The first anniversary of John Peel's death will be marked by several hundred concerts which are to be staged under the banner of John Peel Day. One of these concerts features The Fall and New Order, among others, and will be pre-recorded in London for broadcast as part of a six hour radio special on October 13th.

John Peel's admiration for Captain Beefheart was legendary so it is not surprising that a Beefheart track is included in the double CD 'John Peel - A Tribute' to be released on October 17th. Many of the bands about which Peel waxed lyrical are represented on the CD, from the Bonzos and The Faces to The Clash and Joy Division. The full track listing is published at the NME website.

The Beefheart track? Big Eyed Beans From Venus.

Posted by derek@beefheart.com at 12:34 PM  - 3 comments - post a comment

Gary Lucas continues to be one of the most hard-working and prolific members of the various Magic Bands. Gary's calendar shows him to be currently performing in Europe. Tonight, 21st September, he's performing in Amsterdam and the show will be broadcast and webcast live at VPRO.

Audiences in Bristol and Lancaster this weekend get a rare chance to see Gary perform his score to a 1920 film. The Golem is based on the legend of an historical 16th century rabbi who created a man out of clay to save the Jewish community of Prague from annihilation. Apparently this is a superb example of the early horror cinema at its finest, but I can't vouch for that as my DVD copy of The Golem with Gary's score got lost in the post.

Gary has other forthcoming European gigs in Paris and Aberdeen.

Posted by derek@beefheart.com at 12:31 AM  - 2 comments - post a comment

Anton Corbijn persuaded Don Van Vliet to remove his hat during the Ice Cream For Crow cover shoot. Corbijn later recalled that Don put it straight back on his head again. "My wife's not gonna like this," Don said.

I don't suppose that Jan minded too much. The resulting photograph became iconic and Don later made the short film Some Yo Yo Stuff together with Anton.

Part of that film, plus an impressive selection of Corbijn's music videos and other film work are to be released as a DVD on Tuesday 13th September. A 56 page book accompanies this Directors Label DVD from Palm Pictures.

Posted by derek@beefheart.com at 12:36 PM  - 0 comments - post a comment

Big Eyed Beans From Venus, that bunch of Beefheart botherers from Athens GA, have announced another two dates for their ongoing assault on the auditory senses of that city. They play the 40 Watt in Athens this Wednesday, the 14th, and play there again on October 8th when they open for the Circulatory System (friend of theirs from Olivia Tremor Control).

There are still audio links to their Beefheart covers at nFluent Music and at MySpace. But when will they get out of Athens and start touring?

Posted by derek@beefheart.com at 12:23 PM  - 2 comments - post a comment

For every one who appreciates the Hammond Organ playing of Jimmy Smith, Ian McLagan or John Medeski there are plenty more for whom the Hammond Organ represents middle of the road wallpaper music and serially issued LP compilations of teutonic pop drone.

Imagine if a Klaus Wunderlich or a James Last had ever got round to covering Captain Beefheart and smoothing out his edges. I suppose that collectors would now be paying very silly money for cheesy LPs with titles like Hammond Party of Special Things To Do, Hammond Blows Its Stacks Vol 3, or possibly Orange Claw Hammond.

Even Acid Jazz, latter-day home to that genre, hasn't yet thrown up a Hammond Beef tribute album, although Lewis Taylor approached the idea with a swirly hammondy version of Frownland on his Trout Mask Replica replica.

No, the Hammond Organ is not an instrument which I ever associated with Captain Beefheart. Not, that is, until a Hammond album popped up for sale at eBay. The seller had made a connection between the name of the artist and one of the keyboard players credited on Bluejeans and Moonbeams, Jimmy Caravan.

Jimmy Caravan was way off my radar so I began to look around. I found that he released at least three LPs; Look Into The Flower (1968), Hey Jude (1969) and Jimmy Caravan and the Blues Caravan (date?). I haven't found much written about him in reference books or on the internet. A couple of his tracks have recently been played on Craig Charles BBC radio show.

What then about Jimmy Caravan's contribution to The Magic Band?

There are three keyboard players credited on Bluejeans and Moonbeams. Two of these players get special thanks for making the album possible, so I'd guess that as important as these two were to the making of the record their keyboard skills were probably not all that was required.

It seems to me that Jimmy Caravan must have been brought in specially to give a unique keyboard sound and that sound must have been the sound of his Hammond Organ, or 'star machine' as it is credited.

If I have identified it correctly the only Hammond is on the song Bluejeans and Moonbeams itself. Isn't it the instrument which echoes and underlines the guitar parts in the last third of the song before soaring up into the songs musical climax shortly before the fade-out?

Maybe this coda to the album was meant to be a reprise to that long lunar note which was so memorably described by David Stubbs in his 1995 essay about Clear Spot?

"...Rollo's guitar trembles lingeringly, pre-ecstatically, before taking you as close as rock ever will to ejaculation. Bottleneck guitar sprays, slides and slips everywhere. By the end of the song, you're drenched in God's own semen. Glorious."

If that was what was intended (that, or another version of the theremin theme from Electricity) then within the context of the album and the terms of the song, I think it works very well. Klaus Wunderlich must have known that he couldn't cover Beefheart. With Jimmy Caravan's help Beefheart had already been there and done that.

You can hear brief snatches of Jimmy Caravan's other work at allmusic.com

Posted by derek@beefheart.com at 11:09 AM  - 2 comments - post a comment

I've just stumbled across an excellent, in depth and lengthy article about what many would consider a holy trinity - John Peel, John Walters and Captain Beefheart by Kris Needs.

Needs shows how their three stories are intertwined with each other, while also paying tribute to each. There are stories in here which I don't remember ever reading before such as Don accidentally "branding" his mother and Joe Strummer commenting on his first encounter with Trout Mask Replica which he stated was "the moment I became a weirdo".

There are a lot of factual inaccuracies but who cares, it's all from the heart.

Posted by Graham Johnston at 5:44 PM  - 1 comments - post a comment

About three years after I upgraded to XP and my scanner packed in, I finally got it working again last night so am able to continue with the Captain Beefheart vs The Grunt People script. There are another 20 pages available now, with the rest following very shortly.

Posted by Graham Johnston at 5:22 PM  - 1 comments - post a comment