Clear Spot

198? Australia 7" We Had Love / Clear Spot on Au Go Go Records ANDA 29

Frying Pan

1986 Sweden 7" This Ain't The Summer of Love / Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Fire on Amigo AMS169

1992 Australia(?) CD Various Artists : Showdown! (1981-1993) on Sympathy For The Record Industry SFTRI 333

The Screaming Dizbusters were actually the prolific Swedish band The Nomads who have been recording since the 1980s.

China Pig

198? ?????

A dramatic and stark rendering of this song with minimal piano accompaniment. Excellent in my opinion.

Unfortunately, I have not been able to find any details about this recording or the band. It does exist because I have a copy from when it was played on a Canadian Radio Beefheart Tribute show in 1983.

Peon

1993 Germany CD Swine Art on Uton Records UTON11

ReR Records describe this album as:-

Second CD from this excellent German trio. Studio productions of played and arranged pieces, mostly songs (echoes: Skeleton Crew, Cassiber ?). An unusual meeting of skills and styles where very different interests somehow collect and make musical sense. Intelligence, variety and fine playing underwrite complex/simple songs and extended successful recording experiments. Rock, stretched.

ReR also describe another of their albums as containing:-

... outrageous Beefheart style instrumentals, noise experiments.

Plastic Factory

1998 US CD Sexy Death Soda on Bong Load Custom Records BL34

Pretty good indie/grunge rock take on 'Plastic Factory' from this Californian band who may have their tongues firmly in their cheeks for some of the other songs on the album. Worth checking out!

Her Eyes Are A Blue Million Miles

2008 US CD The Covers ep on ???

According to an interview online with guitarist Adrian Carroll at the Washington City Paper on 30 January 2008 the band "started to feel like we were being perceived as a country or rockabilly band, but we’ve always been interested in a lot of other things,” says Carroll. “We all liked Beefheart. The words are really simple and beautifu - there was a circular pattern to them.” The song also motivated Shortstack to rock out a little harder than before. “Previously our drummer [Scott Gursky] played with brushes. He pretty much exclusively plays with sticks now. It made the band louder—that’s what attracted us to it.”

This Is The Day

1974 UK vinyl This Is The Day on United Artists UAS29684
2001 UK CD Shusha/This Is The Day on Beat Goes On Records BGOCD531

Iranian born, educated at the Sorbonne in Paris and relocated to London in the 1960s Shusha Asa is very talented - a singer, composer, author and documentary film maker.

Apart from releasing albums based on Persian music in original settings as well as jazz-rock arrangements she has also issued over the years a number of more commercial albums featuring her own songs alongside covers of Woody Guthrie, Joan Baez, Chuck Berry, W.B.Yeats, William Blake, Shakespeare and Ted Hughes.

At times like Sandy Denny with a slight French accent she makes a stylish folk rock sound. It doesn't always work but her cover of 'This Is The Day' is perfectly charming.

Another minor Beefheart connection is that the piano player on the 'This Is The Day' album is John 'Rabbit' Bundrick who also played on the first Mallard album.

Gimme Dat Harp Boy
Mirror Man

1989 UK vinyl 13:9:88 on IT060
1997 UK CD ABC&D ... the best of ... on Cherry Red Records CDMRED 143

The tracks are actually listed as 'Mirror Man, Mirror Puppet' and 'Gimme That Harp, Little Frank' and done as a medley. To save room on the CD they were recorded in one channel with a totally different song recorded in the other!

Frank Sidebottom, with his large papiermache head (a bit like a friendly version of a Resident!), is the alter ego of Chris Sievey, one time member of the novelty punk band The Freshies who are probably best remembered for the song 'I'm In Love With The Girl At The Manchester Virgin Megastore Checkout Desk'.

Electricity

see Fast 'n' Bulbous Tribute Album

Sonic Youth stroll through this version of a stonking Beefheart song - I really expected better from them!

Dropout Boogie

1996 live at Barrowlands, Glasgow

Apparently the now defunct Soundgarden played 'Dropout Boogie' as an encore at this concert. I don't know if a tape exists or whether they played it at any other shows.

Sure Nuff 'n' Yes I Do
Willie The Pimp

1971 UK vinyl Stackwaddy on Dandelion Records DAN8003/K49003
1994 UK CD Stackwaddy/Bugger Off on See For Miles Records SEECD407

A no nonsense pub-rock band that recorded for John Peel's legendary Dandelion Records (which, if I remember rightly, was named after his hamster).

Gimme Dat Harp Boy

Has anyone heard this? Know anything about the band?

Thanks again to Derek Laskie for finding it.

Kandy Korn

2003 Italian CD Six Fishes From Unknown Seas (A Practical Handbook For The Young Explorer, Vol. 1) on Aua Records

An Italian three piece released this mini-CD of covers which includes songs by Syd Barrett and Lou Reed as well as Beefheart. This version of Kandy Korn is driven by riffs rather than the two lead guitars of the original. The use of stop/start helps to build the tension in the song. It grew on me the more I listened to it.

Guitarist and vocalist, Maurizio Curadi, is a Beefheart fan who has written a lengthy article about the Magic Band in the Italian fanzine Lost Trails. He also translated four of Don's songs into Italian - Pena, Steal Softly Thru Snow, When Big Joan Sets Up and The thousandth and tenth day of the human totem pole.

Maurizio told the Radar Station about choosing Kandy Korn:-

KANDY KORN - this has always been one of my obsessions. A composition that has always amazed me for its strength, its colours, its inner transformations. For me Kandy Korn is the sonic correlative of a Van Gogh painting. Something that hits the nervous system, a real geometry of mind expansion. The coda is a timeless enigma. It was a natural choice for me to set Kandy Korn as an appearance in a sea of cicadas, in summer barley fields.

My comments are mainly visual, but I think you understand.

We recorded it almost completely live, then I did a guitar overdub and vocals. Maybe it has too much bass loudness, but I really like the result.

I'm a fan of the Strictly Personal period I've listened to these songs since I was 16-17. With Trout Mask, it was the first encounter with Captain Beefheart for me.

I've immediately loved those demented delta guitars, the african feel, the disturbing balance between tradition and atonality, the visionary strength. It has the power to make laugh and cry. Freightening and funny. But I don't want to be boring. For all these reasons, and for many others unknown, I guess, it was chosen Kandy Korn.

STEEPLEJACK was formed in 1986 by Maurizio Curadi, after playing guitar singing and writing songs in seminal acid rock italian bands such as Useless Boys and Birdmen of Alkatraz. Steeplejack has always been a strange anomaly in the Italian scene: visionary rather than psychedelic in the usual sense, the band has always followed an independent path with unusual spirits and sounds, mixing primitive delta blues with eerie songs. They recorded 2 LP's ("Serena Maboose" in 1987, and "Pow Wow" in 1989 for Electric Eye Records) and 2 singles in 1991. After years of apparent inactivity, they reformed in 2000. At present they're recording new material for a new cd, "Nameless City". Find out more about them on their site - http://www.steeplejack.it/

Ashtray Heart

2002 US 7" Ashtray Heart on Entropy Now! Records

A hardcore metal band with a singer who sounds really angry on this full-blooded assault on Ashtray Heart.

Josh Wartrip from the band told me:-

"I know it's already been done a few times, but we had wanted to do that song for a long time, and after hearing the White Stripes version we decided we *had* to try and do a better job ;).... I don't know if we succeeded..."

Where There's Woman

This track is included on the Genus Records' Mama Kangaroos tribute album