It takes an outsize ego to make great art. By all accounts that was the case with Don Van Vliet, a.k.a. Captain Beefheart, leader of the quintessential cockeyed rock ‘n’ roll band. Creators of perhaps the most obscure critically revered rock record of all time, 1969’s “Trout Mask Replica,” California’s Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band epitomized rock’s version of art for art’s sake. Misunderstood – even openly reviled – in its day, the band has been an inspiration for such disparate musicians as PJ Harvey, Joan Osborne, Tom Waits and the late Jeff Buckley. This month, Revenant Records, a small, meticulous reissue label inRead More →

Hmmm… is this the very best surviving clip of Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band? I think it could be. Copies of this amazing footage have circulated for many years amongst collectors but the quality has not been the best. Now that Reelin In The Years have gained ownership of the film they have made it available but you have to put up with their watermark throughout … it’s definitely worth it for the superior quality: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUa5DcDmc48 Recorded on 15 January 1971 at WABX Studio, directed by Chuck Reti. (Incorrectly dated on the video). Available on the enhanced disc of Grow Fins but not in suchRead More →

(so sad baby so glad girl) When you first came round I was sad My head hung down I felt really bad Now I’m glad, glad about the good times that we’ve had Walked in the park kissed in the dark leaves burned just like just like a spark Now I’m glad glad about the good times that we’ve had You went away I cried night and day for what you done I had to pay Left me so blue I don’t know where to go or what to do please come back and let the sun shine through Sun passed behind a cloud IRead More →

Well you came and now you’re gone But our life it will go on I moss you so but only for your return Please come back to me tomorrow To ease this pain and sorrow please try to understand My heart is in your hand baby please don’t take our love in vain (repeat) Well here I am I always am And with you my love it will remain please try to understand Yeah my heart is in your hand Please don’t take my love in vain Well my nights are filled with sorrow For me there is no tomorrow I’d beg or I’d stealRead More →

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 →

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 →

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 →

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 →

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 →

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 →

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 →

“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 →

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 →

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 →

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 →

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 →