99% of this stuff to trash.

What remains is some fun stuff, such as Liverpool band The Zutons who claimed to have named themselves after a Beefheart song. For the mp3 generation, who don't read sleeve notes, that long lunar note was played by a Mr Zuton Rollo.

So when a musician with no need of fame by association places 'Lick My Decals Off, Baby' at the top of his list of favourite albums - as David Lowery of Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven did last week in his local newspaper - I think it is worth reporting here.

And when Buck 65 and Tortoise go into a recording studio together with "almost no plan" about how to make a new album - and Buck tells one of his local papers, "About the only thing we did beforehand was listen to a bunch of Captain Beefheart records" - then I listen to 5 tracks from this album at Buck 65's website. And I find myself doing so again and again. The CD, 'Secret House Against The World' was released this week and I bought it. I've a feeling that if you're still reading this, you might like it too.

Posted by derek@beefheart.com at 8:17 AM  - 3 comments - post a comment

I've recently received news of an exhibition which has just opened in Glendale, California, featuring the original artwork from Captain Beefheart's Strictly Personal album cover

Revolutions, a ground-breaking free exhibit that features the artists behind the images synonymous with identifying the pop culture of the 60s and into the new Millennium, opens July 31st at the Forest Lawn Museum in Glendale. Showing never-before-seen art and original creations, from photographs to posters, original artwork used for albums and CDs, magazine art and drawings, the exhibit showcases artists who created visually beautiful and thought-provoking work cherished by the world's musical icons.

This unique exhibit is a reflection of the musical heritage and culture of Los Angeles - from the artists to the record companies, and the visual art that shaped their industry. While many of these works have been published, this is the only time they have been exhibited in their original form.

Renowned in the music, arts and photography world, these artists have had some of the greatest influence on the evolution of graphic art as performance art aligned with the world's best musicians of every genre. From Michael Doret's infamous Kiss CD covers and Robert Grossman's Angel Elvis to Guy Webster's prolific and diverse works that include Bob Dylan, Igor Stravinsky, Janis Joplin, and the Monterey Pop Festival, over 20 artists have loaned more than 100
images.

The Revolutions exhibit is free and open to the public, and will run from July 31st to October 9th, 2005 at the Forest Lawn Museum, Forest Lawn-Glendale, 1712 S. Glendale Blvd., Glendale.

For more information go to the Forest Lawn website (yes, it seems you can also get cremated while you're there...) and the Taken By Storm website. Many thanks to Bonnie Quintanilla for the tip-off.

Posted by Graham Johnston at 6:25 PM  - 1 comments - post a comment

Not a lot of Beefheart in this post but I thought it worth drawing your attention to an article in The Guardian which announces that Stockhausen will be playing live at London's Billingsgate market. You can also read the announcement at Stockhausen's own website.

A tenuous link? OK - Don Van Vliet once said that "a lot of good music comes out of Germany, Stockhausen for example". In his typically contradictory manner he also once said that he liked Stockhausen more than he liked Stockhausen's music so who knows. UK residents now have a rare chance to encounter both.

Posted by Graham Johnston at 5:45 PM  - 2 comments - post a comment

I've learned by now not to hold out too much hope when Ozit release another Beefheart CD. But this time they're taking the piss ...

'Prime Quailty Beef' ... for heaven's sake, Ozit, get a grip. This is second rate stuff even if it is decent sound quality (although, at least that's an improvement on your usual shoddy sound). But 'Sweet Georgia Brown'! ... By no stretch of the imagination is that 'prime quality' anything let alone quality Beefheart.

So what do we have here?

Well, it's the Crazy Little Things (semi-legitimate release) CD of the 1974 Cowtown, Kansas show (including the two versions of Peaches) mixed in with some of the unphased Strictly Personal tracks copied, I would guess, from the Mirror Man Sessions remixed CD released by Buddha in 1999. Do they have no shame? There is also a second version of Beatle Bones (which starts part way into the song) that I have to admit I'm not sure where it comes from.

Why include a full live show but completely change the running order and then drop in some unrelated tracks? Ozit's motives (apart from moneymaking) are beyond me.

The 'full colour eight page booklet' contains absolutely no information whatsoever about the tracks on this CD (although this does mean Ozit avoids their usual habit of getting the details wrong). The only text relates to adverts for two books published by Ozit (uncredited reprints of the Lives & Times of Captain Beefheart and Lives & Times of Frank Zappa from the mid 70s).

The back cover lists the track titles but that is all. There is, significantly, no publishing information listed anywhere.

The booklet includes several photographs of Don, most of which have been colourized, interspersed with lots of pictures of cows. Not very helpful and not particularly original. As for the cover illustration ...

Perhaps more telling is the illustration of the bovine skeleton ... is this Ozit owning up to the fact that they're picking Don's bones clean?

An absolute disgrace!

