Recording details
Date – late 1968 and March/April 1969
Studio – Sunset Sound, Hollywood; Whitney Studios, Glendale
Producer – Frank Zappa
Engineer – Dick Kunc
Musicians
- Don Van Vliet
- Bill Harkleroad
- Jeff Cotton
- John French
- Mark Boston
- Victor Hayden
- Gary Marker
- Doug Moon
Track list
- Frownland
- The Dust Blows Forward ‘N The Dust Blows Back
- Dachau Blues
- Ella Guru
- Hair Pie: Bake 1
- Moonlight on Vermont
- Pachuco Cadaver
- Bills Corpse
- Sweet Sweet Bulbs
- Neon Meate Dream of a Octafish
- China Pig
- My Human Gets Me Blues
- Dali’s Car
- Hair Pie: Bake 2
- Pena
- Well
- When Big Joan Sets Up
- Fallin’ Ditch
- Sugar ‘N Spikes
- Ant Man Bee
- Orange Claw Hammer
- Wild Life
- She’s Too Much For My Mirror
- Hobo Chang Ba
- The Blimp
- Steal Softly Thru Snow
- Old Fart at Play
- Veteran’s Day Poppy
Myths and legends
The album was written in 8 and a half hours on a piano. Beefheart went a year and a half without any sleep. The band never took drugs. The musicians could not play before joining the band and were taught every note by Beefheart.
These claims have all been controverted by various band members in recent decades and are of course entirely untrue; the Captain was just having a bit of fun with us. What is interesting about these claims, however, is that people seemed willing to believe the impossible about Captain Beefheart…
“Hello, there, kids, it’s your old friend Captain Beefheart! You know, me, the magic man, invisible, and all that jazz, ha! Flies through time and space, dimension warp, all that rhythm…”
-I Was A Teenage Maltshop by Frank Zappa and Don Van Vliet, 1964.
Album overview from Graham Johnston
Every description you have ever heard of the music on this album is true: it’s shocking, bewildering, inscrutable, dense, playful, hilarious, immobilising, a work of genius, unique, impossible, timeless, beautiful, overwhelming and immensely rewarding. Background music, however, it is not.
Every time I put it on, I feel an initial tremble of foreboding and uncertainty before I’m lost once again in its incredible world which I know so well yet feels so fresh.
If you have heard it then you either love it or haven’t learned how to love it yet. Ed Ward once confessed to Beefheart that he didn’t really get Trout Mask Replica:
“That’s OK,” he said, “just put it on and then go back to doing whatever it was you were doing, and it’ll come to you.”
If you haven’t heard it then buy, borrow or steal it immediately.
It’s Captain Beefheart’s most renowned work for a very good reason: there will never ever be anything remotely like it again and it’s worth putting in the effort to get to know it, no matter how awful that prospect might initially seem. None of this is hyperbole; you simply could not hype Trout Mask Replica.
Reviews
-
- Trout Mask Replica by Lester Bangs, from 26th July, 1969 Rolling Stone.
- Trout Mask Replica by Buddy Seigel, from 25th March 1983 Los Angeles Times.
- Why Captain Beefheart’s ‘Trout Mask Replica’ Still Sounds Like Tomorrow by David Fricke, from 15th June 2019 Rolling Stone
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Original liner information
ZOOT HORN ROLLO: glass finger guitar, flute
ANTENNAE JIMMY SEMENS: steel-appendage guitar
CAPTAIN BEEFHEART: bass clarinet, tenor sax, soprano sax, vocal
THE MASCARA SNAKE: bass clarinet & vocal
ROCKETTE MORTON: bass & narration
DRUMBO: drums [not listed on original liner, only CD reissue]
CAPTAIN BEEFHEART plays tenor & soprano sax simultaneously on Ant Man Bee, simran horn & musette on Neon Meate Dream; ANTENNAE JIMMY SEMENS sing lead vocal on Pena & plays flesh horn on Ella Guru; special guest artist DOUG MOON plays guitar on China Pig;
Produced by FRANK ZAPPA
Arranged by DON VAN VLIET
Engineered by Dick Kunc
Album design: Cal Schenkel
Photography: Ed Caraeff/Cal Schenkel
Special electronic modifications on Captain Beefheart’s band equipment by Dick Kunc
Most recent in a long series of contract negotiations leading to an actual signing: Neil C. Reshen
All songs written by Captain Beefheart
© 1969 Words & music copyrighted for the world by Beefheart Music Co. BMI
Added to the CD issue after the words “most recent…”:
CD design and restoration: Tom Recchion
An amazing Trout band photo, credited to Ed Caraeff, which appeared in Rolling Stone # 507 in 1987. More of these shots can be found with the Grow Fins box-set.
Purchase Trout Mask Replica
- CD from amazon.co.uk
- Mp3 from amazon.co.uk
- Vinyl from amazon.co.uk
- CD from amazon.com
- Mp3 from amazon.com
- Vinyl from amazon.com
Trout Mask Replica releases
View the Radar Station’s full information about the various editions of Trout Mask Replica which have appeared over the years.
Related links
- Trout Mask Replica on Wikipedia
- Trout Mask Replica on Discogs
- Trout Mask Replica on AllMusic
- Trout Mask Replica articles by Mike Barnes, Uncle Fester and Jason Gross at Perfect Sound Forever
- All Trout Mask Replica-related items here at the Radar Station
Help us out
If anyone is able to complete or update any of the information above, then please do get in touch.
I got this album when it came out. I was 17. I read the review in Rolling Stone and thought, “Why not?”
I have loved this album for 50 years. I really see it as two albums. The first is wild and crazy blues with such songs as Moonlight on Vermont, Dachau Blues, and China Pig. The rest is sheer avant-garde madness.
1969 was quite a years for both popular music and jazz with many classics that stand up well today. I own about 70 of them.
This year saw albums as diverse as In a Silent Way (Miles Davis), Hot Rats (Frank Zappa), Crosby Sills and Nash, Abbey Road, The Band, Nashville Skyline, Extrapolation (John McLaughlin), In the Court of the Crimson King, Let It Bleed, Santana, Monk’s Blues (Thelonious Monk), and Super Nova (Wayne Shorter). Captain Beefheart was in good company!
Doesn’t matter if they are stoned , I don’t want to know there moods when they made she brings me white jam and I don’t know where I am
There’s a big pain in your window it’s been how I have felt the last 60 years listening and in my special place.