Frank Zappa vs. Captain Beefheart

And the best Beefheart is Lick My Decals Off, Baby.

saw a copy of this the other day on vinyl. i really should get this since it isn't 'available'.

Trout mask kicks ass: I forgot to ask Jeff W if he got used to beefheart when i met him for the FAP. hopefully he can tell me.

Ice cream for crow is a good starter: it gets the listener used to the madness of trout mask. and the title track is too good. that's so good the record isn't suffers for it as a whole, i think.

we've done this zappa vs beefheart thing before i'm sure. use the search engine.

I've got a 2 CD set of Zappa solos. and that's good, though it would be better if there was no band since the arrangement to accompany his solos are so insubstantial really. it doesn't allow the players to stamp their personalities, their know how, it feels as if they are reading from a score. but zappa's playing is v v good.

that said, Zappa was probably a cooler guy to hang out with most of the time & had more practical wisdom to impart to the youth.

The thing is Zappa is cod - Loonheart is the real thing. Zappa tries to hard whereas with the Captain, I get the impression that the madness comes naturally to him. His instrumentation and melody construction is inspired, with Zappa it feels like he's just going for oddball.

I believe Beefheart also has greater range (although this range was expressed on account of commercial concession), I mean chart the territory from Safe As Milk, through TMR, through Clear Spot, the love songs albums then late shit like Bat Chain Puller et al - the guy is taking off Blues, jazz, fusion, rock, pop, psychedelia and each time, the sound is unmistakably and delightfully Beefheart. Zappa might be a musical know it all but he doesn't have the feel for raw emotion and dazzling imagery that the Don is wont to conjure.

Also, Zappa's vision was too rigid - Beefheart suffered no such constraints which makes him the more compelling and interesting artist. I mean a guy whose greatest recollection of the Troutmask sessions is playing music to a pair of male and female eucalyptus trees and who then hired eight tree surgeons to save them after the rain got to them, billing it straight to record company, deserves attention.

From the man himself: "Zappa wanted to pretend that he had done Trout Mask Replica, on which he'd done nothing but go to sleep at the mixing board. It was way over his head. Not really over his head, just too unstructured and telepathic for him, because he's so formed and regimented. These guys had only been playing for six months when they did that album. You know, Krasnow did that, Zappa did that - it's all these guys wanting to cop a feel off Don Van Vliet. Years ago, I was taped by Frank Zappa, and a lot of ideas on a lot of his records started out with me. Like Susie Cream Cheese, What's Got into You?, and Brown Shoes Don't Make It. Hot Rots is my title. Lumpy Gravy - I was referring to the ups and downs of life, the lumps in the sperm and the gravy."

200 Motels has some of the greatest Zappa songs he ever recorded, but it is for some reason one of the very few FZ albums Rykodisc allowed to go out of print.

As far as the level of sanity and weirdness, which seems to be the major point of comparison thus far on this thread, I think it's true that Don was more "eccentric" but if FZ was just "going for oddball" as Jules' said above, then why is it Don in "Sam With The Showing Scalp Flat Top" who says, "...opaque melodies that would bug most people, music from the other side of the fence, a black swan figurine lay on all-color lilly pads, on a little conglomeration table of pressed black felt with same-color shadows, inseemed knob knees and whatnots, the long-hallway rolled out into oddball odd... Sam was a basket case!"

I'm pretty sure the Cap'n was "going for oddball," too, trying to go further than the weirdest beat poets of the day. I also think it's possible to try so hard to be weird that you convince everyone you're really weird including yourself and wind up a fried nut in the desert.

I get the impression Frank lived for sounds and genuinely liked the sounds he came up with. Lyrics seemed like just a way to express his sense of humor and dissatisfaction with his American experience. All the predictions he made in early 70s interviews about where America was headed are coming quite true. He was perceptive enough to pick up on these things back when most people were too busy getting wasted and following the status quo. He was disgusted enough to drop out of society in just about every way but criticizing it and possibly entertaining it, but mostly just doing what he wanted to do.

If you doubt he was a "genuine weirdo" you have to wonder in retrospect about a guy who lived in his basement with his live-in girlfriend, recording and editing music all day, who claimed his only friends were his family and everyone else was just an associate or a paid employee, whose own wife said, "Frank didn't do love." There are lots of FZ interviews on YouTube that give me the impression that he was always a very brilliant and perceptive man who really liked what he liked and passionately disliked just about everything else.

I can see why the Mothers would be pissed at him, but from Frank's perspective, I can see why he did what he did. While the Mothers albums were cool and probably most people's favorite stuff, they definitely were holding him back. There's plenty of great FZ music that has still not been released. After waiting a long time for a decent archival release, last year's "Imaginary Diseases" finally proves that. Frank mixed it back in '72 and then set it on a shelf and just let it collect dust. Did he know it was so awesome that he wanted to release it posthumously? Or is it just so on par with all the other tapes that he simply forgot about it? How much more of this awesome music is buried in the vault in his front yard?

As far as music goes, I don't find Frank's music to be weird just for the sake of weirdness, either. I like the way it sounds. I love Civilization Phase III, too! It's pretty amazing with a pair of headphones while you just lay down in the dark. It's totally alien, mechanical and precise. Excuse the salvia divornum, but it reminds me of a sea of robot bugs weaving an ethereal tapestry with telepathic precision. How do robots behave "telepathically?" Right, so they're programmed, then, just like this synclavier music. I mean to say they're all moving in unison and seem to point to some omniscient creator whose knowledge of music is beyond ordinary comprehension. I know these synclavier pieces were the result of years worth trial and error, obsessive re-editing and knob-fiddling, but it doesn't sound that way as an experience. Hearing string instruments transform into brass midway through a note, playing impossible sounds with unflinching precision as it all marches on like clockworks somehow makes me feel the reality of my speck-of-life existence in this vast, surprising cosmos. It is like watching a new species come into being, one you couldn't have imagined until you've seen it and then all you can say is, "Oh yeah, that's different. Huh." It's actually quite frightening at times, but then the idiotic piano people come back to talk nonsense in interludes of what sounds like severe retardation. The contrast of deadly seriousness and utter absurdity, to me, is hilarious. It truly gives a feeling of "teetering on the edge."

