By:
On:
In: Poems
With: 1 Comment

Noon bouncin’ ball of warm beside child Deflating ah vegelife puzzle Ah braking ball of wings, legs, leaves, lives, behives Movies from each comb Each pocket ‘n drones bouncin’ cones Prisms that melt flesh ‘n bones Dust ‘n dark dusklite None numb numerals Noon ball warm beside the child Earholes, eye holes, airholes Dance, deflate, inflate meat rainbows Flesh bonnets her hair woven Toes kick dust away Drops Blue, yellow, red, green clocks Her heart pumps, stops, starts, plays, drops Eyes roll Rocks back ‘n forth She played through the sun stuck out her tongue Stood on each of three decals She licked each oneRead More →

By:
On:
In: Poems
With: 0 Comments

Sun showers danced like dye darker green shadows light on green leaves played bamboo golden light organ pipes wooden ‘n’ olden down finickey halls shadows leaped like lizards scaling flower eyes trailing random vines tales that curl-ee-cued beans that hung green light berries butterfly’s grasp upside down in pain lovely in their rapture golden dust golden winged eels slither apart bleeding life’s light onto the ground ‘n’ quiver down gloden light corny yellow horns blew petals stem riddles bees ride fat honey legged drips centers pulp splinters her flowered eye uh legend on uh rock she scribbles uh dew drop pops up in the SunRead More →

By:
On:
In: Poems
With: 0 Comments

The bra was white and yellow elastic and held to foam cones the corners triangular shaped pyramid three edges made one point starfish and embry boards triple D cupped and poked to a point the main character was composed into a bow that broke first in the front and equal on adjacent sides American cowboy was approaching on a collision course -his hands groped outstretched three digits triangular to the front nail a line was drawn from the middle finger to the knuckle of the index finger across the middle finger onto the third – creating a perfect arrow with an imaginary point (before 1970)Read More →

By:
On:
In: Poems
With: 0 Comments

Hollow smoke the hole transmitting her hair come out like red meat through uh screen door wiped her shoulder balanced like a ball her face was erect on a long thin neck light rubber mountains in the distance stretched under wind blown spider webs the wind puffed out drank the blue sky one milk cloud grazed the sun sailed into black bag hung t’ strap around the girl bowed ‘n rested against her cocked hip a row of buttons ran up her like raisins crisp collars folds made shadows under her loose breasts feet orange rakes wiggled sand the sea moved returned claimed one laceRead More →

By:
On:
In: Poems
With: 6 Comments

The rug ripped up in cloth popcorn balls the walls an old candy striped sack in the corner wrinkled black and white a table held up by legs the peeled back red enamelled mouth of linoleum screamed at the pasteboard door a knob rolled off in some corner sticky a curtain blew into a sink dead flies and newspapers charred fire brown wings and toast Hobo ain’t been around for some time the gate danced without its paint on Odd jobs is written on spiders were the window’s eyes the sun made them look silver the little girl from in back of the clothesline castRead More →

By:
On:
In: Poems
With: 0 Comments

Bub & Gill Bub & Gill Bub in India Bub & Mat Bub in the wool Bub in a rug Indoor Bub – Bub in stitches Glass Bub – Bub in a rope Bub in jail Bub in tent Bub in pale Bub on springs – Bub’s brakes Bub in pajamas Bub’s party – with Gil & Mat & Bub in stitches Erect Bub Gill’s pill Perfumeral (before 1969) A 1993 reading of Gill is availableRead More →

By:
On:
In: Captain Beefheart Symposium
With: 0 Comments

All photographs on this page are Copyright © 2011 Michael Kirschner. Used with permission. Gary Lucas makes the introductions before showing a selection of videos: Jerry Harrison from Talking Heads and producer of Gary’s new “Gods & Monsters” CD was the first special guest. He read two poems “Her Little Face” and “Sun Dawn Dance”: Terry Vliet, Don’s cousin, followed Jerry. He looked like he was going to break down when he began speaking about the talk he had with Jan the day Don died. In five minutes he gives us an amazing picture of Don, then read a very moving and beautiful poem heRead More →

By:
On:
In: Captain Beefheart Symposium
With: 0 Comments

I went to the symposium last night Jan 13 2011 with my neighbor Bret. It’s good we had the address because it was in a pretty much unmarked dark or black colored building. The address was covered with the same dark paint. The entrance was down an alley by a parking lot. Above the door was a big red sign that said absolutely nothing. The only thing that tipped us off was the line of people waiting outside. It was a pretty nice crowd. The event started about 8:30pm with Gary Lucas talking a little about Don and about how he first heard of Captain BeefheartRead More →

By:
On:
In: Mentions of Beefheart
With: 0 Comments

Other than general music encyclopedias, all music guides , rough guides or similar. Vincent Brunner (ed): Tunes – A Comic Book History of Rock And Roll Published by Universe Publishing 2010 Originally published in France in 2009 this book looks at 30 artists from Little Richard to Nick Drake, Elvis Presley to LCD Soundsystem. A bit of an eclectic mix. Each one is given a couple of pages covering their career along with a selected discography and suggested playlist followed by a comic strip interpretation of events in their life. The Beefheart history is a bit loose with the facts although fundamentally okay. And aRead More →