Posted by Steve Froy at 7:34 PM  - 6 comments - post a comment

I received a very interesting series of messages a short while ago from Micheal Smotherman, one-time member of the "tragic" era Magic Band. This is what he had to say:

As a card carrying former member of the Tragic Band, I would like to put straight a few things that have become gospel somehow, just for the hell of it. I know that it is difficult to fly in the face of legend, but for anyone interested in the truth, here goes.

First of all, the original Magic Band (Zoot Horn Rollo, Drumbo, et.al) did not quit en-masse "a few days before an important tour." Don fired them. He was not under the Svengali-like influence of "powerful record executives" in this decision.

This strange little manager-producer that he had suggested that if he went commercial, whatever that is, he stood a good chance of making more money, and believe me, as anyone who knows Don will tell you, he is not opposed to this concept.

Secondly, we didn't just have twenty-seven minutes or whatever to rehearse. We rehearsed for weeks. I can still remember that crummy little rehearsal hall in North Hollywood that smelled like piss and cigarette butts, and thinking that if we had to do "Mirror Man" one more time I was going to start tearing something up.

It still puzzles me that Don, who was a grown man in his thirties at the time, could make a conscious and informed decision to try and advance his career, and when it went south on him it was somehow OUR fault. Like we had anything to do with anything. We were but grunts, people (and treated like it, believe me), young scuffling musicians one bologna sandwich away from the street, and even though the job didn't pay squat we were glad to get it. I believe that we did the best professional job that we could, and under the circumstances did as well as anybody else could have.

Now having said all that, I'd also like to say that I actually had a good time on that gig overall. Don is an interesting cat, to say the least. And believe me, oh my brother, we were ALL bozos on that bus. There was Don, muttering constantly about God knows what, his wife Jan (who is a cool chick), a crazy Jamaican bus driver who quit two or three times on the middle of the freeway, a Scottish road manager who was a very righteous dude, two or three roadies from some God-forsaken place like Romania or something who couldn't speak English and smoked cigarettes in their sleep, we Tragic Banders, drinking like circus workers, assorted record company weasels, a bunch of English blokes who were our warm-up act and couldn't play for shit so they called it "progressive jazz", and last but certainly not least, Frick and Frack, these crazy little tiny Italian brothers from Brooklyn who were the Captain's managers, producers, publishers, agents, tour managers, CPA's, house painters, and God knows what else. Think two identical Kramer's from Seinfeld only real short and in leather jackets and on acid, and you've pretty much got the picture.

It's a drag that Don got semi-vilified for taking a chance that didn't pan out, and ludicrous that we were vilified, since we didn't have shit to do with it.

What if it had been a huge commercial success? He would have then been lauded for taking a bold and daring step, you know? When an artist sticks to his guns and doesn't succeed, he's stubborn, if he does succeed he's tenacious. A poor boy is a dip-shit, a rich boy is eccentric - same principal to me.

I saw the pictures from his exhibit in Germany, I guess, and the Old Fart At Play looked good. Sharp and comfortable, in his element. I would like to see how Jan is faring - a special person, that.

I'm glad that the Mighty Captain (as we called him) is having some well-deserved success with his art. I think, and have always thought, that it is brilliant. I hope you have the testes to print this.

Sincerely, Micheal Smotherman (Tragic Band keyboardist).

Many thanks to Micheal for sending along this insightful glimpse into this murky period in the Magic Band's history, and for his permission to publish his comments here.

Posted by Graham Johnston at 5:30 PM  - 22 comments - post a comment

Frank Xavier Weyerich's photo of two whiskery gents in convivial conversation (large version here)will be familiar to anyone who has ever done an Image Search for Beefheart.

Who, I wondered, is that other chap, and what was he talking about with Don? The website hosting the photograph (thank you Webster70.com) led me to an email address for somebody called Tom Ray.

Ray, who is now owner of one of the largest independent record stores in the American Midwest - Vintage Vinyl - kindly wrote back with the details of his meeting with Don, correcting me on where it occurred.

- Yes, I had that pleasure back in the middle 70s---but it wuz @ Washington University. I recall Beefheart had a great swing style clarinetist w/ him on the set.

- By this time I had been a Beefheart aficionado since the middle 60s---first time I heard him was in my grandfather's car, driving in Georgia, and I heard '/Diddy Wah Diddy' and was totally transported. I had no idea who this was, but the sound coming out of the radio grabbed me.All his releases were great mysteries and wonder for my ears from that moment on.

- I recall in 1970 thinking Lick My Decals the greatest music being made. So, to meet him finally was, well---I don't think there was anyone in the world I would have rather met.- He was wonderful and sweet, playful and full of verbal tricks. We talked about Howlin Wolf and Ornette Coleman, and he inscribed my copy of Trout Mask w/ some of his lyrics....what a day. A real blessing.

Tom Papa Ray hosts a radio show playing "deep soul and contemporary blues" which you can listen to at community radio station KDHX. He's also known as a rather accomplished blues harpist.

My thanks to Tom Ray for his help.

Posted by derek@beefheart.com at 8:02 AM  - 2 comments - post a comment