Tag Archive: Trout Mask Replica


TOTALLY WYATT – A TESTAMENT TO FREE WILL

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August 10, 2015

DIFFERENT EVERY TIME – The Authorised Biography of Robert Wyatt – by Marcus O’Dair (Serpent’s Tail, 2014)

a wyatt bookI look for two things in a biography. Firstly, I like to learn something new and/or surprising about the subject; secondly, I want what I already know (or think I know) to be presented in a way that shares my enthusiasm. Marcus O’Dair‘s marvellous book scores top marks on both counts.

Based on extensive interviews with Robert Wyatt and most of the key people he’s worked with over the years, it is meticulously researched but never stuffy or overly academic.

The author (who is also a lecturer, broadcaster and musician) gives well-informed opinions but never seeks to force his point of view on the reader.

Robert’s story comes two parts – divided by the accident in 1973 that confined him to a wheelchair at the age of 28. Continue reading →

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CAPTAIN BEEFHEART: THE BIOGRAPHY

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May 17, 2011

When Don Van Vliet , aka Captain Beefheart, passed away last December, The Wire magazine ran a feature of personal tributes.

The one that most mirrored my own experiences was  by Mike Barnes who described his first encounter with the album Lick My Decals Off Baby. He recalled that his first reactions to this record were of confusion and even repulsion. At the same time there was something strangely fascinating about this music that drew him back and eventually this resulted in a kind of the epiphany : “the clouds suddenly parted and the sun streamed in, illuminating fantastic musical shapes I never thought could exist”.  Barnes ended the piece by saying that because of this revelatory experience “no music since has ever proved such an insurmountable obstacle”.

The first record I remember being repulsed/fascinated by was The Beatles’ I Am The Walrus, a song that now sounds relatively conventional.  However, this experience was nothing compared with the shock of first hearing what most (including me) regard as Beefheart’s masterpiece ‘Trout Mask Replica’. Like Barnes, the initial disorientation gradually gave way to a sense of  awe. Over four decades on it still sounds as radical as when it was released in 1969.

Barnes’ piece led me to his biography of Beefheart, a book I was vaguely aware of but had never seriously considered reading. I doubted that anyone could ‘explain’ what type of brain lay behind the music and I was right.

While Barnes book is a thoroughgoing, and occasionally illuminating, piece of journalism, the author himself is forced to admit that a work like Trout Mask  “resists demystification”. Continue reading →

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FAREWELL CAPTAIN

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December 17, 2010

Deeply saddened to learn that DonVan Vliet – Captain Beefheart – has died at the age of 69.

He was one of the true geniuses of rock.

All his albums are essential but Trout Mask Replica was his masterpiece and 41 years after it was released it remains as bewilderingly original and subversive as ever.

He was an artist  who never compromised. He gave few interviews and preferred to let his work speak for itself.

He retired from music in 1982 when he felt he had no more to offer and devoted himself to his painting.  After he made this decision there was never any hint that he might make a comeback, although he must have had many offers to do so.

His legacy will live on as a true inspiration for artists who strive to make music that means something more than massaging the ego or pandering to mainstream taste.

Photo of Beefheart by Anton Corbijn.

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Audio Encyclopedia

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March 27, 2008

beefheart

“Certain records cease to be records, they become resources, like an encyclopedia in a library. No matter where you are, no matter which level you’re at in your own music, you can go back to that record and learn something“.

Aaron Hemphill of Liars speaking about Public Image Ltd’s album Flowers of Romance in today’s Guardian.

He’s absolutely right. My personal choice of audio encyclopedia would be Trout Mask Replica by Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band a record that sounds wild, fresh and explosive every time I hear it.

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TEMPTATION TO ZOOLOGY

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November 17, 2007

The Temptation To Zoology is a short film made in 2004 by New Weird American icons MV & EE (Matt Valentine & Erika Elder) together with Gabriel Walsh.

It offers a quirky and apparently random juxtaposition of sound and vision. Its surrealistic qualities seems tailor-made to infuriate ‘straight’ viewers accustomed to the reassurance of a structured narrative.

The psych-fuelled babble of the film’s subtitle makes it plain that lucidity is not a priority, being described unrevealingly as: “an incredible myth of things seen in the skysea concerning an animal so human and its transfiguration during a journey to the trysting place of an aeon“.

The languid voiceover near the start offers no further enlightenment. The voice refers to “reflected moonbeams” and “infinitesimal colours” in a tone strikingly reminiscent of the drawled inserts that punctuate Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band’s avant-blues-rock masterpiece -Trout Mask Replica.

The film, much like MV’s singular brand of Free-Folk, makes a positive virtue out of going with the flow and trusting instinct over intellect.

There’s an inbuilt hit and miss aspect to this approach – it easily strays into smugness and self indulgence but at the same time, if you are prepared to engage with its random design and see it as a skewed representation of freedom it begins to make more sense.

The zoology in the title I associate with the classification and characteristics of animals and finding some kinship with Nature. It is a theme analogous to the social conditioning of human beings.

Habit, as Samuel Beckett once observed, is a great deadener and when conventional choices all too often make us comfortably numb the pseudo-hippy vibe that permeates this film looks more fun than working for the man. In the words of George Clinton’s Funkadelic anthem: “Free your mind and you ass will follow”

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