New film of Beefheart in concert found


Virgin Records has found in its vaults a previously undocumented film of Captain Beefheart in concert. A digital copy of the film has been produced to help promote Virgin’s six forthcoming Captain Beefheart CD releases.

It isn’t very often that previously unseen film of Captain Beefheart in concert is released, so I’m especially happy to be able to report this news here.

The film is captioned as having been made in London, though to my knowledge there was no film crew present for the London concerts at that time.

I tracked down one of the directors of the film to ask him about it. He confirmed that the filming was not done in London but took place in Manchester and he kindly answered several more questions. His full story of how this concert came to be filmed and what happened afterwards will follow here in the next few days.

Details of Virgin’s Beefheart CDs will be posted here before August 7th, the release date.

We’ll also be giving away five complete sets of the six CDs in an easy to enter competition – so you may find it worthwhile to click-clack back to this page in the near future.

9 Comments

  1. I thought the setting looked familiar, but didn’t think to check out the “Peaches” track.

    Chris W

  2. Yep, the same film as used for the OGWT “Peaches” track which is generally acknowledged to be from Manchester.

    Chris W

  3. Thanks for confirming that the Peaches clip is from a Manchester concert chris. I’m not yet sure whether it was recorded during the first performance or the second that day. Can you help with that too?

  4. Nice video and performance. A promo video I gather, Don doesnt seem to happy toward the end, waving and running off like that. It wasnt from one of his ‘happier’ periods. A great performance nonetheless, the sax player cracked me up for some reason. It’s a good band though.

  5. Sorry Derek, Can’t help on the fine detail.

    Chris

  6. so what’s the six cds Virgin has planned?

  7. “Previously undocumented,” eh? I’ve had this for some years on a boot video, although I’ve never heard it mentioned. Nice to see it not as a high-gen video, though. Really nice sound, except for that blokie squealing away on sax. Quite embarassing.

  8. Thanks! I really enjoyed that! Interesting to hear that someone already has it as a bootleg. There must be more videos like this lurking somewhere, its just a case of tracking them down. Out of interest, does anyone know where someone could obtain a t-shirt like the one Don is wearing on the clip. I have seen a few originals go on eBay in past months, and I understand they were sold at concerts at the time (please correct me if I’m wrong). I am just curious if there is any lurking around.

  9. I saw version of the CB&HMB in Austin Texas. I remember being saddened and walking out after hearing them do Sweet Georgia Brown. I have nothing against that tune but generally the music and Vliet’s weird vibe–as in this video, seemed desparate and demanding, the music of this CB period is not to my taste. The saxophone player I think is the same guy who was on the Moonbeams & BlueJeans album and who was said to be Beefheart’s manager and band leader. I was remembering the name Del Simmons but looking at allmusic.com and seeing the producer of that album was Andy DiMartino make me question my memory. As for the shirt, it was a promo give away by the record company. I didn’t see or hear of them selling them at concerts, at least not in the USA.

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