Captain Beefheart

Jeff Cotton seems like a nice old hippy dude, remarkably together considering.

Yeah, he's definitely not a casualty -- he warms up over the course of that very long interview and it's clear that he is very smart and very together and the years of religious and spiritual stuff he's been in have not left him unable to think, more the opposite. When he does a couple seconds of Pena, it's genuinely thrilling.

Raw Beat Club soundcheck reels from '72:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFW1DRA2xCs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fQTwewHV6M

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ei7OvpL9EmQ

Did the full performance from Beat Club get a commercial release as an edition of the Lost Broadcasts series about 5 years ago. They were turning up complete performances of various artists that had been edited down for broadcast. I assume it was initially a German TV broadcast series that wound up being torrented and then got some commercial releases. I got some of the shows down as torrents can remember Blonde & MC5 (one with the English bassist). I also bought the Atomic Rooster as an official did. So not 100% sure if the Beefheart was released.

Cool, even though the third video isn't working where I am. "Steal Softly Thru Snow"! Great how the band manage to ignore Beefheart's soprano sax and carry on regardless. Also we get to see some of Beefheart's legendary bitching about the sound and soundmen.

strictly personal underrated

i was (once again) trying to get into zappa and just ended up sliding into another beefheart phase

Strictly Personal is very good, it's just that the versions of the same songs on The Mirror Man Sessions are all-time amazing.

they are amazing in both forms! the takes of "trust us" and "safe as milk" on the album absolutely rip and stand with the others. "mirror man" > "mere man" for sure though

i'm probably close to alone in finding the obscuring effects in the production charming

I do find the phasing a bit distracting

I’ve just heart it comes to you in a plain brown wrapper and it might be my favorite beefheart

I’ve only heard, that should read

it was on one of those “albums that never were” blogs I think

i was (once again) trying to get into zappa and just ended up sliding into another beefheart phase

― mellon collie and the infinite bradness (BradNelson)

i used to be into zappa, he's seriously not worth it unless you're _really_ into the toxic masculinity thing, which i don't get the impression you are

aside from that it's just clusters of notes played really fast, "the black page" really does sum up his compositional approach fairly well

you can feel trout mask forming in the edges of the strictly personal/mirror man/brown wrapper songs and it's thrilling, one of my favorite parts of his catalog if not my favorite

Plain Brown Wrapper you heard presumably = the bonus tracks on Safe As Milk and last half of Mirror Man Sessions? If so then yes, unimpeachable set of songs, Beefheart at his best.

@kate: i did come away with a positive impression of early mothers, especially the cracked doo-wop stuff on freak out and cruising with ruben and the jets, and i looove zappa's instrumental jazz fusion stuff. uncle meat is sort of lost on me beyond "king kong" and a few other isolated tracks; part of the reason i ended up listening to a lot of beefheart instead was that trout mask replica seems to answer the question "what if uncle meat was 100000x better and way less stupid"

I was working with a teacher a few years ago and while out at the pub he told me a story about how Zappa and Beefheart once had an argument about whether there was such a thing as "the right note" - Zappa said there was, Beefheart said there wasn't. I said that it was a good example of why Beefheart was much better than Zappa. He said that he thought it was an example of why Zappa was much better than Beefheart. And that was when we basically stopped getting on with each-other.

@kate: i did come away with a positive impression of early mothers, especially the cracked doo-wop stuff on freak out and cruising with ruben and the jets, and i looove zappa's instrumental jazz fusion stuff. uncle meat is sort of lost on me beyond "king kong" and a few other isolated tracks; part of the reason i ended up listening to a lot of beefheart instead was that trout mask replica seems to answer the question "what if uncle meat was 100000x better and way less stupid"

― mellon collie and the infinite bradness (BradNelson)

hmmm, that is interesting! personally i don't think "uncle meat" is anything _like_ "trout mask replica". tmr was songs worked out over the course of a year by a killer white blues band in exhaustive brainwashing/rehearsal sessions led by an eccentric megalomaniac and played through basically live in one take. uncle meat is songs, by a weirdo rock guitarist with a semester of composition training and the mistaken impression that he was the second coming of edgard varese, from a hodgepodge of sessions assembled in a strange sort of proto-rundgren maximalist/absurdist stew.

you might like the really early stuff, there's some neat things on "the lost episodes"

i mean they're nothing like each other in conception for sure but i feel like despite that they exude the same odor

exemplary use of the word "odor" brad.

thread idea: albums that smell

i used to be into zappa, he's seriously not worth it unless you're _really_ into the toxic masculinity thing, which i don't get the impression you are

that's unfair, Zappa has like 75 studio albums, "the toxic masculinity thing" is only on 70 of them

lol

this is just to say that i could listen to "kandy korn" over and over again for the rest of my life

honestly the Daphne & Celeste version captures the essence so well I don't really wanna hear the original anymore

FPed. Which original?

(xp) Actually I'd never heard that version before, it just reinforces what a genius song it is.

Love the Daphne & Celeste version but the one on Mirror Man Sessions is in my top 10 tracks of all time.

Same here.

ohhhhhh my fuckin goddddd clear spot is so rad. i should've been listening to this record for years!!!!

hi, Brad

probably my favorite Beefheart ("Her Eyes Are a Blue Million Miles")

the "Click Clack" groove is my single fave Beefheart thing

I still own the two-fer that includes The Spotlight Kid.

I mean....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2ZMOKLsiuY

the daphne and celeste version of "kandy korn" is good, but i do think my favorite is the version from the magic band's second '68 peel session. unfortunately good quality recordings are hard to come by - that particular track is around in slightly better quality than the rest of the session from an alternate off-air recording. i also like this older famitracker take:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=360V-7LW5mQ

Stopping by to affirm Brad is 100% otm abt the Strictly Personal stuff (which I've only heard on the Complete Mirror Man Sessions)

CMMS really does a great job of bridging the gap between Safe as Milk and TMR

I supplemented my digital copy of "The Mirror Man Sessions" with the bonus tracks from the 1999 reissue of "Safe As Milk", they make a great extension and give a complete picture. There might be more from these sessions on the "Grow Fins" box but I don't think they're critical.

Great write-up about Doc At The Radar Station in The Quietus today:

https://thequietus.com/articles/28822-doc-at-the-radar-station-captain-beefheart-anniversary-review

Thanks will check that out later

ta for the link, spent the last hour looking at Hilma af Klint paintings. she's awesome!

Nice enough interviews. Lol @ the Throbbing Gristle 'like'

I love you, big dummy!. My playlist.

wow i really love ice cream for crow. my favorite of the final three

"Don Van Fliet"

Don't remember seeing this thread before the past week; it's gotten me looking around---a bunch of skeevey-looking CDs still on Amazon (several of which I bought quite a few years ago), but also, discovered that they now have a nicely-priced legit-looking Decals (ditto several others that I already have), also I'm Goning To Do... on mp3 (and a bunch of other Rhino Handmades likewise, incl. Television's Live at the Old Waldorf and that monster Fugs box). Grow Fins mp3 is $49.49, much less than even the used CD edition on there.
I've just finished first listen to Albums That Never Were's version of It Comes To You In A Plain Brown Wrapper, different from the Sundazed, and, as always, he tells you exactly what and why and how he used which materials---sound is crisp, well-defined without getting anal about it (I listened to the flac; also offers mp3s: 2 "discs," 45 minutes each):
http://albumsthatneverwere.blogspot.com/search/label/captain%20beefheart

Fast typing, sorry. "Kandyyyy Korn, Beeee reborn..."