Beatle bones ‘n’ smokin’ Stones The dry sands fall The strawberry mouth; strawberry moth; strawberry caterpillar Strawberry butterfly; strawberry fields The winged eel slither on the heels of today’s children Strawberry feels forever Yeah, roosters, ol’ glass roosters, stick to your race In a drag-queen, live-wood farmhouse Tractors are clawin’; the folks are crawlin’ Trees in a row climbing a coach and I blow rich Red, blue, yellow sunset Where I set and you set; and I’ve loved and you’ve loved And I’ve seen and you’ve seen Salt Man has just made his mark – and crumbled The dark – the light – the darkRead More →

Bat chain Puller Bat chain puller Puller, puller A chain with yellow lights That glistens like oil beads On its slick smooth trunk That trails behind on tracks, and thumps A wing hangs limp and retrieves Bat chain puller Puller puller Bulbs shoot from its snoot And vanish into darkness It whistles like a root snatched from dry earth Sodbustin’ rakes with grey dust claws Announces its coming into morning This train with grey tubes That houses people’s very thoughts and belongings. Bat chain puller Puller puller This train with grey tubes that houses people’s thoughts, Their very remains and belongings. A grey cloth patchRead More →

Go back ten years ago, sunbeams dancin’ round Go back ten yeas ago, sunbeams dancin’ down Autumn’s child Autumn’s child Autumn’s child got a loophole ’round her finger, Halo rings her head, Corn husk hair makes me linger Her carriage fair meets my dare, A marraige share greets my stare Gonna be m’ wife, she sang, she said Gonna be m’ wife, gonna spice my life, she said Go back ten years ago, sunbeams everywhere Go back ten years ago, sunbeams fill the air Harvest moon be nimble Apple dunking tremble Fish pond streaks of kind Found the child I had t’ find Apple shine share t’gether GotRead More →

You used me like an ashtray heart Case of the punks Right from the start I feel like a glass shrimp in a pink panty With a saccharine chaperone Make invalids out of supermen Call in a “shrink” And pick you up in a girdle You used me like an ashtray heart Right from the start Case of the punks Another day, another way Somebody’s had too much to think Open up another case of the punks Each pillow is touted like a rock The mother / father figure Somebody’s had too much to think Send your mother home your navel Case of the punksRead More →

Apes-Ma, Apes-Ma Remember when you were young Apes-Ma? And you used to break out of your cage? Well you know that you’re not Strong enough to do that anymore now And Apes-Ma… The little girl that Named you years ago died now And you’re older Apes-Ma Remember when she named you And it was in the paper Apes-Ma? Apes-Ma, Apes-Ma You’re eating too much And going to the bathroom too much Apes-Ma And Apes-Ma, your cage isn’t getting any bigger Apes-Ma (1976) Originally made available at Justin Sherill’s Home Page Replica.Read More →

Ant Man Bee as imagined by OpenAI

Originally appeared on Trout Mask Replica White ants runnin’ Black ants crawlin’ Yella ants dreamin’ Brown ants longin’ All those people longin’ to be free Uhuru ant man bee uhuru ant man bee All the ants in God’s garden they can’t get along War still runnin’ on It’s that one lump uh sugar That they won’t leave each other ‘lone Why do yuh have t’ do this You’ve got t’ let us free Why do yuh have t’ do this You’ve got t’ set us free Why do yuh have t’ do this You’ve got t’ set us free Why do yuh have t’ doRead More →

Long before song before song blues Babbette baboon [repeat] abba zaba zoom Two shadows at Noon, Babbette baboon [repeat] Comin’ over pretty soon, Babbette baboon Run, run, catch her soon, draft of dawn, sunshine on Babbette baboon Mother say son, she say son, you can’t lose, with the stuff you use Abba Zaba go-zoom Babbette baboon [repeat both] Run, run, morning soon, Indian dream, tiger moon Yellow bird fly high, tabacco sky, two shadows at noon Babbette baboon gonna catch her soon Babbette baboon Song before song before song blues Babbette baboon abba zaba zoom [repeat both] Two shadows at noon, abba zaba zoom GonnaRead More →

My musings on the meaning of the lyrics for that particular song aren’t my personal interpretation, I’m merely relaying what Don Van Vliet told me that the lyrics are all about. So, it’s the author/composer’s own interpretation of what the words mean, not mine. Meaning The words are about human evolution, which Don somehow seemed to feel took place on the Indian subcontinent – not Eastern Africa. He apparently wasn’t familiar with L.S.B. Leakey and his various progeny and kin – or their discoveries at Olduvai Gorge. “Babbette Baboon” is an ape-like creature on the brink of “comin’ over pretty soon” to a more humanoid existence – if she canRead More →

Rhino’s Captain Beefheart career retrospective. Track list Disc one: Diddy Wah Diddy Frying Pan Electricity Abba Zaba Beatle Bones ‘ N’ Smokin’ Stones Safe As Milk Moonlight On Vermont Ella Guru Old Fart At Play Sugar ‘N’ Spikes Orange Claw Hammer My Human Gets Me Blues China Pig Lick My Decals Off Baby Woe Is Uh Me Bop I Wanna Find Me A Woman That’ll Hold My Big Toe Till I Have To Go The Smithsonian Institute Blues I’m Gonna Booglarize You Baby Click Clack Grow Fins When It Blows Its Stacks Little Scratch Big Eyed Beans From Venus Golden Birdies Disc two: Nowadays ARead 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 →