Captain Beefheart

Booglarize is AWESOME

There are other copies of the broadcast video online where is it easier to hear that Don is doing some insane multiphonic singing. But this extra footage is amazing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBxt9jbNjS0

Yeah this is the one I'm familiar with. Opening with the most adorable German VJ you will ever see.

that is a cute VJ.
just watched this thing again. amazing.

Wow. Would take her to Tau Ceti.

Also great performance, goddamn.

That is a cool Beefheart clip.

I've finally got around to some of the side bands around that scene and Mallard and Geronimo Black were both a couple of cool bands too.

It's the way she says "baby". I think I'm in love...

She says:

"Whatever. Maybe that will happen to Captain Beefheart too sometime, because in America he's already one of the greats. His music is a little reminiscent of Frank Zappa, but you can't tell him that or he'll get pissed off. So for the next five minutes we have Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band, performing [a song with] the fairly burlesque-sounding name "I'm Gonna Booglerize You . . . Baby."

the children are the future

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBXBXBXyDac

uh, tough crowd? first of all, that kid's the best frontman I know. second, hell of a lot of "grown up" bands couldn't play this song

This is the year that the Captain finally clicked for me - picked up "The Dust Blows Forwards" anthology and really dig it!

those kids are pretty good, i sure couldn't play that song.
beefheart is weird to get into because his most famous album (Trout Mask) is probably the worst one to start with? Maybe not the worst, but not the best.

Decals is prob a mite less accessible than Trout.

yeah and i guess the latter albums are probably not great to start with either -- i'd say just start at the beginning.

See I'd tend to recommend Clear Spot as a starter.

It was kinda inevitable - XTC does a spot-on cover of "Ella Guru", the Blue Aeroplanes cover "Owed T Alex", and Robyn Hitchcock did a whole gig covering "Clear Spot". I'll circle back and check out the albums proper though looks like "Lick My Decals Off" is hard to find.

I can hook you up with Decals as a single long mp3 file if all else fails you. It's p much impossible to get the CD last time I checked and unlike Starsailor it's not offered through legit download services.

Trout Mask is, despite the flaws, i.e. Zappa's production and what not his best, even if Lick My Decals is his actual best record.

You could easily start w/Safe as Milk, but dive in to Trout.... If you can't see what's good about it by just looking at the cover he's not for you. Its that simple.

Kids were p good.

hey Gerald I have Decals on CD, hit me up via ILXmail if you want a flac copy. And yes, I would say start with Safe As Milk or Clear Spot, although Doc is pretty damn good too.

Scorpio did a 180gm edition of Decals that might still be kicking around.

Decals is prob a mite less accessible than Trout.

― my other pug is a stillsuit (Jon Lewis), Thursday, December 6, 2012 2:13 PM (2 hours ago)

see I think the opposite, if I'd heard decals first I prolly would've gotten beefheart earlier

mainly cause the production job on trout mask is so raw

lick my decals is on itunes btw

and youtube

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

Scorpio did a 180gm edition of Decals that might still be kicking around.

Bought that from a rec shop a long time ago, when they existed.

last three albums are killer btw, if your first album is Clear Spot, those would not be horrible next steps...

Decals has been one of my fave records for years, but Trout Mask's rep had always sorta scared me off from listening to it--Decals is purportedly *less* accessible than Trout Mask? I've been avoiding it for nothing?

Decals is NOT less accessible than TMR, but TMR shouldn't present any great difficulty for anyone who likes Decals

TMR has more variety.

It's a good album for doing other things to while listening.

I disagree with Julio fairly violently on this one, the production on "Decals" is abysmal whereas I can see nothing wrong with what Zappa did on TMR - what's not to like?

Beefheart should never have been allowed to produce himself, he fucked up "The Spotlight Kid" too

Its more what TMR's detractors say, as in they don't like what Zappa did -- or more what he didn't do because Beefheart didn't really allow Z to touch it apart from bits of button pushing (or so Z claimed).

Not really that good a judge on prodcution -- both sound fine and are his best recs.

I could do without some of the spoken word/ field recordings bits that Zappa put in tbh

what's wrong w/ the production on Decals, sounds fine to me??

The drums sound like shit for a start. You've got two great drummers on the records, what a waste.

well, it's a trebly-sounding alb, i'll give you that, but it's also a very guitar-y alb, so i don't really miss the bottom-end fug of TMR too much.

iirc from his bk, drumbo was p pleased w/ Decals as a rec - think the Magic Band even believed they'd made a much more 'commercial' object, after the alienating swamp of TMR

It's just nowhere near as powerful and ballsy as the music deserves, it's all a bit meek and scuffly and "avant garde", I'd rather it was more Canned Heat than Henry Cow, to put it crudely. I've covered this before... possibly on this thread!

yeah don't think we're gonna agree on this one - but they'd already made their Canned Heat alb(s) w/ eg Mirror Man, so decals is...something else

No, that's not what I mean, TMR is like a Canned Heat record, it's well recorded and you can hear all the instruments and it has a bottom end, there's "rock" in there

yr clarification only has me scratching my head even more!! i mean, there are a million albs by 60s blues-rock groups w/ plenty of bottom end, rock music chops, good clean production, seperation of instruments etc - i go to beefheart for something else, something that has as much in common w/ free jazz, exotica, the avant-garde, blahdiblah - and for me, decals is prob the ultimate expression of that.