So, if you couldn't guess, I like Frank Zappa a hell of a lot better. I like them both and respect them both a hell of a lot, but I just don't know if I actually believe that Don wrote out all the instrumentation note-for-note. At times I've read he did, but I've watched interviews where he says he just made noises with his mouth or on a piano of what he wanted his band to play. So, the genius of Don seems to be spontaneous and uncontrolled, relying on the talents of great musicians to carry it out well. I'm not sure about this, but that's how it strikes me, anyway. Still, I have everything the Cap'n has ever put out as far as I know and I enjoy it all, even his "sell out" stuff. One thing that I find disappointing is that he didn't use his amazing vocal range too much. You always hear about what a range he's got, but all he ever did was growl and whoop.

I'm not quite sure where you're going with this.

I could be overly simplistic and point out that the reason it was Don who said those words was because it was Don who wrote them.

Alternatively I could point out that it was Zappa who introduced himself to the world by first labelling himself, everything that he was doing and everyone that he was associated with as "Bizarre", before proceeding to introduce himself and the other Mothers Of Invention as "Hungry Freaks"; whereas contemporaneously Don was at pains to assure us that, although he too might have been hungry, at least he wasn't weird....

That bunch of long-haired dropouts depicted in pschedelic colours on the front cover of Freak Out! certainly look waaaaay more studiedly weird than those nice young men with their suits and ties and their relatively short-hair who you can see on the cover of Safe As Milk.

I'm pretty sure that the truth is 'though that both Zappa and Beefheart were always aware (and if they weren't then they rapidly became aware) that they were considered by "most people" to be "music from the other side of the fence" - and that even if they didn't always think of themselves in that way (which I rather think they did) then they certainly very rapidly came to see themselves - and market themselves - in those terms.

Certainly I don't think either they or anyone else could have been in any doubt about their outsider status by the time of the Bongo Fury tour!

Neither do I believe that either of them ever considered themselves to be so much more (or less) definitively and authentically "out there" than the other, that there weren't regular periods throughout their careers when each of them in turn tried to out-weird the other.

Have you heard any of the accounts that any of the other musicians have given of the tension that grew up between Don and Zappa during the Bongo Fury tour, as Frank started out forcing his old schoolfriend to eat so much humble pie about the fact that Don had mismanaged his affairs to such an extent that he'd had to go crawling to Zappa for help so that he could earn some money, that Don eventually choked on it, spat it back in Zappa's face, and ended up spending several performances sitting on a chair on the corner of the stage like a sulky schoolboy, refusing to participate in the proceedings except when he was actually singing, and wiling away the time by drawing unflattering cartoons of Zappa which he would then hold up to the band and the audience?

Certainly each of them was a very different type of weird; but then it appears to me that they were each suffering from very different mental health problems: in Don's case bipolar disorder, and in Zappa's case OCD and some element of of autism / Aspergers.

That would certainly help explain why he "lived in his basement with his live-in girlfriend, recording and editing music all day, (and) claimed his only friends were his family and everyone else was just an associate or a paid employee" and indeed why his wife would have said of him that "Frank didn't do love.", wouldn't it?

That would certainly help explain why he "lived in his basement with his live-in girlfriend, recording and editing music all day, (and) claimed his only friends were his family and everyone else was just an associate or a paid employee" and indeed why his wife would have said of him that "Frank didn't do love.", wouldn't it?

Yes, it would! He was supposedly never very friendly at all. In interviews, Beefheart strikes me as lovably insane and I genuinely feel bad for the guy and hope he's alright. Frank affects me much differently. I agree with most of what he said, except when he's being hypocritical and narrow-minded, but he never seems lovable and I never "hope he's alright." He seems like a smart man with a cold heart. Maybe he should've been named "Beefheart?" I suppose it could be OCD + Aspergers, but I think I prefer old fashioned terms like "perfectionist" and "misanthrope." I like that the definition of misanthrope also includes "mistrust of humankind," not just "hatred of humankind." I think that describes Frank pretty well. He seemed to love the possibilities humanity had to offer but was thoroughly disappointed with the idiocy of just about everyone. I don't know that this is what Aspergers is like at all.

sorry about the past/present tense there. I keep forgetting the guy's dead.

Funnily enough, Frank was "Beefheart" first!

Oh and as regards "I just don't know if I actually believe that Don wrote out all the instrumentation note-for-note. At times I've read he did, but I've watched interviews where he says he just made noises with his mouth or on a piano of what he wanted his band to play.", I think the answer depends on your interpretation of the word "wrote".

If you mean it as synonymous with "composed", then by most reasonable accounts he did (although Drumbo, Zoot Horn Rollo and Gary Lucas in particular were all responsible at various times for the arrangements of many of those compositions).

Otoh, if you mean it literally as describing a process of making little squiggly marks on pieces of paper with pens or pencils, then nothing I've ever read has led to me to believe that Don would even have the first idea where to start with such a process.

"Funnily enough, Frank was "Beefheart" first!"

I dunno what your basis is for saying that Mark, but the ideal cast list for for Captain Beefheart Vs. The Grunt People (the play / filmscript / teenage masturbation fantasy which Don and Frank wrote* when they were at High School, and which afaik is the first authenticated appearance of the name) clearly has Don in the role

http://www.beefheart.com/zigzag/gruntpeople/01.htm

* - predictably, of course, it was Frank rather than SDon who laboriously typed it all out; and equally predictably it was Frank's archives that the original was subsequently retrieved from!

Oh, OK. I'd read it as the other.

Hangabout, 1969 re-write? With Grace Slick as "Celestia"?

Hmm.

"I suppose it could be OCD + Aspergers, but I think I prefer old fashioned terms like "perfectionist" and "misanthrope.""

I think the difference depends largely on which side of the fence you're viewing them from.

And how well you really know them, which in both of our cases is not very well, right?

Their music is really nothing alike, is it?

I wonder how they got to be "school friends" when Don claims he went to one day of school in his whole life and then locked himself up in a room and sculpted until he was a teenager with his parents sliding meals under the door. Meanwhile, Frank used to play guitar on the lawn in front of the high school.

They both didn't go to the *same school*?

(alt: they lied)

"Hangabout, 1969 re-write? With Grace Slick as "Celestia"?"

This was the idealised cast-list of a couple of teenage boys and the casting of Grace Slick was probably just as optimistic as the inclusion of Howlin' Wolf.

