Can you think of any meaty posts - or good 500-1000wd reviews - I could read online about this here thing? I'm curious about what's been said on the record, but don't really feel like reading a Beefheart book at this point.
― sean gramophone (Sean M), Tuesday, 4 April 2006 09:07 (eighteen years ago) link
― Le Baaderonixx de Benedict Canyon (baaderonixx), Tuesday, 4 April 2006 09:13 (eighteen years ago) link
reviews archive. lester bangs etc.
― AaronHz (AaronHz), Tuesday, 4 April 2006 09:19 (eighteen years ago) link
― haitch (haitch), Tuesday, 4 April 2006 10:50 (eighteen years ago) link
― Marcello Carlin (nostudium), Tuesday, 4 April 2006 11:19 (eighteen years ago) link
Of course, TMR will sound positively lush and pleasant to anybody whose daily listening includes the Boredoms or Merzbow or whatever other racket is coming out of Japan these days (this being 2006 and all.)
― Myonga Von Bontee (Myonga Von Bontee), Tuesday, 4 April 2006 13:19 (eighteen years ago) link
Ah, the expressive fallacy. This is pretty much why I don't like Lester Bangs, even though I like some of his writing.
― Abbadavid Berman (Hurting), Tuesday, 4 April 2006 13:26 (eighteen years ago) link
― sean gramophone (Sean M), Tuesday, 4 April 2006 13:33 (eighteen years ago) link
http://cookham.blogspot.com/
― The Shyster, Wednesday, 12 April 2006 15:06 (eighteen years ago) link
― Painless Parker, Friday, 14 April 2006 18:25 (eighteen years ago) link
― Stewart Osborne (Stewart Osborne), Saturday, 15 April 2006 09:38 (eighteen years ago) link
captain beefheart wrote most of the songs on the piano and gave the recordings to zoot horn rollo. beefheart's songs were mostly singing and banging, and rollo had to flesh them out into band arrangements.
this might have been natural for the band, but in the context of pop music up until that point, it's a pretty mind-blowing thing. messaien had been doing the same thing for the last ten years with birds, now rollo was doing it with beefheart himself.
as far as i know, it's the first "pop" record that rigourously exercised a conceptual performance practise during its recording.
― Owen Pallett (Owen Pallett), Saturday, 15 April 2006 14:01 (eighteen years ago) link
― Stewart Osborne (Stewart Osborne), Saturday, 15 April 2006 17:27 (eighteen years ago) link
anyway, I have been listening to Trout Mask so long, I don't perceive it as all that difficult, or hard to figure out. I mean it's a skein of drumming and there's some stuff hung on it--when I first listened to this record, it sounded dirty to me, not obscene, but vaguely musty, or like something just recently dead. I'm amazed he made as much of it work as it he did--it all works, for me, except some of the comedy shit which is better than Zappa's comedy music. the best is "Pachuco Cadaver" which kinda sums up what's great about this record, nobody has ever done anything that swings quite like that. as I always say, every time I talk about Beefheart, the essence of it is swinging/not-swinging at the same time, with those locked-in sections of...whatever, they're almost not even "riffs"--being the point, and the moss or whatever Beefheartian nacheral-world signifier you want to use, hanging over it. whether this was all DVV, all John French, both, who knows?
so, a record I don't listen to much any more--I still like to hear "Decals," "Clear Spot" and "Doc at the Radar." doesn't beat Howlin' Wolf but he comes close in his way, and of course beats Wolf and everybody, still to this day (TMR is hardly a buncha tired ol' beatnik/hippie shit, altho that's part of it, since that shit was tired in '69), in sheer egocentric bravado--right up there with James Brown or the Meters in my book-o-rhythm...
― edd s hurt (ddduncan), Saturday, 15 April 2006 17:38 (eighteen years ago) link
As far as I'm aware John French has always been pretty clear that "all" that he contributed to the process was basically to recognise the validity and significance of what Don was trying to achieve and to give himself over pretty much entirely to making it happen in whatever way he could. That's not to say that I believe that it would or could have happened without him - and I'm certain that it wouldn't / couldn't have happened in quite the same way without him.
All the guys involved in making that album went through some pretty severe privations during the 8-or-so months that they were basically locked up in that house in Laurel Canyon on starvation rations rehearsing that album over and over and over again and generally having their heads fucked.
Antennae Jimmy Semens actually tried to escape a couple of times and the rest of the band had to go after him and bring him back!
In his autoboiography, Zoot Horn Rollo otoh does seem to want to claim some credit for his part in the creative process - and whilst I wouldn't want to deny him that, it must be said his 2001 solo album doesn't seem to have much in common with The Magic Band.
― Stewart Osborne (Stewart Osborne), Saturday, 15 April 2006 18:03 (eighteen years ago) link
I really think "TMR" and that music is as much French as anyone--he's what makes it all happen. he saw how stiff Don was, really, and being a good Christian he decided to give him his head...
― edd s hurt (ddduncan), Saturday, 15 April 2006 20:50 (eighteen years ago) link
― Tim Ellison (Tim Ellison), Saturday, 15 April 2006 21:06 (eighteen years ago) link
― Tim Ellison (Tim Ellison), Saturday, 15 April 2006 21:08 (eighteen years ago) link
― Tim Ellison (Tim Ellison), Saturday, 15 April 2006 21:11 (eighteen years ago) link
― Stewart Osborne (Stewart Osborne), Sunday, 16 April 2006 08:48 (eighteen years ago) link
http://ajournalofmusicalthings.com/captain-beefhearts-trout-mask-replica-album-amazing-hard-listen/
― Kibbutzki (Jaap Schip), Wednesday, 6 December 2017 08:55 (six years ago) link
Meh
― Anne Git Yorgun (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 10 December 2017 20:29 (six years ago) link
nobody "really wants to like" metal machine music
― bob lefse (rushomancy), Monday, 11 December 2017 02:01 (six years ago) link