Shiny Beast was the first one I heard (thanks to a review in the Spin Albums Guide and its availability at my local library). I had never heard anything that sounded so wrong or made me so uncomfortable. I'm glad I persevered, though, because I love the Captain dearly now. And that particular album practically sounds like pop to me these days.

i go to beefheart for something else, something that has as much in common w/ free jazz, exotica, the avant-garde, blahdiblah - and for me, decals is prob the ultimate expression of that.

Well there you go, I don't

First one I heard was "Doc at the Radar Station", which retains much of the avant garde aspects but with a tad more oomph, so, perfect for me really

lick my decals is on itunes btw

― CGI fridays (Edward III), Thursday, December 6, 2012 5:15 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Damn I did not know that! Goodbye, single unbroken long-ass mp3 file...

It's just nowhere near as powerful and ballsy as the music deserves
i love the way these records sound, but if you talk to pretty much any of the magic band members, they'd agree with that, not necessarily production, but just the way he made the band play....there's a zoot horn rollo interview in the recent feeding back book where he says as much.
"when beefheart was singing, he'd turn into a little kid who was freaked out. and that really dictated what he did. So then Decals ... more of the same. Then his accusation was that we'd ruined his music; he needed to sing slower. So then we did Spotlight Kid where it's like we were in Night of the Living Dead the tempos were so slow. You listen to the mix and it's all vocal. He wiped the band out."
again, i'm not sure i'd want the albums to sound different, but there's testimony form a guy who was there.
he goes on to say "what the man could do in a room standing there singing was never recorded, period. Interviews, live gigs, I would say the best you ever saw of him was sixty to seventy percent. what he could do when he was relaxed would have scared you to death."

Yeah I agree w/Ward - think I always found straight rock music w/oomph as such to be kinda boring - maybe apart from 50s rock n roll but the 'roll' content is important. Love all the spoken word/field recordings in TMR and so on.

Don't think this stuff is about power or balls at all.

to expand a little on my comment above, decals is more cleanly recorded. trout mask at first blush can sound like a mad rush of nonsense without the definition afforded by decals. you don't have to tell me that clean sound can blunt the immediacy of a recording (I am a connoisseur of garbage sound) but it's easier to appreciate the complexity and interplay of the magic band on decals. yeah, it's more "sterile" but it's a better entry point.

the best way into trout mask imo is to pick a handful of songs and get real familiar with them, the terrain gets less imposing if you recognize some landmarks - 'ella guru', 'moonlight on vermont', 'sugar n spikes', 'the blimp'.

if you're down with decals, trout mask will go down pretty easy. the material on both are *very* similar, it's just the engineering that differs. I guess trout mask does have more stuff that would strike the casual listener as filler - the field recordings, spoken word bits, free horn sprees - but that's like 20% of the album maybe?

after struggling through the john french bk, i've def come down more heavily on the captain's side, rather than the magic band's side, in this imaginary oomph/avant dust-up - like, drumbo in his book is v caustic abt the captain's horn playing, saying how horrible untutored it is (and explicitly judged to be dud in w/ comparison the sophisticated musical chops of the magic band, honed in countless club/bar blues bands etc) - whereas i LOVE the sound of beefheart's sax, and am happy for him to obliterate the magic band as and when he sees fit - nothing these guys have done apart from beefheart has been worth a damm, really ('cept maybe the french/kaiser/thompson etc recs - and again, drumbo isn't too keen on those, too much 'improvisation' and not enough 'rock' whatsits)

but after this skirmish i'm raising the white flag, retreating to my bunker and spinning... i dunno... Mirror Man for the evening

Beefheart was a v good saxophone player, had a great sound. As good as I dunno...the Pistols playing oomphy untutored rock.

Reading that zoot horn hollo comment above as 'recording unable to capture a wild live sound'. Well now that applies to so much great music! Par for the course..

Even though Decals has more conventional-sounding rock sections than TMR, in all I think it's a more complex work. The amount of detail packed into "Doctor Dark" alone is mind boggling. I think the removal of the 2nd guitar opened things up a bit, allowing the bass to take a greater role in shaping the tune. I think Marc Boston is the unsung hero of this band--his lines on Decals and TMR are just sui generis, there is nothing else like them in rock.

As for production I think the debate is just a matter of taste. I think the squished sound of Decals fits the jam-packed nature of the compositions themselves. I wouldn't change a thing, except maybe removing the sax from "Flash Gordon's Ape".