Captain Beefheart

A lot of people in my social feeds have been mocking a Vox article about Captain Beefheart's "Trout Mask Replica," called "Why this awful sounding album is a masterpiece."

Music is completely subjective and sites that thrive on clickbait say stupid things all the time, so I won't bother linking it. The title alone makes me cringe as much as it would if the author were talking about say, a Francis Bacon painting. Online snark is the last refuge of an idiot.

The amount of work that went into creating that album and the context behind it should not be distilled into a moron's opinion and I have no interest in watching a video "explaining," anything.

That being said, the more interesting Beefheart album to me isn't Trout Mask Replica which tends to be the demarcation line between "Real Beefheart Fans," and "Everyone Else." I am not interested in demarcation lines either, as that's just as annoying.

What I will say is Captain Beefheart's "Clear Spot" is a much more interesting album to me as it is a snapshot of a genius artist seemingly attempting to go commercial, failing at the goal, and still coming up with gold.

I should back up and say I had an amazingly geeky high school science teacher who could tell I was into good music and let me borrow his cassette of Captain Beefheart's "Spotlight Kid" and "Clear Spot." It wasn't the actual cassette, but a copy he'd made.

You know how every possession a smoker owns smells of smoke, no matter how they protest it doesn't? The cassette paper might as well have been made from smoke. I opened it and was hit with a tobacco blast. It really stunk, and somehow that fit with the music. My teacher's hand-printed writing was serial-killer-esque. But hey--anyone who treats music like a precious object is okay in my book.

I wish I could remember the teacher's name, but it is lost to the decades. Sorry but I have to say as another aside, I grew up in what should have been a very boring middle to upper class suburb. My parents went into debt for the first year I went to school because they didn't live in the zip code and had to pay a "tuition." When my dad got a raise and they could afford a home in that suburb, they jumped at the chance. After a year or so they learned financial planning and then things got better. Either way, I give them props for sacrificing creature comforts so my brother and I could have a better primary education. I think it paid off and I would do the same if I had a kid.

Back to the science teacher I can picture him clear as day. Pale skin, glasses and a full unkempt black beard with gray strands here and there. He always wore short-sleeved dressed shirts even in winter. He had the nerd's physique of skinny arms but a paunchy stomach.

I listened to the Captain Beefheart tape a few times through and made a recording of the songs I really loved. "Alice in Blunderland," and "Blabber 'n Smoke," and basically the first side of "Spotlight Kid," and all of "Clear Spot."

"Too Much Time," just blew me away. Still does. How do you go from avant-garde to this? It was a weird R n' B song with the singer singing about having too much time to be without love and female background singers and congas? Or maybe bongos, I can't tell. I think it's congas and horns. Either way: This is the same guy who recorded "Ella guru?" "Dali's Car?" That to me is the real genius.

Sure, it seemed straight forward, but Beefheart was painting poetry regardless. "Sometimes when it’s late and I’m a little hungry I heat
up some old stale beans, open up a can of sardines, eat crackers and dream about someone to cook for me." So freaking specific it hurts. And then there's "Her eyes are a blue million miles," which brings a bluesy edge, "My Head Is My Only House Unless It Rains" an already beautiful love song transformed decades later by Everything but The Girl and those are just a few songs on the album. It was a jumble of emotions and I loved it because like most teenagers, I was the same.

The tragedy, as it is with most artists who arrive before their time, is that Captain Beefheart needed us to catch up to him. And of course, everyone now espouses the Seminal Work™ because people tend to be pretentious and follow the hive mind.
Why would you admit liking any Beach Boys album before "Pet Sounds?" (I would, and I think their fake live album "Party!" is a huge accomplishment. in some ways more than "Pet Sounds" as a testament to what was achievable in studios then. and I own a first Japanese edition pressed on red vinyl version with a hand-written label.)

Point being, Vox is stupid for calling it an awful album in their headline as much as the super important rock critics are stupid for dismissing other albums other than Trout Mask Replica. When you fall for a musician, and are a fan, you tend to embrace all of their albums regardless.

Whether we are talking about writing or visual art or music, artists are supposed to grow and stretch and even fail. But just because the album is considered a sell out or a lesser work it doesn't mean it should be discounted.

By the way this post has nothing to do with my short story collection but if you enjoyed it, then you might enjoy A-Sides and B-Sides which is available on iBook as well as Amazon and also Kobo and Nook. You can preview a nice chunk of it, too. Hope you'll consider buying if you like what you see. Here's what the cover looks like.

I don't care who you are, this song is tight.