Iirc the original version of the script also specified that the "Moon Maidens" were to be extremely attractive young ladies, and that for them to appear wearing extremely skimpy and revealing costumes was essential to the development of.... well, something that was a priority to the teenage Zappa and Vliet certainly.... the plot maybe?

yes yes yes, but they wouldn't even have known who Grace Slick was when they were teenagers.

"They both didn't go to the *same school*?"

Oh yes they did y'know. Antelope Valley High School, Lancaster, CA.

You can see their Graduation pictures here: http://www.beefheart.com/zigzag/pictures/graduation.htm

I have "The real Frank Zappa book" over there on my right.

It has no index tho.

(xpost I meant it as "they both were avoiding going to the same school as opposed to avoiding going to different schools", but first rule of comedy spike: Never explain, etc)

there was a zappa on mike douglas thing floating around on youtube a while back - zappa's guitar tone when he's just pickin' away is to fucking die for

beefheart's albums are better, but sometimes you really want crazy-good tone & chops, and zappa had 'em to spare

"yes yes yes, but they wouldn't even have known who Grace Slick was when they were teenagers."

Aaah, yes, I see what you're saying now: you're right of course (even given that all three of them were from California, all about the same age, and probably knew a lot of the same people; Slick was her married name, so that confirms it, doesn't it?).

I can only think that she must have been brought in as a substitution during the re-writing process.

Of course this does help regarding another point: if spending a substantial amount of time laboriously re-typing a filmscript which you had originally written in collaboration with one of your amusingly zany schoolchums (and apparently with one hand on your nob) when you were a hromonally-challenged teenager; and which you have absolutely no prospect of actually ever turning into a film; when you're 29 years old and already have any number of reasonably successful careers as a member of a band and a solo artist with 7 albums to your credit, as the owner of a record label and a recording studio, and as a recording engineer and producer; isn't symptomatic of some sort of mental health problem....

Frank liked continuity and really bad film ideas.

Frank certainly spent an extraordinary amount of time and effort recording everything around him on those occasions when he was exposed to external stimuli, so that when he was subsequently able to withdraw back to the safety of his studio / family, he could continually re-visit and re-write every little detail.

Don, otoh used to enjoy bewildering and confusing people by taking random fragments of truth and weaving hugely expansive and fantastic fantasies around them.

Unfortunately the consequence is that you can never really believe either of them, even when they both appear to be saying the same thing.

Have you heard that recording of the two of them live on the radio, playing old archive things like "Metal Man Has Lost His Wings" and laughing at their misadventures, the idiosynracy involved in naming their band "The Suits" but spelling it "Soots"? Sounds like they were having a good time - strange to hear in the wake of all their subsequent sniping (primarily from DVV.)

I've liked Zappa a lot in the past, and he's ultimately probably released as many LPs I love as has Beefheart. But we're talking 30% of one man's complete canon vs. 90% of another's.

Beefheart for me.

Pit of Despair vs. Torture Never Stops?
http://youtube.com/watch?v=vHijygz_Lmk

Zappa, because he occasionally wrote good melodies.

Neither, because what the hell?

"Have you heard that recording of the two of them live on the radio, playing old archive things like "Metal Man Has Lost His Wings" and laughing at their misadventures, the idiosynracy involved in naming their band "The Suits" but spelling it "Soots"? Sounds like they were having a good time - strange to hear in the wake of all their subsequent sniping (primarily from DVV.)"

There's actually a bootleg CD of that called "An Evening With Frank Zappa & Captain Beefheart" - I believe it was recorded just as the Bongo Fury tour was starting and before things between the two of them became strained.

They do seem to have had a somewhat tumultuous relationship over the years, although I rather suspect that on occasions they both used to play on this as a means of getting publicity and raising both of their profiles.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of their various fallings-out however, it does seem that Zappa treated Don pretty badly (and the Zappa Trust seem to be perpetuating this injustice) when he refused to release the master tapes for the original Bat Chain Puller album that the Magic Band had just finished recording, after he (Zappa) dismissed Herb Cohen (who had been Zappa's manager for the preceeding 10 years) in May 1976, and began legal proceedings against him, stating that Cohen and his lawyer brother had been stealing money from him and that part of this money had been used to fund the Bat Chain Puller recordings.

Whatever Cohen and his brother or may not have done there doesn't ever seem to have been any suggestion that Don was party to this deceit, so this just seems to have been act of spite on Zapa's part, maybe as revenge for Don's behaviour on the Bong Fury tour a few months earlier.

btw, does anyone happn to know if there are any plans to release 200 Motels on DVD any time soon?

Nobody really knows what went on between Frank and Don except Frank and Don, not even musicians on the Bongo Fury tour. Frank might've appeared mean, but maybe he was fed up. I'm surprised that Don acting like a petulant child on stage wasn't enough to get him booted from the tour, actually. Maybe give him some credit for that and the fact that, despite being pissed about it, was willing to help the guy out. Maybe the guy was becoming more and more helpless and thankless and Frank finally got tired of it.

Has anyone here but me heard the 2006 "Imaginary Diseases" release? If you like the Hot Rats period, you'll love it! It's crazy good!

This brief Rolling Stone interview makes Don sound like the jerk: http://www.freewebs.com/teejo/argue/zapcook.html

If Frank thought the Mothers were holding him back, imagine how he felt about a guy like this!

If that's the boot with the version of "Orange Claw Hammer" from the Grow Fins collection, I'd like it but how?

"This brief Rolling Stone interview makes Don sound like the jerk"

Personally I think that interview makes Frank sound like a far bigger jerk than Don.

Look at it this way: not content with the amount of fawning, grovelling and toadying that Don's already volunteered (and which can't have come at all easily to someone with an ego the size of Don's!) Zappa still feels compelled to stick the boot into Don a bit more by telling a journalist that story about Don flunking an initial audition - which isn't just personally spiteful, it's self-destructively unprofessional (equally uncharacteristic behaviour for Zappa who was normally a model of self-restraint and professionalism - hence incidentally, I think why Don wasn't kicked off the tour when he eventually started to kick back at Zappa).

Just to make this whole episode a little more interesting it may also be worth noting that (afaik) no-one who was actually in the band at the time and who might reasonably have been expected to have been present at any formal audition for a new vocalist seems to have any recollection of it ever having happened.

It's also worth considering that two of the musicians who played on that tour (Bruce Fowler and Denny Walley) subsequently chose to leave their (relatively) regular, well-paid and secure jobs working for Zappa, to tajke their chances working with Don - indeed over the years there were a significant number of musicians who left Zappa to join Beefheart (Art Tripp, Roy Estrada, Elliot Ingber, Jimmy Carl Black) but afaik in all that time no-one ever went the other way from Beefheart to Zappa.

