Derry writes about his first encounters with The Captain.

In 6th grade I saw a song called "Don't Eat the Yellow Snow" in a music magazine.  My uncle has an immense dubbed tape collection, so I asked for all his albums by this guy, Frank Zappa.  Apart from Apostrophe', he also had an album called "Bongo Fury" with some guy called Captain Beefheart.  What a grating, booming voice!  This guy sent shock waves through the microphone!However, I didn't know of his other albums and thought him just a Zappa sidekick.  "Bongo Fury" was a very Zappa album anyway, and didn't showcase Don's own music, so I barely got a taste of his genius.

The 4 Zappa albums I copied from my uncle were all I played for a year, and I knew them note for note.  It wasn't until 4 years later, after just getting out of school, that I heard any more than "Bongo Fury".  Dumb luck placed me in front of the television set mid-morning, just as Don appered on a Comedy Central rerun of Saturday Night Live.  I pushed record on the VCR not caring what tape was in the machine.  "Hothead" blew my mind.  Don made Zappa sound like the Bee Gees! "Ashtray Heart", with the sax solo at the end was an even better performance! After rewinding and viewing five times, I put the performance on audio cassette and played it over a dozen times.

  In the Rolling Stone "Top 100 Albums" issue, I saw the bizarre "Trout Mask Replica" and went out the next day and bought it.  I hoodwinked my brother into buying another album, "The Best Beefheart", which was too accesible for me after the SNL performance.  And "Trout Mask Replica" was so vast I couldn't comprehend  all of it.  It sounded like a great puddle of noise and took several dozen listens to notice the twists and turns to the music.

My brother then bought "Ice Cream for Crow" which was more digestable than "Trout Mask Replica", and I listened to this one all the time.  Months later I finally found "Doc at the Radar Station", and loved every song.  It was at this point that I finally began to digest "Trout Mask Replica". 

Now possessing all studio albums but "Bluejeans and Moonbeams", the whole picture of Don's genius is finally becoming clear to me.  I don't know what I'd be listening to, or what kind of man I would be if I hadn't seen that little opus "Don't Eat the Yellow Snow" 5 years ago, and sniffed out the REAL "Alternative" musical cornucopia.