..the secret, really, to understanding, to dwelling within, Trout Mask Replica is to make sure it’s the first record you ever hear..
Marcello Carlin wrote some excellent music appreciation in his now defunct blog. He dealt with subjects from Laura Nyro to Gnarls Barkley, but what he wrote about Trout Mask Replica at The Church of Me in April 2006 will be of most interest here.
..Trout Mask Replica is really a set of hallucinatory nursery rhymes, thus “Ella Guru” and “Sweet Sweet Bulbs” and “Sugar ‘N Spikes” somersault their way through mathematical rods and make you want to slide down banisters and pass the parcel while chanting “Here she comes walkin’/Lookin’ like uh zoo”..
The house where ‘Trout Mask Replica’ was made has recently appeared in at least two blogs. At Confluence City you can read about a pilgrimage made to the Trout House and see some photographs taken there, while at unokhan’s blog you can see a photograph of a painting of the house commissioned by the writer.
Another blogger, this time at the secret ingredient is water, has made a stab at commenting on Trout Mask Replica through the medium of a criticism of Kevin Courrier’s book about the album.
As an example of Don’s modus operandi we can use the exchange between Beefheart and Rockette Morton:
What do you run on Rockette Morton ?
Soto voce: Say beans.
I run on beans; I run on laser beans.
Not an improvised fragment but a rehurst part of a performance.