Search Results : captain beefheart » Rock Town Hall • Rock Music Discussion

Dec 182010
 

On the ride back from my company party tonight I listened to a rough demo of a new song I wrote a couple of weeks ago that attempts to touch on a fraction of the feeling I get from two of my favorite Captain Beefheart songs, the shattered glass blues of “Hothead” and the blow your speakers/blow your mind F-U of “Frownland.” In my humble songwriting efforts there are probably two dozen songs I try to draw power from, and while taking some pride in my latest efforts at internalizing these two songs I thought of the audio equivalent of time-lapsed nature photography of “Dirty Blue Gene,” my favorite Beefheart song ever. It was clear how much space Beefheart had cleared for my mind to run. Catching up with almost an entire day that I missed here in the Halls of Rock I have learned that Beefheart his died at 69 from complications from multiple sclerosis. Too bad. He was a great…artist.

Put this guy in the stupid Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame already. The world doesn’t need to pay any more attention to Neil Diamond. What can be learned from a closer look at his life, that he liked hash brownies? I’ve got no major beef with Tom Waits, but he’s no Beefheart. In fact, he wouldn’t be much of a Tom Waits if he hadn’t begun internalizing Beefheart beginning with Swordfishtrombones. This is not to dismiss his earlier albums, but it’s the Beefheart-influenced ones that cemented his reputation as an Artist and something more than the oddball of the LA singer-songwriter scene.

Hey, I really shouldn’t use Beefheart’s death to take shots and Diamond, Waits, et al. What I’d really like to do is celebrate the weird, driven musical world Beefheart created. Thanks for blowing open a clear spot in my mind.

Click here for an old post in which I tried to convince a friend who usually knows better that he should know better when it comes to the music of Captain Beefheart.

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Jan 312010
 


The title of this thread is more specific than it needs to be, but in an All-Star Jam comment on the current SHOWDOWN poll (ie, SHOWDOWN: Tom Waits or Captain Beefheart?), Townsman geo began to get at some of the issues I’m hoping we can explore:

I voted Captain Beefheart in the current poll, but I also really like Waits. Despite their apparent surface similarities, big, deep hollering voices and a tendency toward the aggressively harsh sound, they really come from different places. Waits is much more of a traditionalist. He brings a junkyard’s worth of musical detritus to what is, at heart, a traditional approach to songcraft. Beefheart, at his best, almost completely obliterates the most basic conventions of the electric blues based music that he started out in.

I’ve been revisiting Tom Waits recently, through his new live album, Glitter and Doom. The song selection is pretty good, the band sounds great, the recording is nice and live sounding… There’s a lot to like about this as a live album, including a second CD entitled Tom’s Tales, which I’ve yet to spend time with and which I suspect may be the best part of the concert. However, I can’t help but thinking that, compared with Captain Beefheart, an artist I love and an artist who must have been influential in Waits’ early-80s refashioning of his musical arrangements along “junkyard” lines, I am lukewarm on Waits.

For me, as geo notes, Waits is still a traditionalist at heart. I find his vocal style and all the junkyard trimmings to be a little distracting. “You don’t have to work junkyard,” I want to tell him.
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Jul 172008
 

Run Paint Run Run

“Fifty years from now you’ll wish you’d gone ‘wow’.”
– Captain Beefheart, conscious of his visionary powers, in a 1980 NME interview.

As I read through and participated in Townsman Sammy‘s candid Bullshit On: Captain Beefheart thread, I sensed some members of Rock Town Hall willing to give this admittedly difficult artist a fair shake. It’s a new day at Rock Town Hall – Your Rock Town Hall – so I’ve put together mix of decreasingly accessible Beefheart songs that may allow those of you who are getting anxious with only 22 years left on that 50-year “wow” clock that’s quoted above to find a way into this guy’s music. Do you get what I’m saying? Have a listen, and say “wow,” somebody!

First, a recording that makes me wonder why anyone wastes their time on ZZ Top, even at their best. I like my boogie refried.

“Nowadays a Woman’s Gotta Hit a Man”

Next, an uncharacteristically tender Beefheart song that you probably know from The Big Lebowski. Close your eyes and think of Julianne Moore‘s translucent skin if you start finding yourself troubled by this naked sound file.

“Her Eyes Are a Blue Million Miles”

Moore Moore Moore

I know you like hearing a guitarist cut loose now and then. On this next track, Beefheart steps aside, shuts up, and lets his guitarist do the talking.

