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The 12-year old anti-hero of Josh Lieb’s new book for young adults is a Captain Beefheart fan. I point to my beloved Captain Beefheart, a musician so brilliant, so evil, he drove his own band insane. He would not let let them eat. He would not let them sleep. He would not let them leave his house. He made them wear dresses (and they were not girls). He stripped them of their very names and subjected them to hours and hours of abusive group therapy session. When a dejected and desperate member of the band managed to escape the Captain’s clutches, Beefheart snatched him offRead More →

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Four small works by Don Van Vliet are showing at Zach Feuer Gallery in Chelsea until January 23rd. Part of a group exhibition entitled Jr. and Son’s, Don’s creations hang next to the work of S. Clay Wilson and are pictured in situ here at the Zach Feuer Gallery website. Zach Feuer Gallery, 530 W. 24th Street, New York, NY 10011 Tel: +1 212 989 7700 info@zachfeuer.com www.zachfeuer.com Exhibition dates: December 12, 2009 – January 23, 2010 Gallery hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 10-6Read More →

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Head of No. 6 Records Terry Tolkin recollected Captain Beefheart and Bob Krasnow in an interview with Warped Reality Magazine. Talking of gaps in the No.6 catalogue Tolkin said: The last one was a Captain Beefheart EP called Hoboism, a fantastic track left over from the Bat Chain Puller sessions. I had become quite friendly with Don Van Vliet through my years at Rough Trade and then especially Elektra. Elektra’s CEO was Bob Krasnow, the last of the great 1960’s A&R guys to run a major label……..I went out to Don’s house in Eureka, California. Kras had produced Beefheart’s Safe As Milk LP and thenRead More →

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Captain Beefheart’s celebrity gate-crashers bring gift of beetle bones: It would be hard to find two rock stars who are more fixated on Captain Beefheart than Alison Mosshart of The Kills and Jack White of The White Stripes. Both groups have recorded Beefheart songs and continue to play them live. Jack White dressed up as Captain Beefheart on the photo shoot for Get Behind Me Satan and in interviews Alison Mosshart regularly expresses her yearnings to be with Don Van Vliet. There’s one musician who’s alive but isn’t working any more that I would do anything to do something with – and that would beRead More →

Magic Band live 13 Dec 09 part 1

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These photographs show The Magic Band playing at ‘Ten Years of ATP’, a music festival in Minehead, on Sunday 13th December. Click on the images to enlarge them. In the annotated set list keen followers of The Magic Band will spot some interesting differences between this concert and previous appearances. The Magic Band MySpace page contains lots of interesting information including brief biographies of new members Eric Klerks and Craig Bunch and some notes which John French wrote about recent Magic Band rehearsals. Samples from a recording of a previous Magic Band show, one of three scheduled to be released in February on Vinyl, CD,Read More →

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Grammy Award winning producer, engineer and mixer Greg Ladanyi died in a fall from a stage in Cyprus in September. He was 57. His first job as an engineer was with Captain Beefheart. In 2005 Greg Ladanyi described working with Captain Beefheart on Bluejeans and Moonbeams. It was the most bizarre, twisted experience for me. This was before I was an engineer and before I went to the Sound Factory. I was the business side of Stronghold Studios, and my partner, Al Thomas, owned the studio. I found the job, brought them in, and they paid us $5,000 for studio time. We spent the moneyRead More →

Messin With The Kid - Benjamin Horrendous

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I have great respect for anyone who attempts to cover any of Beefheart’s songs. So what do you say when someone decides to cover a whole Beefheart album! Well, that’s just what Benjamin Horrendous has done. Singlehandedly, he’s (in his own words) ‘messed’ with each song from The Spotlight Kid to come up with his own vision of this great album. Find out more about it at Benjamin’s site.Read More →

Beefheart Through The Eyes Of Magic by John French

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The following press release about the publication of John’s long awaited book has just come to our notice: John “Drumbo” French: Beefheart: Through The Eyes Of Magic The ultimate book about Captain Beefheart written by the man who spent more time with him than most. Published in hardback 880 pages, including 16 pages of amazing photographs, many published for the first time. Includes reminiscences from key members of The Magic Band and The Mothers Of Invention. Cover price £19.95. Out 11 January 2010 Few names carry such formidable mystique and rabid cult status as Captain Beefheart, who led various lineups of his Magic Band toRead More →

