Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band

Captain Beefheart is mostly known for either the raw yet more accessible mid 60's bluesy sound from their first album Safe As Milk, or the flipside infamous chaos and sublime clattered alchemy that is Trout Mask Replica - both of which are totally awesome!

For those who haven't heard any of the Beefheart stuff before, i would categorise it (nearly) always as of some kind of primal blues. When they began, the sound is deffo closer to the 'normal' blues sound that everyone who has involuntarily appropriated the past 40 years of watered-down-white-boogie will recognise as the concept that we know as 'rock n roll'.



But even on the early records it's never just basic lame treading of R'n'B water - Beefheart's rich, deep, wise and extreme voice set them above and beyond from most of the zeitgiest and the band were also pushing a much more authentic and uncivilised pulse. As the band progress on the next few albums they start to deconstruct and stretch the formula with awesome results (see Mirror Man, Strictly Personal), until they unleashed the truly groundbreaking Trout Mask Replica. This album probably deserves a whole thesis in itself, but basically in short - it's a pretty fuckin unusual album! On the first listen you may think it is an utter cacophony or some kind of atonal structureless free jazz, but on another listen or two you might be lucky enough to begin to hear the soul, inner melody and genius of this eschew and still highly avant-garde album (made in 69!).



It's important to say that in preparation for this the recording, the captain forced his band to live in the woods for many months before - isolated from all human contact with little food apart from beans(!). It is during these months that the captain seemingly 'broke' the musicians, forcing them to rearrange their whole cognitive thought process about how to play music. Eg. If a guitarist wished to play a long note, he must not do that and instead bend the string and play something high pitched with 'droplets'! When it came to leave the woods, the band had invented a completely new type of fucked up music and composed all the tracks for the album. My favourite example of this sound is the closing track of the album - 'Veterans Day Poppy'. It begins as raging blues, before it's somehow fades into one of the most beautiful and sad yet highly abstract tunes that I've ever heard (I'm still baffled how they've done it).



Anyway regardless of it being an avant-garde classic, I personally think this album has much more in common with the original 'blues' than all the 60's Yardbirds/Canned Heat/white R'n'B etc. I personally like quite a bit of all that stuff too, but if you get a chance to hear the very early recordings of the blues – that proper stuff ain't the lame 4/4 comfortable-shoe-shuffle still pedaled by the likes of Mark Knopfler - it's warty and

full of the personal rhythms and crags of the performer. I genuinely don't think that Beefheart was trying to be 'weird' with this stuff - he clearly fuckin means it!

Check it out!



Anyway, i'll probably follow on from this article with something about Lick My Decals Off Baby - which I think is their finest work. In the meantime check out the clip below to see them at their most fucked up.



- written by Joe at Cult Cargo.com



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