I was sent these mp3s in April 1999 by Greg Gardner who once found himself in the lucky position of being at a Magic Band soundcheck / rehearsal with a tape recorder in his hand. He writes:

These unfortunately too few bits and pieces of a Captain Beefheart soundcheck are from 17th January, 1981 at the Commodore Ballroom in Vancouver, B.C. Canada.

A friend and I wandered down to the Commodore the afternoon of the concert, (we had just played there a few nights previous), and when we got there, we were fortunate enough to have arrived at the soundcheck and no one seemed to mind our presence. We sat out of the way, and I turned on this old tape deck (the only one I could muster up in time for the gig in those days), here and there during the soundcheck. Not wanting to use up all the only tape I had, as I was intending to tape the actual concert, I only got these few bits. Had I thought before hand that we would be fortunate enough to witness a soundcheck I would have brought much more tape!

The real unfortunate thing is that the tape of the entire concert that I made was, for some unknown reason, plagued with a whining screech that rendered it unlistenable. I have no idea what caused the problem, since it never had happened before and it never happened again after that night.

• Hair Pie - Rehearsal - 2,248K
• A Carrot Is As Close As A Rabbit Gets To A Diamond - Rehearsal - 792K
• My Human Gets Me Blues - Rehearsal - 3,934K
• One Red Rose That I Mean - Rehearsal - 1,058
• Nowadays A Woman's Gotta Hit A Man - Rehearsal - 3,612K

Sound quality of all the tunes is pretty good, with only a small amount of background hiss and audience chatter. There is no evidence of the whining screech that Greg mentioned on the rehearsal tunes, so don't be put off. The performance itself is excellent. Many thanks to Greg for sending these along.