I'm not saying that Don is / was a nice guy by any stretch of the imagination: he was quite clearly lazy, disorganised, immature, selfish, inconsistent, a bully, a fantasist and a control freak.

I just think that, despite being up against such world-class competition, Zappa may actually have been just ever so slightly worse.

"If that's the boot with the version of "Orange Claw Hammer" from the Grow Fins collection, I'd like it but how?"

Well you could try flirting we me outrageously.

It wouldn't work, but it might be a laugh.

Failing that, just drop me a line Mark.

xpost The interviewer probably asked Frank what's the deal with Don and Frank told it like it is, like Frank tends to do. If he was really going to "stick the boot" into Don, he might have tried some of Don's tactics! He simply pointed out that Don was not right for the band. Otoh, Don told the press various outright vicious lies about Frank that amount to character assassination, just 2 months after he gave this particular interview. We know they are lies because Don contradicted himself several times about these things, so if he's contradicting himself and not just Frank's version, then one of his stories has to be a lie. Since practically every word out of the guy's mouth is complete bullshit as he praises his own honesty and artistic integrity, I have no trouble believing Frank was the nobler of the two. Then, he apologizes and Frank takes him back and helps him again and again. I wouldn't. Would you?

The crotchety, insane bandleader gleaning brilliant performances from a traumatized & brainwashed band is, just, very appealing.

I keep wondering about this. "Traumatized & brainwashed?"

"Traumatized & brainwashed?"
There are numerous accounts of Don's malevolence towards the band in various sources. He allegedly spiked band members with LSD. He would harangue them for hours during the Trout Mask period. When he gave Drumbo the boot, he literally threw him down a flight of stairs. All kinds of shit.

"He simply pointed out that Don was not right for the band."

Then why hire him? Charity? From a man "who claimed his only friends were his family and everyone else was just an associate or a paid employee"? How does that work then?

And whatever the reason for hiring him, why would someone with Zappa's media savvy attempt to rubbish the reputation of his own band and attempt to saboutage a tour which he was ultimately footing the bill for by telling the press that he didn't think that the vocalist that he himself had just hired was really up to much?

"Otoh, Don told the press various outright vicious lies about Frank that amount to character assassination, just 2 months after he gave this particular interview."

Can you give me specific examples of this?

"We know they are lies because Don contradicted himself several times about these things"

Don contradicted himself all the time. Partly because he was a fantasist and partly because he enjoyed fucking with journalists' heads.

Unlike Zappas however he was never sufficiently committed to any of his fantasies that he went to the length of attempting to re-write history accordingly.

Don, in short, was a rubbish liar - Frank otoh was sharp and focused and fastidious and painstaking and controlled and self-posessed enough to be an extremely accomplished one.

"Since practically every word out of the guy's mouth is complete bullshit...."

This sounds like a pretty reasonable appraisal, at least as regards most of what Don said to the press, however:

".... as he praises his own honesty and artistic integrity"

I can't help but wonder here if we are still talking about the same Don Van Vliet.

I'm talking about the one who disliked being identified as the leader of the band ("it makes me itch to think of myself as Captain Beefheart. I don't even have a boat") and who has consistently and publicly disowned two of his own albums and actually encouraged his fans to take one of them back to the shop and demand a refund.

"I keep wondering about this. "Traumatized & brainwashed?""

I take it you haven't heard any of the stories about the way Trout Mask Replica was created?

internet

btw, that reminds me, did you know that Frank "invented" the mp3? Back in the early 80s he wanted to digitize his music and let his fans download it through the phone lines. !!!!

Well, I was under the impression that whoever linked to it was the same guy with a different name at this point taking the lazy way out of repeating himself
Sorry bro, but actually I was just trying to link to the whole thread but I linked to that one post by accident. But, um, "lazy way out"? I was under the impression it was good form to link to stuff and not repeat the same thing over and over- maybe it's written in the FAQ- but I guess for some people more is more.

I didn't mean lazy in a bad way. Nothing wrong with laziness if it will suffice!

<I>J, do you like Bongo Fury?

-- dean ge, Thursday, July 12, 2007 9:48 AM</I>

A day late, he answers:

Not really, but that could be the relatively cheap-ass live recording. "Debra Kedabra" is okay, but even the poems sound to me like Beefheart's trying to fit into a more rigid format where he's not really comfortable. But then again, I feel much the same way about most of <I>Safe As Milk</I>, so what do I know?

I like <I>Freak Out</I> and <I>WOiIftM</I>, and more to the point of this thread, <I>Hot Rats</I>, but I'd probably listen to any Beefheart except <I>Bluejeans and Moonbeams</I> over all three.

Goddamn BBCODE!

I like Bluejeans & Moonbeams! But I loooove Clear Spot. I also dig the rawness of that live recording, but it is conceivable that he "remastered" it (ruined it) in the 80s like he did most of his back catalog. Shoulda just vinyl transferred 'em and left it that way. Or give 'em to Bob Ludwig!

Hello all, sorry to have abandoned this thread but I got dragged away from my PC to particpate in some of that tedious "real world" stuff (in this instance my missus' daughter's graduation). Pleased to see this has carried on runmbling 'though.

There are a couple of points I feel a need to address (and there may be more when I've digested the rest of the last couple of days' postings!)

First, there does seem to be some confusion between the two albums that Don has "consistently and publicly disowned" which I was referring to (Unconditionally Guaranteed and Blue Jeans and Moonbeams) and "those two albums he said he made for the band so they could enjoy doing commercial stuff" ((Clear Spot and The Spotlight Kid).

Iirc what Don said of the latter (with his tongue very clearly in his cheek) was that following Trout Mask Replica and Lick My Decals Of Baby, the band were keen to record some material that might be sufficiently popular that they might generate enough income to allow them to actually eat for a change.

Even then, the story is that Don took most of the money that was intended to feed the band and spent it on that rather magnicent jacket that he was wearing on the cover of The Spotlight Kid!

As for the other two albums (Unconditionally Guaranteed and Blue Jeans and Moonbeams), even Don would have been hard-pushed to blame them on the band, given that they all walked out on him in disgust immediately after recording the former of those, and that the other one was recorded without them, with the bunch of hired-hands usally refrred to by Beefheart fans as "The Tragic Band".

