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Fluffy
Administrator
USA
10739 Posts |
 Posted - 09/16/2007 : 03:56:22 AM
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....Captain Beefheart. I felt like I should start a thread completely dedicated to CB and his music now that TR has finally covered him. This album is absolute genius and deserves a listen by anyone who purports to like unique, avant garde music. It may take a few listens but you will get it eventually. I think Matt Groening said it best so I will let a story written by him do the talking for me.
quote:
For Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons, nothing can hold a candle to Trout Mask Replica
The first time I heard Trout Mask, when I was 15 years old, I thought it was the worst thing I'd ever heard. I said to myself, they're not even trying! It was just a sloppy cacophony. Then I listened to it a couple more times, because I couldn't believe Frank Zappa could do this to me - and because a double album cost a lot of money. About the third time, I realised they were doing it on purpose: they meant it to sound exactly this way. About the sixth or seventh time, it clicked in, and I thought it was the greatest album I'd ever heard.
I played Trout Mask for my blues-loving friends, who all went through the same reaction I had, and we'd sit around saying, Wow, if this is how great pop music is in 1969, just think what it’ll be like in 1984! Of course, we didn’t realise this was the best album of 1984... and it remains the best rock album I've ever heard.
I saw him perform in 1970, when he came to the Paramount Theater in Portland, Oregon, and all seventy-five weirdos in the city showed up. These were the people the hippies had rejected. I remember the lights dimmed, and then Ed Marimba came out with a plastic toy raygun, pulled the trigger a few times to make sparks, and intoned the words 'Raygun, raygun' over and over again . . . finally concluding with 'Ronnie Raygun', who was already Governor of California. Then Drumbo came out and they played a duet for a while, and finally the whole band walked on. It was the best concert I've ever seen, easily.
In 1975, at the very end of an orchestral concert that Frank Zappa did at UCLA, I remember Don came out after the orchestra left the stage and just started blowing his soprano sax. After the show, a couple of friends and I tracked him down and had lunch with him. He showed us this incredible sketchbook, full of stuff that was for more figurative than anything he does nowadays. One of the friends I was with actually bought a picture of a trout that he'd drawn. He got quite nervous when she offered to buy it and called his wife to check that it was OK. Not long ago, I went to a private view of his paintings in Santa Monica and he was there. But by that time weirdness had become hip, so he was surrounded by every hipster weirdo in L.A. And in any case, I got waylaid by Henry Rollins.
-Matt Groening
The above article first appeared in the December 1993 edition of Mojo Magazine.
Something that someone sent me recently which led to hours of internet exploring trying to find the origin and meaning of is the following pic:
The photograph has been a source of much wonder and speculation, astonishment and disbelief, and not least mirth and dismay. Could Paris Hilton, icon of everything shallow, really appreciate the complexities of Trout Mask Replica? For some fanatics Captain Beefheart's iconic album is at the opposite end of the musical and cultural spectrum from Paris Hilton's world. "Cognitive dissonance" and "cultural juxtaposition" are just two of the less rude comments which have been applied to the image. I believe it must be a photoshop job but I have not been able to find out a definite answer. For the sake of argument let's say it is a photoshop job well whoever did it seemed to want to convey the "cultural juxtapostion" of something shallow, something DEEP. Well we know which one is the shallow one so we can assume that the other is DEEP! It is not just my opinion but the opinion of alot of well-versed musicheads. Check it out!!! |
Peace & Keep the Faith
Fluffy         
"THE MUSIC BUSINESS IS A CRUEL AND SHALLOW MONEY TRENCH-- A LONG PLASTIC HALLWAY WHERE THIEVES AND PIMPS RUN FREE AND GOOD MEN DIE LIKE DOGS. THERE'S ALSO A NEGATIVE SIDE..." -Hunter S. Thompson |
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KevinLesko
Alien Abductee
3712 Posts |
Posted - 09/16/2007 : 11:50:32 PM
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| haha, I've never seen that picture before. I agree it must be a photoshop. Well, I certainly give the cd another chance. |
god
Kevin |
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Fluffy
Administrator
USA
10739 Posts |
Posted - 09/17/2007 : 12:41:32 PM
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I would also highly recommend the following documentary that I acquired about a year ago in Colorado while on TouR with TR during our heavy rediscovery of Capt Beefheart Trout Mask Replica. I watched it in my hotel room one nite and was so excited that I had to play it for TR in the van the next day. There is some serious deep insight into the music that they made over their lengthy career with lots of great, RARE footage. Check it out if you get the chance and have the inclination. TR and myself highly recommend it.
from Amazon.com:
The music of Don "Captain Beefheart" Van Vliet is like certain works of literature: lots of people talk about how great it supposedly is, but relatively few have ever actually heard (or read) it. That could change with the release of Captain Beefheart – Under Review, an absorbing, comprehensive, and lengthy (nearly two hours) overview of this idiosyncratic character's career that serves as the musical equivalent of a Cliffs Notes for, say, James Joyce's Finnegans Wake. Van Vliet retired from music in the early '80s in order to devote himself to painting, his first love; a disclaimer lets us know that neither he nor anyone in his immediate circle authorized this British-made film, and although there is lots of Beefheart music to be found here, the Captain himself is not interviewed. Plenty of others are, including many of the musicians who populated Beefheart's Magic Band over the years. Along with a host of critics and other "experts," they cover all the bases, from his earliest recording (a performance of the semi-hit "Diddy Wah Diddy" from the '60s teen TV show Where the Action Is is just one of the extraordinary number of video clips included) to his last (the 1982 album Ice Cream for Crow). The consensus: Beefheart's sound, though obviously rooted in the Delta blues (especially Howlin' Wolf's), was unlike anyone else's. With Trout Mask Replica, he blended a surreal sense of humor with dense, fragmented, seemingly chaotic (but painstakingly rehearsed) music; many others followed, including a few ill-conceived attempts at a more commercial sound, but that 1969 double album is still considered his masterpiece, a work that "reinvented conventional song form." Some of the filmmakers' choices are preposterous: drummer John "Drumbo" French is interviewed in a tree, talking into a telephone, while pompous Brit critic Alan Clayson holds forth from a church pulpit. But by and large, Captain Beefheart – Under Review is, as the Captain's himself put it, "fast and bulbous." --Sam Graham
Product Description
Captain Beefheart - Under Review is a two hour documentary film tracing the roots and history of this iconic musical legend. It features rare live and studio performances of Beefheart, interspersed with contributions from virtually all members of The Magic Band along with a panel of esteemed experts. The film also features rarely seen promo films, interview footage with Beefheart, TV clips, location shots and a host of other features. Covering his entire musical career and loaded with extra features, this is not simply the only Beefheart DVD on the commercial market, it is also the best ever film about the man and his music yet to emerge.
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Peace & Keep the Faith
Fluffy
"THE MUSIC BUSINESS IS A CRUEL AND SHALLOW MONEY TRENCH-- A LONG PLASTIC HALLWAY WHERE THIEVES AND PIMPS RUN FREE AND GOOD MEN DIE LIKE DOGS. THERE'S ALSO A NEGATIVE SIDE..." -Hunter S. Thompson |
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Trout Mask Replica: The genius of.....