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John French has confirmed that The Magic Band will perform at All Tomorrows Parties’ Ten Years Of ATP Festival in December. In mails to us this week he has given some details of the line-up and the expected content of the set. John has also confirmed that more live shows are being planned and that several albums of live recordings from the 2005 tours will be released in various formats. This is what John wrote: About 6 weeks ago, Barry Hogan unexpectedly sent me an email inviting The Magic Band to play at their tenth anniversary Festival. I was very happy to accept on behalfRead More →

Safe As Milk: Pye

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The graphic designer and photographer Tom Wilkes died on 28 June from a heart attack. He was 69. Most well known to Beefheart fans for his work on the Safe As Milk album he was involved in the design of many, many others. For more detailed obituaries check out the LA Times and the Independent. Thanks to ‘anonymous’ for the heads up about this sad news.Read More →

Beefheart Through The Eyes Of Magic by John French

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The Radar Station just been told that John French’s book is still on course for a Spring 2010 release … although the exact date has yet to be confirmed. However, what’s new is that Proper has decided that it’ll now publish Through the Eyes of Magic as ONE BIG book instead of the two volumes they had originally planned. This probably make more financial sense. It also means we’ll get the whole book without the danger of the second volume never seeing the light of day! They’ve also promised that no editing will be done to make it fit one volume … which is goodRead More →

Don with sketch Creem (May 1983)

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As you’re probably already aware the Radar Station has the largest collection of images of Don’s artwork on the web and we continue to add to it whenever we can. As we’re obsessives we don’t want to miss out on the other doodles and sketches of his that turn up all over the place so we’ve started trying to capture these all in one place too. Take a look at the Pictures, photos, bits & bobs page and check the Assorted sketches by Don section which includes a great piece of grafitti on a wall of the Armadillo as well as photos of Don displayingRead More →

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You can now follow beefheart.com on Twitter and get all of our Up Sifter updates and anything else Beefheart-related which we decide to shunt your way. Find us and follow us: @CaptBeefheart. We also have an RSS feed available too if you prefer. I also have my own personal Twitter account – @prawntot – so feel free look me up and say hi. I tend to use it more to see what others are up to than to tell the world when my left buttock cheek needs a scratch so there’s not much going on there apart from the occasional passing tumbleweed. Perhaps you likeRead More →

Safe As Milk promobox

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Two of Beefheart’s earliest albums have been given the Japanese mini LP treatment. You can now get exact copies of the original Safe As Milk and Mirror Man vinyl albums but as compact discs. These are exquisite … you even get a mini version of the SAM bumper sticker and MM comes complete with the gatefold die-cut shattered mirror effect cover. Although the packaging replicates the original album the tracks on them are the remastered versions with the extra songs that were released in 1999.- so the sound quality is excellent. In fact, SAM sounds even better than the 1999 copy I have. These areRead More →

Trout Mask t-shirt

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A new collection of shirts from New York design house Rotter and Friends features several variations on the Trout Mask Replica cover. Here modelling one of them are Gustav Ejstes from the Swedish band Dungen and Susannah Lipsey designer for Windy Freda. All of the shirts from the collection can be seen and ordered at Rotter and Friends website where there is even a video showing how well the shirts perform to Zig Zag Wanderer. Photo taken by Jeaneen Lund.Read More →

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An extract from Barney Hoskins’ new biography of Tom Waits has appeared at The Quietus. It deals with the change in Waits’ music which happened at the time of his marriage to Kathleen Brennan, and Swordfishtrombones the album which resulted. Here Hoskins skates over the vexed question of Captain Beefheart’s influence on Waits: Waits has even claimed he’d never really listened to Captain Beefheart before meeting Kathleen – that, despite being signed by Beefheart’s manager Herb Cohen and supporting the Captain’s mentor Frank Zappa on tour, he was oblivious to the gruff-voiced Dadaist genius born Don Van Vliet. Where the bruising ‘Heartattack and Vine’ hintedRead More →

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PJ Harvey’s new album A Woman A Man Walked By, recorded with long-time musical collaborator John Parish, features former Magic Band member Eric Drew Feldman on keyboards. John Parish and PJ Harvey are both Captain Beefheart fans and significant musical similarities to the work of Captain Beefheart have been noted by most reviewers. Even the publicity material for the album at PJ Harvey’s MySpace page flags the Beefheart connection. In a video at Island Records website John and Polly can be heard talking about their musical influences. Polly explains how she first came to appreciate Captain Beefheart: I’d heard Beefheart when I was really youngRead More →