Despite Don's refusal to bow to the pressure created by having his band walk out on him on the eve of a world tour (hence the ill-conceived Tragic Band tour, the even worse-conceived Blue Jeans and Moonbeams album and his public dismissal of Mallard - the band that was subsequently formed by the rest of the former Magic Band - as a "bunch of quacks""), Don was very clearly hit very hard by this and was (by his standards, at least) a humble and broken man by the time he found that he'd made such a mess of his business affairs that he had no alternative other than to go cap in hand to Zappa, which was what led up to the Bongo Fury tour.

Where can I read more about Beefheart? Is there a particularly good biography you recommend? I read a few stories about how fried and paranoid he became from acid use. One time, he got on stage and sang one line, then got scared and ran off stage, falling down and hurting himself in the process. On the Bongo Fury tour, he was apparently carrying a grocery bag with his belongings (brown paper sack) that contained his books and a saxophone. He would absent-mindedly leave it anywhere and everywhere, just get up and leave, and drove the road manager nuts. He apparently tormented his band for 6 months while trying to create the music for Trout Mask Replica (the band says the "big story" that he wrote the album himself in 8 hours is a complete lie), then spent only 4 hours in the studio, which surprised Zappa, then listened to the final version and said, "That's it! That's the first record to really capture what the Magic Band actually sounds like!" and then didn't go around Frank's house for 2 weeks and later on claimed Frank ruined the album. I've also read that people attest to his bizarre occasional psychic experiences and, as a guy who was pretty into the doses myself, I'd like to read more about how this character operated.

Stewart, dear -- to put a simpletonistic questions quite bluntly: you seem to feel (and give off teh appearance of, doncha?) that Don 'Hearts's music is a teeny-wienery sniff-snuffy bitt closer to yers heart than are teh Zappa-Papa's sounds, don't ya?

Second, that second interview that Dean has linked to, far from being "just 2 months after he gave...." the first interview that we were discussing, was actually more like four years earlier, and as such relates to an entirely different dispute between the two of them.

If I'm correct then on that occasion Don was expressing his anger at the fact that Zappa had recently lifted two tracks from Trout Mask Replica ("The Blimp" and "Steal Softly Through Snow") and included them on a cut-price record showcasing various Bizarre label signings, called Zapped.

The reason that Don was pissed off about this was that, not only had this been done without his knowledge and consent, but he felt (and with obvious justification, I think!) that not only were the tracks that Zappa had chosen far from being representative of Trout Mask Replica (does anyone want to argue that one???), but also that, by juxtaposing them between tracks by a bona fide certifiable headcase fruit-loop (Wild Man Fischer) and the recordings of a bunch of non-musician celebrity groupies dicking around in Zappa's studio with a couple of stoned Mothers (The GTO's), Captain Befheart And His Magic Band were being diminished to a similar level and trivialised as mere freaks (the word "freak" here in it's Victorian circus sideshow sense of bearded ladies, elephant men and other deformed curiosities, rather than it's 60's subculture sense of freakbeat and hungry freaks, daddy!).

Of course, quite typically, Don is quite incapable of making a clear and concise point of his genuine grievances and leaving it at that, but ends up over-embellishing it to the point where he undermines every valid point he had and ends up looking like a spoiled and petulant child (which, of course, is precisely what he was) throwing all of his toys out of his pram in a wild and uncontrolled tantrum (which, I would suggest, is precisely what he was doing).

Consequently he says things which everyone who knew anything about Zappa and Beefheart would have known was a ridiculous and preposterous lie "I only met the guy about 25 times....", contradicting himsef (quite apart from anything else, if you only met him 25 times, then how could Frank have stolen so much stuff from you Donnie?!?) and just talking such absolute utter patent bollocks ("he stole all my facial expressions and my movements too") that he makes himself laughable.

Strangely 'though, some of what any reasonable person might think was bollocks was actually, at least to some extent, true (Don was indeed a child prodigy, and his uncanny ability to predict that someone was about to ring him has been testified to by too many people not to be taken seriously), hence it becomes almost impossible to tell exactly where the bullshit ends and the truth begins - which, I tend to think, is exactly what Don wanted.

It is also apparently true that the expression "lumpy gravy" was common currency between the teenage Zappa and Vliet, although clearly we'll never know for sure which one actually originated it (fwiw my personal gut-feeling is that "lumpy gravy" does sound more like a Vliet expression than a Zappa - but then the same gut-feeling tells me that the name "Captain Beefheart" sounds more like Zapa expression that a Vliet one - so that'll be one-all then!).

"Stewart, dear -- to put a simpletonistic questions quite bluntly: you seem to feel (and give off teh appearance of, doncha?) that Don 'Hearts's music is a teeny-wienery sniff-snuffy bitt closer to yers heart than are teh Zappa-Papa's sounds, don't ya?2"

Musically, no secret that I prefer Beefheart, although I also love a lot of Zappa's.

As people however, I just see Don as a spoiled petulat brat and Zapa as a slighty older, more calculating child who probably enjoyed pulling the wings off insects.

"Where can I read more about Beefheart?"

At least until Drumbo finally gets his auobiography published, Mike Barnes' excellent biog. is definitely the best place to start. Zoot's book is also good but a bit biased and bit lightweight. Avoid anything by Ben Crikshank or Ken Brooks like the plague.

Fwiw, purely as a scientific experiment intended to help answer t**t's very valid question more accurately, I just asked my missus which was a better description of me: "a spoiled petulat brat" or "a slighty older, more calculating child who probably enjoyed pulling the wings off insects.", and she replied - with worryingly little hesitation - that I was most definitely the pulling-the-wings-off-insects type.

Of course it should go without saying that I'll get the bitch later for that remark.

Please give my humblest regards to yous missus, Stewart!

xpost to Stewart- It wasn't 2 months later? I must've read the dates wrong.

The reason that Don was pissed off about this was that, not only had this been done without his knowledge and consent, but he felt (and with obvious justification, I think!) that not only were the tracks that Zappa had chosen far from being representative of Trout Mask Replica (does anyone want to argue that one???)

Is this something I need the "Grow Fins" box set to understand?

but also that, by juxtaposing them between tracks by a bona fide certifiable headcase fruit-loop (Wild Man Fischer) and the recordings of a bunch of non-musician celebrity groupies dicking around in Zappa's studio with a couple of stoned Mothers (The GTO's)

I haven't listened to TMR for a while. I thought all the nutcase rambling was Don. ?

