Captain Beefheart

[Chinaski]

So, any aficionados here?

As a Tom Waits fanatic it's a name I have always been aware of but never investigated too much. I got Safe as Milk and Trout Mask Replica.

The first one clicked with me pretty instantly but to be honest after a few listens TMR still just sounds utterly bonkers to me and not in a way I have got my head round yet.

If I didn't know that it had been so carefully organised (eight months in a house together or something like that?) I would have believed it was made totally off-the-cuff.

I am hoping it will be one of those records that once it clicks I'll never be able to understand how I didn't used to understand it.

[Guest Len B'stard]

Fuckin legend, safe as milk, trout mask replica, stone cold classics.

[Chinaski]

I watched a documentary on him last night. It's funny how everyone says he was a nightmare to work with. Literally everyone. Like a total dickhead at times but none of them say it with any resentment. As if what he could conjure was so mad and brilliant it was worth putting up with anything.

Bits of Safe as Milk sound like if Ray Charles came from Mars.

[Guest Len B'stard]

Was watching a documentary on Joe Strummer called Lets Rock Again where in this particular scene he's like, trying to drum up business and sell tickets for a Mescaleroes show, like, out in the streets and he gets a cold shoulder and he's like "you gotta have a hard shell when you're hustling, like Captain Beefheart said 'one cold vibe won't stop this here boogie'.

Then he goes on to tell a story of when he was with The Clash they shared a studio with Beefheart and they were running down Get Down Rhodey for ages and ages and ages and apparently someone had a word with Beefheart at some point, after having heard The Clash across the hall going through that song over and over and Beefheart was like 'Tell The Clash to shut the fuck up with that fuckin' Get Down Rhodey!' and Strummer was like, i was mortified that i'd pissed my hero off

But yeah, difficult to work with is the word. What annoys me about Beefheart is that no ones heard nothing of his ever except Trout Mask Replica, he's kind of like The Kinks in that way, you'll find any number of people that dig The Kinks but try asking them the names of any of their albums or anything. I suppose thats a bit snobby of me but there y'go.

A lot of people slag off Unconditionally Guaranteed as being his foray into commerciality but i think there's a lot to that album if you give it a few spins. I got into Beefheart through reading John Lydons autobiography as a kid and him raving about Beefheart as being really cool and sort of mental and it was like, well if Johnny Lydon thinks he's fuckin' mental it must be worth a spin, loved him ever since.

Our Dalsh recently got me into Frank Zappa, who for some reason or another is often grouped with Beefheart. What was the documentary you saw, was it good, i'd love to see it

[drtydane]

Thry did the live album bongo fury together and often toured together. Incredible voice. Then disappeared aftet getting ms.

cool video from the early ninties. Also an amazing painter.

[Ragnar]

Mad genius

[Facekicker]

Utter looper. Trout Mask Replica is what you get when you have Frank Zappa as producer and a shitload of drugs.

I like to put this on whenever I'm throwing a houseparty just to fuck with people

[dalsh327]

I think just about everything you want to see & hear from Beefheart's on You Tube.

Play this one!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muiYV4avZfY