“Alice in Blunderland”

Now steel yourself for a plodding, grumpy tale of devolution. This is the point where we oh-so-slowly head way back toward Mirror Man, where it’s just a few turns across the border to Trout Mask Replica.

“Grow Fins”

The following Clear Spot song is a good example of the benefits of Beefheart picking up on his fractured blues approach from Trout Mask Replica with more accomplished musicians and a fairly conventional studio sound. Plus it’s funny. I’m surprised, when I read of a Townsperson’s inability to dig Beefheart, how often folks fail to appreciate the man’s humor. I know, I’m sounding like The Great 48🙂

“Big Eyed Beans from Venus”

Here’s your reward for working so hard…

“Clear Spot”

Now, let’s shift ahead to 1980’s Doc at the Radar Station, where I think Beefheart and/or his label once and for all gave up on the idea that he’d ever be a regular rock artist and sell more than 2000 albums and, instead, made an entire album as focused on his vision as was anything since the primitve Trout Mask Replica. (Maybe Lick My Decals Off Baby was the last one made with as much integrity and focus, as Geo suggested, I don’t know. I get a cold feeling from that album whenever I spin it. I’ll have to listen to it again.) This album opener always gets me dancing in my head. As a lover of dry recordings, this album can’t be beat. Place me between a sandwich of Doc and Gang of Four‘s Entertainment and I won’t ever grimace over some insecure use of reverb.

“Hot Head”

Here’s another one that recommits to Beefheart’s old Trout Mask Replica approach while still rocking. The imagery in the lyrics is pretty cool, too, for those of you who can closely follow that stuff.

“Ashtray Heart”

Here’s a little ditty I’ve always loved. General Slocum and I had some really deep discussion over this track about a hundred years ago, if memory serves, although I can’t recall what wisdom we’d culled from the tune. If you happen to have similar deep thoughts, feel free to claim our forgotten insights as your own.

“Sue Egypt”

And now, what I believe is the song that the “landmark” recording of Trout Mask Replica first pointed toward.

“Dirty Blue Gene”

BONUS: Previously posted on Rock Town Hall:

“Kandy Korn”

Archives: All the Beefheart content that’s been fit to post.

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Nov 042014
 

A few years ago the dearly missed Happiness Stan wrote up a piece on an English cult artist I’d never heard about before, Frank Sidebottom. Despite Stan’s typically charming and personal presentation, this artist was hard to swallow. However, I had to give Sidebottom props, at first site, for being annoyingly funny. After that post faded from The Main Stage and after Happiness Stan faded from these Hallowed Halls I never gave Frank Sidebottom another thought…until this past summer, when my wife and I were desperate to see a new movie and came across the description of something called Frank.

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Oct 282013
 

LouReed

I first became aware of Lou Reed when I was 13 or so, the year I finally dipped into FM rock radio after a childhood of scratchy 45s; my first 2 dozen LPs by the likes of The Beatles, The Band, Joe Cocker, and Traffic; AM radio; and the latest TSOP album-length cuts hot off Philadelphia’s FM soul station, WDAS. Rock radio on the FM dial in 1976 wasn’t all the cool, older kids at my school made it out to be. I got to hear cuts from Who’s Next for the first time and more Mick Taylor-era Stones than I’d ever heard before on AM radio—and there Beatles A to Z weekends galore—but I had to wait through a bunch of stoopid blooz-rock that typically bored me once songs ran past the 3-minute mark: Led Zeppelin, Ted Nugent, Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Allman Brothers…not to mention the often perplexing genre known as progressive rock. Jethro Tull slotted in between all these uncomfortable sounds. Worse yet, FM rock in Philadelphia circa 1976 featured way more Jackson Browne and Eagles than I could stomach. Often I figured, The hell with trying to impress the cool kids! and flipped back to the comforting AM sounds of The Spinners and Elton John.