By:
On:
In: Related publications
With: 0 Comments

Published by Da Capo Press, New York ISBN: 0-306-80682-7 First published in 1979. the edition pictured at the top of this page was printed in 1996 and contains a new foreword by Robert Christgau. Synopsis from the back cover In 1978, Greil Marcus asked twenty other writers on rock – including Dave Marsh, Lester Bangs, Nick Tosches, Ellen Willis, Simon Frith and Robert Christgau – a question: what one rock and roll album would you take to a desert island? The resulting essays were collected in Stranded, twenty passionate declarations that, appropriately, affirmed the solitary and obsessive activity that rock listening had become. Here areRead More →

By:
On:
In: Related publications
With: 0 Comments

Published by Poseidon Press, New York 1989 (hardback) Simon & Schuster/Touchstone, New York 1989 (paperback) Picador, London 1990 (hardback & paperback) Synopsis from the flyleaf Zappa offers his initimable views on just about everything: art, politics, cigarettes, beer, televangelists, symphony orchestras, lead guitarists, groupies, the PMRC, marriage (as a dada concept), and the history of rock and roll. Radar Station overview Not so much an autobiography more a collection of anecdotes in chronological order taped by Frank in answer to questions put to him by Peter Occhiogrosso who then typed them up. Fascinating and hilarious. There are plenty of rare photographs plus some great cartoonRead More →

By:
On:
In: Related publications
With: 0 Comments

St Martins Press, New York 1990 ISBN: 0-312-04588-3 Price: $19.95 Synopsis from the book cover Bat Chain Puller is an irreverent look at popular culture in the tradition of Hunter S. Thompson’s “A Generation of Swine” and Greil Marcus’ “Lipstick Traces” […snip…] a trenchant, revealing and often hilarious collage of articles commentary and interviews with rock and rollers and other pop culture heroes […snip…] Loder also pays tribute to those who have kept the faith and maintained a rebellious stance despite the lure of safe celebrityhood. Further detail The majority of the articles in this book have been previously published in Rolling Stone, Loder beingRead More →

By:
On:
In: Related publications
With: 0 Comments

Published by Viking Press, London 1996 (hardback) St Martins Press, New York 1996 ISBN: 0-312-14444-X (hardback) Bloomsbury, London 2003 ISBN: 0-747-56180-X (paperback) Synopsis from flyleaf (edited) Here is the entire history of pop Los Angeles in all its splendor and excess… Barney Hoskyns has spent the better half of a decade researching this definitive account of a dysfunctional artistic community. From the days of the thriving jazz clubs in the forties to the menace of West Coast gansta rap in the nineties, the sound of this bleached, irrigated dreamscape is here in all its warped glory. Hoskyns travels through fifty years of music history toRead More →

By:
On:
In: Book reviews
With: 0 Comments

This is indeed a curious universe, but its cosmological clockwork has finally fallen into place; or it has for me at least. I’ve been listening to this kind of stuff for years but never really knew what to call it, and at last I now know: it is the music of the outsider. I remember when I was a teenager, a few friends were going on a trip around Europe. Finances had prevented me from going too so, as the next best thing, I recorded a tape for them to take my place. The tape would be so unusual that it would inevitably make anRead More →

By:
On:
In: Related publications
With: 0 Comments

Irwin Chusid takes a look at the weirdness of the world of Captain Beefheart, among many others. MUSIC, 272 PAGES, 6 x 9 75 ILLUSTRATIONS PAPER $16.95 1-55652-372-6 WORLD A CAPPELLA BOOKS MAY 2000 There is a tie-in CD release to complement the book, featuring tunes by the artists covered, including Captain Beefheart (“Vampire Suite” from Grow Fins. The CD has the same title and is released by Which? Records. I’d recommend that you get both the book and CD – I found them rabidly entertaining and I love this kind of stuff. Reviews You can read Graham’s review for this book and CD whichRead More →

By:
On:
In: Related publications
With: 0 Comments

Bath Books 2001 Paperback 85 illustrations Frederick (Freddy) Bannister was a major UK music promoter during the 1960s and 1970s. He handled the European tours of most of the big acts from America at the time, as well as organising some of the biggest festivals – Bath, Lincoln, Knebworth – in the UK. He promoted the 1970s tours in the UK by Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band. And he must be in all Beefheart fans’ debt for getting Don back performing by offering him a gig at the 1975 Knebworth Festival. This book of reminiscences of his career is a fascinating read that includesRead More →

By:
On:
In: Related publications
With: 4 Comments

Rock Music Memorabilia, in collaboration with collector Paul Brown, has produced a commemorative boxset, in a limited edition of 200 copies. These are numbered and signed by promoter Freddy Bannister. It comes in an impressive red box (although this is slightly misleadingly labelled as Festivals 1969-1979) and contains all kinds of goodies. The set includes the following: There Must Be A Better Way – the excellent memoir by Freddy Bannister facsimiles of the programme and flyer from the 1975 Knebworth Festival featuring Captain Beefheart facsimiles of the programme and flyer from the 1978 Knebworth Festival featuring Frank Zappa 10 pictures from the archives of collectorRead More →

By:
On:
In: Related publications
With: 0 Comments

Published by Music Magazine, Japan 2011 240 Pages Paperback Overview by Andy Bean This is a full-colour 240-page large paperback, which is basically an illustrated Zappa/Beefheart discography. Given the relative size of their catalogues, Beefheart fans who don’t like Zappa are at a disadvantage, however. You get: 6-page photospread of Zappa in Japan in 1976 10- page ‘Collections’ section, featuring pics of rare single sleeves and labels, sleeve variations (a whole page of ‘Safe as Milk’ sleeves), etc, for both Zappa and Beefheart. This section also includes the ‘Stand Up To Be Discontinued’ book/cd, and a 1982 art catalogue/book called “Conjunctions” from 1982. No otherRead More →