Captain Befheart And His Magic Band were being diminished to a similar level and trivialised as mere freaks (the word "freak" here in it's Victorian circus sideshow sense of bearded ladies, elephant men and other deformed curiosities, rather than it's 60's subculture sense of freakbeat and hungry freaks, daddy!).

Hmm. I don't know. I'll check out those books.

I agree with Stewart that those two tracks (as much as I enjoy them) are unrepresentative of TMR (as much as anything can be "unrepresentative" of an album as sprawling and various as TMR) - or at least they do not capture what I think would be considered the more serious musical innovations of that record.

Ok, I wasn't aware of these 2 tracks (and still don't know which they are), but I suppose that'd piss me off, too. But, was it done for good or bad reasons? I suspect since it was his money, his label and his old buddy, he was probably trying to create a sort of "gang" of hungry freaks not diminish them in any way.

Well, actually, "Steal Softly" is not so unrepresentative - I was thinking of "Old Fart at Play" - but "The Blimp" is. On the album it mainly functions as comic relief. And isn't the backing music on it actually Zappa's? I read somewhere that it was something that Zappa constructed in the studio using a taped phone call of Antennae Jimmy Semens and some old recording he had lying around (and not the Magic Band at all) - which would also give his decision to use that on the sampler album another twist.

Did Zappa include these and disregard other tunes Don had recorded? When I listen to TMR, I just let it play and never even suspected anything like this. I thought the story I'd read was that Frank ruined the production. If he tossed out a bunch of good Magic Band material in favor of some hungry freak jerkoff session that's too bad! I'm going to have to give this a listen when I get back home...

"The Blimp" actually has the same backing track as one of the songs from We're Only It For The Money, although I'm having a brain fart as to which one it is. So yeah, you're right, nate.

Dean, unless you are a total fanatic, you don't actually need Grow Fins to understand anything (if you're a fanatic, then you need it as much as you need your own arm, since it's like a new set of cubist puzzles to unravel and gives you a whole new perspective on the Trout Mask material--back me up here Stewart!).

That is, except this: if you are laboring under even the tiniest suspicion that Beefheart music on Trout Mask is improvised, rather than composed, disc 2 of Grow Fins will disabuse you of that notion in one hot minute. I actually prefer the rehearsal versions of a lot of the Trout Mask stuff--they sound fuller and have more bottom. No Don on those tracks, sadly.

Ummm, no, I don't think that "Blimp" backing track appears anywhere on "...Money", unless you've gotten a bit of information I've never stumbled across (possible) or my memory is faulty (even more possible).

I do know that the track was supposedly titled "Charles Ives". Whether it was complete in itself or an excerpt from a longer work, I don't know. But yeah, what a stupid choice to immortalize on a sampler, a track with the Mothers and no Beefheart. (Doesn't even sound like Ives, from what little I know.)

Huh. I could easily be wrong. I haven't listened to "Money" in years. I coulda sworn . . .

Great documentary on Beefhert:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5726343732691602449&q=captain+beefheart&total=295&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=8

Part 2... Part 1 is there, too! Very cool!

The vamp section of "Charles Ives," the part that plays behind the lyrics on "The Blimp," appears on "Didja Get Any Onya," on Weasels Ripped My Flesh. Interestingly, that section of "Didja Get Any Onya," from 3:42 to 6:51, wasn't on any of the vinyl issues of Weasels -- it didn't show up until the Ryko CD era. "Charles Ives" also appears on YCDTOSA vol. 5 -- the differences between the two versions make me fairly certain that FZ used the piece for conducting hand-signal improv by the MOI.

Some telling Zappa quotes about his musical interests I just found:

FRANK ZAPPA - Guys who sing good with an orchestra in the background? I respect what they do, but that style of music is not something that will retain my interest for any period of time. In fact, I am not particularly amused by any television broadcast of serious music, because usually the pictures detract from the music.
When I want to hear that kind of music, I want to listen to it- I don't want to look at it.

JON WINOKUR - When you say "that kind of music," do you include Mozart?

FRANK ZAPPA - I don't usually listen to Mozart. I like Stravinsky, Varese, Webern, Schoenberg, Bartok, Takemitsu, Messien, Penderecki...

JON WINOKUR - How about John Cage?

FRANK ZAPPA - I have many John Cage recordings, but I find his writing more interesting than his music.

JON WINOKUR - Do you like rap?

FRANK ZAPPA - If it wasn't for rap there would be no poetry in America. I think we went directly from Walt Whitman to Ice-T.

JON WINOKUR - How do you feel about pop romantic songs, ballads, love lyrics?

FRANK ZAPPA - I think love lyrics have contributed to the general aura of bad mental health in America. Love lyrics create expectations which can never be met in real life, and so the kid who hears these tunes doesn't realize that that kind of love doesn't exist. If he goes out looking for it, he's going to be a kind of love loser all his life. Where do you get your instructions about love? Your mother and father don't say, "Now, son, now daughter, here's how love works." *They* don't know, so how can they tell their kids? So all you love data comes to you through the lyrics on Top Forty radio, or, in some instances, in movies or novels. The singer-songwriters who write these lyrics earn their living by pretending to reveal their innermost personal turmoil over the way love has hurt them, which creates a false standard that people use as a guideline on how to behave in interpersonal relationships. "Does my heart feel as broken as that guy's heart?" "Am I loving well?" "Is my dick long enough?"

JON WINOKUR - One of the things that I appreciate about your music is its precision. Are you a taskmaster?

FRANK ZAPPA - Well, I'm not murder on them, but I don't let them mess around. Just because it's a rock 'n' roll band is no reason you shouldn't have the same discipline and precision that you ask for in an orchestra- after all, you're handing a guy a paycheck. You try to hire people who can actually play, but even people who can play get lazy. Musicians are unbelievably lazy. And the discipline that you have to create in order to get them to show up on time, to get from place to place in a group- it's a little bit like running an army. Working with live musicians tends to take some of the fun out of life, I won't make any bones about it. You may like the results when you finally listen to it, but it's just like making sausage: not a pretty process.

JON WINOKUR - Would you prefer not to have to rely on it?