One long guitar-driven song that occasionally hit the airwaves on WMMR and WIOQ at that time was the Rock ‘n Roll Animal version of “Sweet Jane.” I already knew and loved “Walk on the Wild Side,” which somehow got played on AM radio when I was a preteen, but Lou Reed was just a name back then. The live version of “Sweet Jane,” with its swirling, fuzzed-out guitar intro followed by Reed’s strange, talk-sung, hectoring vocals and fatalistic lyrics always made me reach for the dial, the VOLUME dial. I cranked it up and marveled at the crunch Reed and his band produced. While the cool kids were slobbering over the quintuple-guitar solos of bands playing California Jam, I wanted to know more about the racket that this Lou Reed character was making. “Sweet Jane” (the live version), long intro solo and all, was the kind of song worth sticking out a friggin’ Foreigner song in hopes of hearing. The hairs stood up on my neck every time Reed sang, “Some people like to go out dancing/There’s other people like us, we gotta work.” This was the language I heard from my hard-working Mom after another long day’s work. This was way more true to the language in my home than songs about rockin’ and rollin’ all night, as was that “life is just to die” line that caps off “Sweet Jane.” Many a Saturday and Sunday morning in my house growing up was centered around such certain thoughts, as my Mom struggled to get out of bed and face another lonely day.

Not really the "best of," but a boy's got to start somewhere.

Not really the “best of,” but a boy’s got to start somewhere.

After a few months of waiting for “Sweet Jane” to play, I finally took matters into my own hands, buying the Rock ‘n Roll Animal album as well as a cheapo “best of” album. The “best of” album included “Walk on the Wild Side,” of course, as well as a bunch of songs that were really strange to my ears. “Satellite of Love” sounded familiar, like a David Bowie or Mott the Hoople song I would have already known, but some of the awkward songs stuck out, stuff like “How Do You Think It Feels,” which dealt with really personal, depressing stuff in a stilted musical arrangement. Like some of those lines from “Sweet Jane,” the mood of the song rang surprisingly true to the mood that sometimes pervaded my house. “Wild Child” was an easy release, like a cheap follow-up to “Walk on the Wild Side.” Some of the other songs were unlistenable for me then and now. From the beginning I would come to terms that Lou Reed had an amazing propensity to turn out absolute crap.

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Jun 192013
 

moyer

Happy birthday to me. I have turned 50 years old.

50.

Before receiving my AARP card a couple of weeks ago, I had been thinking my 50th birthday would mark the beginning of my middle-age period. Statistically speaking, though, I should have gone middle-age crazy 10 years ago. I’m two thirds gone if I’m reasonably lucky. Shit.

Saigon…shit…

So, I’ve blown my middle-age period feeling like an overweight man in his early 30s, but with the frequently curmudgeonly attitude of a septuagenarian. No sports car. No hot tub. No Tommy Bahama shirts. No island getaways. No golf. Just more records and guitars and rehearsals and recording sessions and baseball games and family and friends and food and Dugout Chatter on Rock Town Hall. There could have been worse ways to spend one’s 40s.

I’m 50, and despite the aches and pains of my first season with neighborhood friends in an over-35 baseball league I’m in consciously better shape than I’ve ever been in my life. Even when I was a kid and playing sports as frequently as the day allowed, I only played to compete. I was never conscious of my body and how prepared it was for whatever game. Stretch? Sure, when there’s a close play at first I’ll stretch like Willie McCovey. Jog? Only if the coach makes us. Lift? Sure, a hoagie or a cheesesteak—or both—to my mouth.

I wanted to share some really deep thoughts about reaching this milestone and how it relates to who I am as a music lover, but I’ve realized that no matter how happy I am with my life, when it comes to music I still hold to many of the same views about things that most people would not stop to consider. Even some fellow music lovers wonder how I can hold so deep a LOVE or HATE for specific musical details. Just last week my close personal friend and drummer, Townsman Sethro, was learning the arrangement for a new song with me when he stopped playing a rhythm on the ride cymbal and said, “Wait, you hate when I do that.”

“What do I hate?” I asked.

“You hate when I do this,” he said, as he tapped out a fancy, dancing pattern on the ride cymbal.

“Do I hate that?” I asked.

“You hate everything,” he said lovingly.

It actually sounded good at this particular point in the song, so I told him to carry on with it, but to avoid not getting too cute. Only in rare cases, I suddenly realized, am I cool with what I consider to be a “cute” pattern on the ride cymbal.

Much is made about the kinder, wiser, gentler moderator I’ve become since launching Rock Town Hall with a group of like-minded friends in November 2002 (when I was only 39 and probably acting like a mature 26 year old), but time has not broken me of some of my didactic approach to musical experiences. On this, my 50th birthday, I will share 50 didactic thoughts on the first 50 musical topics that come to mind. Enjoy, learn, and thank you for your part in making my life about as much as I could have hoped it would be.

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