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Gazing across pop music’s stale horizons, past all the cynical ineptitude, pseudo-intellectual solemnity, neurotic regression and dismal deadends for great bands, there is one figure who stands above the murk forging an art at once adventurous and human: Don Van Vliet, known to a culture he’s making anachronistic as Captain Beefheart. Though there are still lots of people around who just don’t read the Cap at all, who think his music is some kind of private joke or failed experiment (or as a local teen band told me, “Most of that’s the kind of stuff musicians do when they’re just fucking around”) or merely aRead More →

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Already, I’m thinking that this is the Captain’s most satisfying album to date. “Safe As Milk” was a very good, every-so-slightly spacey rock album; “Strictly Personal” was ruined by phasing; and “Trout Mask Replica” tended to be a little unwieldy, despite several flashes of brilliance. But from the first note, “Decals” discovers and maintains a balance which rarely wavers, right up to the final reed squeak of “Flash Gordon’s Ape”. It’s difficult to decide whether the unnamed musicians are geniuses or complete beginners, but from the evidence of several tortuous unison passages I’m inclined to believe that they’re the former. Much of the playing consistsRead More →

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In a twilight region which separates laughter from terror and precision from chaos, five men walk along a musical path with a purpose they disclose only in their smiles. Zoot Horn Rollo, a fortunate refugee from the Land of Drugs, carries his lead guitar between a thumb and one glass finger. He speaks through his instrument with a voice of gentleness, restraint and lyricism. To a large extent the success of this expedition rests on his shoulders. For it is Rollo’s job to catch the melodies which the Captain throws out, transform them into definite musical statements and to teach them to the others inRead More →

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When I first heard Trout Mask Replica, I about puked. What is this shit, I thought. People I met talked about it in glowing terms — not just anybody, mind you, but people I genuinely respected when it came to their musical tastes. Well, I figured, everybody has their own little watchimacallits. And then came Lick My Decals Off, Baby. Its reputation preceded it, and a preview of its music at a concert, I was told, would make it all clear. And you know what? It did. You know, those guys actually stood up there and played that music. And when it was over, IRead More →

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It’s probably a tribute to the literary conscience of Reprise Records that they decided to include a copy of Beefheart’s lyrics. Within a year, some lovely young thing with a doctorate in English will have transformed Beefheart into a demiurge, thereby glorifying herself to a freshman comp class at a state institution. Fortunately, the sheet of lyrics can be overlooked; no great feat, because the sense that comes out of them tends to rearrange itself with all the life of the infinte number of monkeys in the old joke about the infinite number of old typewriters. If anything, Beefheart’s word-collection is just as anti-lyrical asRead More →

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Recording details Date – Summer 1970 Studio – United Recording Corp., Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood Producer – Don van Vliet Engineer – Phil Schier Musicians Don van Vliet – vocals, harmonica, sax Bill Harkleroad – guitar Art Tripp – drums, marimba, broom Mark Boston – bass John French – drums Track list Lick My Decals Off, Baby Doctor Dark I Love You, You Big Dummy Peon Bellerin’ Plain Woe-is-uh-Me-Bop Japan in a Dishpan I Wanna Find a Woman That’ll Hold My Big Toe Till I Have To Go Petrified Forest One Red Rose That I Mean The Buggy Boogie Woogie The Smithsonian Institute Blues (or theRead More →