FRANK ZAPPA - Yes, and that's the way I live now. The things I can do with the synclavier are mind-boggling. It truly does give you the ability, should you choose to do so, to do away with human beings as musical performers. All you've got to do is get a sample of a single note. If you can get a guy to blow one note on the clarinet, he's gone.

JON WINOKUR - Do you miss performing in front of a live audience?

FRANK ZAPPA - I used to love going on stage and playing the guitar, but now I don't play unless I've got a reason. Why make your fingers wiggle if you already know what the notes are?

"Is this something I need the "Grow Fins" box set to understand?"

Not at all, you just need to have heard Trout Mask Replica and have a passing familiarity (and, trust me, that's really all you need!) with Larry Fischer and The GTO's!

"actually, "Steal Softly" is not so unrepresentative - I was thinking of "Old Fart at Play""

Well there's a thing, now that you say that, I may be wrong and may have been "Old Fart At Play" that was on Zapped and not "Steal Softly Through Snow" <pauses to consuult interweb> yes, you're right, it was indeed "Old Fart At Play"!

"Did Zappa include these and disregard other tunes Don had recorded?"

He chose them out of the whole of Trout Mask Replica, yes.

"....unless you are a total fanatic, you don't actually need Grow Fins to understand anything (if you're a fanatic, then you need it as much as you need your own arm, since it's like a new set of cubist puzzles to unravel and gives you a whole new perspective on the Trout Mask material--back me up here Stewart!)"

Well, that's hard to say - whose arm, and which one, are we talking about here?

Grow Fins is probably only "essential" in this context if you're suffering from any misconception that there was anything in any way random about the way the band played that music.

As it happens, I've just been reading Kevin Courier's 33 1/3 book about Trout Mask Replica*, and he clearly seems to believe that Frank Zappa's production added something significant to what Don and the band had created - which I can only agree with on the basis that having just recorded the music and refrained from dicking with it to any significant extent (which, in fairness wouldn't have come easy to Zappa!) represents a significant contribution.

* - not a bad read, and actually contains a snippet of detail, apparently from John French, which appears to contradict existing perceived wisdom re: when Don and the band first heard what Bob Krasnow had done in mixing Mirror Man; which (given that earlier interviews with John French are the principle source of that "perceived wisdom") would seem to suggest that Drumbo is now surrepticiously muddying certain already muddied waters himself!

"Please give my humblest regards to yous missus, Stewart!"

As soon as the bruising subsides and she's able to eat solid foods again, I shall indeed convey your compliments

"I feel that Stewart Osborne's post regarding mutual sidemen deserves to be addressed: It's not correct to say that Art Tripp, Roy Estrada, Elliot Ingber, and Jimmy Carl Black left Zappa's band for Beefheart, if that’s even what was meant; they all played in Beefheart's bands after being dismissed -- Tripp, Estrada, and Black, after Frank dissolved the "original" Mothers -- or fired -- Ingber, sometime after Freak Out was recorded, apparently for drug use which, according to Frank, negatively affected his playing.

It could perhaps be said that Denny Walley and Bruce Fowler left Zappa for Beefheart (don't know the particulars though -- did they actually “leave”?). Fowler had been with Frank for some time prior to the Bongo Fury tour but Walley hadn’t (though he did know both Frank and Don from high school), fwiw. Walley and Fowler both had stints with Zappa after playing with Beefheart, however – Walley for several years (late '70s to early '80s) and Fowler in '88. Roy Estrada and Jimmy Carl Black also returned to work with Zappa after Beefheart.".

Wow! Genuine, sincere and heart-felt thanks for that! Sort of. I've been using that argument (with increasing conviction, since up to now no-one has even attempted to contradict me) in discussions with any number of Zappa fans for several years now, and this is the first time anyone's ever challenged or corrected me in any respect!

My pleasure, Stewart. Actually, I was hoping you wouldn’t perceive that post as confrontational -- just saw a chance to put my Zappa scholarship to use (acquired, mostly, ’96-’98 in the ol’ community college computer lab when I should have been in class); so I’m glad it appears that you didn’t.

I haven’t heard that MOFO Project/Object release, dean. I’d go for the 4cd set if I had the loot right now, although the 2 disc would probably suffice. The Ryko Freak Out is actually one of the reissues that I don’t have (I do have a Verve LP copy); I had planned to buy it and Civilization Phase III after acquiring the rest of the catalogue but became burnt out before that happened (actually I’ve only acquired two or three Zappa albums since that time -- like, 8 years ago; I’ll get to the rest eventually). It's good to hear that the ill-advised sonic improvements have been corrected finally.

x-post

The Zappa family has actually started to release quite a bit that I’m interested in. Imaginary Diseases, in particular, is a release that I’ve long-awaited.

They still wont release thw Wild Man Fischer album tho!

I thought Rhino Handmade released a comp. of everything Mr. Fischer had ever done 2-3 years back?

It was everything except for the "An evening with.." album. Gail refuses to reissue it, saying it wasn't "Frank's best work", but more likely as he (Larry) scared her and the kids back in the day.

Well, who could blame her if she was scared by him?

Quite apart from the old story (which inspired / was exploited on the cover of An Evening With....) that Mr. Fischer had once attached his own mother with a kinife - apparently following one of the numerous occasions on which she arranged to have Larry forcibly committed to a mental asylum - I've heard that Zappa's professional dealings with Mr. Fischer were terminated somewhat abruptly following a violent disagreement about royalties which took place inside the Zappa's home.

Well, quite.

On the other hand, the stuff that's not blatantly exploitative (one half side of Frank and RodBig? mooning on about Larry being the 'next big thing'), is recorded sympathetically, and isn't "hey, let's laff at the loony".

Which a lot of the other albums are. I did have a copy of that Rhino 2CD comp, I had to send it back as CD2 was unplayable. They didn't send me a replacement, but about 4 months later sent me a copy of "Fun House Sessions" box. And 6 months later, another one! Didn't complain, naturally.

Some interesting stories about Larry's relationship with the Zappa's:

"I was told that Larry's relationship with Frank Zappa ended when Zappa's wife put her foot down and refused to let Larry come over. I was told that she was mad because Larry had thrown a wooden toy at Dweezil (a toddler at the time).

Larry was always a little weird on the subject of Zappa. He claimed that Zappa was out to get him etc., etc. In the song "Whatever Happened To All The Fun In The World" on the Sheik Yerbouti album the line comes up: "Whatever happened to Larry?" "Er, ahh....Larry bit the big one." Larry was convinced that this was proof that Zappa was still after him.

Larry got mad at his alarm clock and threw it out the window. That was so much fun that he threw everything else he owned out the window. This sort of behavior is what got him blacklisted at most every hotel in Hollywood."

"I became close with Wild Man, and he calls me from a 15 minute payphone at least once a day without fail. He currently is homeless, but usually sleeps in a hotel or on fans' couches. I buy him dinners whenever I can afford it. He is extremely bitter about the music business, and especially the way he was treated by Frank Zappa and Herb Cohen.

He constantly mentions his recent encounter with Gail Zappa at Greenblatt's Deli. Gail was ordering food at the counter, and when she looked behind herself, she noticed Fischer. She immediately abandoned her order, and ran out of the deli screaming hysterically. Sheleaped into her Jaguar and sped away. When I asked Larry why, he claimed that once he was at the Zappas mansion and he threw a glass bottle on the ground. Gail kicked him out of their house because she insisted the bottle almost hit Moon Unit who was a baby at the time. Moon Unit was actually in the other room. Meanwhile, Fischer says Gail and her lawyers have been in conversation with Rhino about the possible reissue of Evening With. Larry is strongly opposed to the idea, and justifiably so."

And (purely in the interests of balance of course, and not just gratuitously because I find the story in any way amusing, I would like to refute any such suggestion from the outset) another little story which maybe suggests that some of these stories may just possibly be open to alternative interpretations:

".... my name is Dennis P. Eichhorn, and I am the author of several stories that feature Larry Fischer, which were drawn in sequential style by noted illustrator/cartoonist J.R. Williams, and subsequently appeared in several issues of "Real Stuff," a comic book series published by Fantagraphics.

Meeting Larry was one of the most high-octane experiences of my life, and his antics and performances were beyond belief! He stayed with my friends and me on two occasions, and I traveled with him to several concerts around the Northwest, which I had set up and promoted. It was a lot of fun, and I counted Larry as a friend.

Years later, while working at Seattle's "Rocket" magazine, I conducted a telephone interview with Larry, which was one of the most enjoyable conversations I ever had with any artist! Larry gave great interview! He was full of pithy quotes, and the resulting article was well received.

So, when there came a time when I was able to crank out autobiographical stories for my "Real Stuff," "Real Smut," and "Real Schmuck" comix, it didn't take me long to pen several Wild Man Fischer stories... all true, and all funny. J.R. Williams rendered them in his inimitable style, and the results were highlights of my work in comix. We're both proud of them.

So I was astounded to learn that Larry was offended by the stories! People told me he hated them, and called them a pack of lies! Larry screamed that he wanted to kill me, on the floor of the giant San Diego Comic Con! My former friend had turned on me, it seemed... and all I did was tell it like it was.

Recently, J.R. Williams had occasion to talk at length with Larry, and he reports that Larry has pretty much admitted to the truth of all the stories J.R. and I collaborated on... with one exception. Larry denies that he ever plucked a tampon from my ex-wife Kip's snatch, while she was sitting on the toilet! Well, I'm afraid that Kip (who later divorced me, partly because of her experiences with my friends... friends like Larry) adamantly disputes Larry's denial. Kip says it happened. I remember when it happened. So do several people who were around at the time. What I'm trying to say here is... it happened. Larry was being Wild Man Fischer at the time, and now he's embarrassed to admit it. But it happened so long ago that it's become mythic, and besides... who cares? So, admit it, Larry... you did it!

It seems to me that Larry doesn't have much to complain about. The comix that feature his antics have only added to his legend."

All of this and more at http://home.new.rr.com/tapelists/wildman/tales.htm

The toilet scene seems a bit difficult to imagine.

I ove Pamela Des Barres' story about Larry performing - what, "Merry Go Round" or something? - in some auditorium; and after the first verse he runs in a circle around the circumference of the stage. Then sings a second verse and this time circumnavigates the entire room, audience and all. Then sings the third verse and runs through the exit, halting the performance for 10 minutes while he runs around the entire building! Keeping the audience waiting the whole time - priceless stuff.

It's weird that Frank hung out with nuts and acid cases, except I guess that he just wanted to record everything (odd, too), but to invite a nut like this into your home frequently is a little weird.

Love that story, obv.
xpost

http://i43.photobucket.com/albums/e366/AlexEmily/Derailroaded.jpg

Wildmania is my fave wildman album. jummy durante and i light the pilot and i'm a truck are so great.

my copy of an evening with wildman fischer still has ancient 60's-era pot seeds in the middle of the gatefold.

and he still sounds great:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6601197749057407719

my copy of an evening with wildman fischer still has ancient 60's-era pot seeds in the middle of the gatefold

Heh, reminds me of your anecdote (on the thud-rock thread?) about that hippie-era record with the pot leaf that was supposed to pop out at a crucial passage...

Mark G:

I did have a copy of that Rhino 2CD comp, I had to send it back as CD2 was unplayable. They didn't send me a replacement, but about 4 months later sent me a copy of "Fun House Sessions" box. And 6 months later, another one! Didn't complain, naturally.

Aaand speaking of stupid money got on eBay for stuff, we have a winner. That Stooges thing gets a whole lot of money.

"The toilet scene seems a bit difficult to imagine."

From the same source: http://home.new.rr.com/tapelists/wildman/shroom.htm

Whether that makes you more inclined to believe that Larry Fischer was entirely capable of just about any extraordinary behaviour, or that Dennis P. Eichhorn is just making all this up, is entirely up to you.

(one half side of Frank and RodBig? mooning on about Larry being the 'next big thing')

It's Kim Fowley doing the mooning

http://home.new.rr.com/tapelists/wildman/evening.htm

and RodBig too...

Ladies: When going to the loo, tend not to have people in with you. If you must, try not to have Wild Man Fischer in with you. (send that one back to 1968, mods plz)

Rod's playing the pianner I think

Does anybody else but me like the Francesco Zappa album? I don't think it's anything remarkable and there's certainly no need for it with all the original stuff out there which it attempts to directly mimic, but there is something cool about the fact that he could make a really long album filled with stuff that sounds like Bach. And it's kind of neat that after his assistant worked at getting realistic samples, he came along and made sure they sounded as fake as possible. I guess it probably sounded TOO much like a normal classical album. Even with the twinkling digital sounds, it sounds like a normal classical album to me. I guess it's classical muzak.