Today in Music (1969): Captain Beefheart released Trout Mask Replica

Trout Mask Replica Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band

Released: June 16, 1969 Peak: -- US, 21 UK, -- CN, -- AU Sales (in millions): -- Genre: experimental rock

Tracks: Song Title Click for codes to charts. Frownland [1:41] The Dust Blows Forward ‘N the Dust Blows Back [1:53] Dachau Blues [2:21] Ella Guru [2:26] Hair Pie: Bake 1 (instrumental) [4:58] Moonlight in Vermont [3:59] Pachuco Cadaver [4:40] Bills Corpse [1:48] Sweet Sweet Bulbs [2:21] Neon Meate Dream of a Octafish [2:25] China Pig [4:02] My Human Gets Me Blues [2:46] Dali’s Car (instrumental) [1:26] Hair Pie: Bake 2 (instrumental) [2:23] Pena [2:33] Well [2:07] When Big Joan Sets Up [5:18] Fallin’ Ditch [2:08] Sugar ‘N Spikes [2:30] Ant Man Bee [3:57] Orange Claw Hammer [3:34] Wild Life [3:09] She’s Too Much for My Mirror [1:40] Hobo Chang Ba [2:02] The Blimp (Mousetrapreplica) [2:04] Steal Softly Thru Snow [2:18] Old Fart at Play [1:51] Veteran’s Day Poppy [4:31] All tracks written by Don Van Vliet and arranged by John French. Total Running Time: 78:51 The Main Players: Don Van Vliet (aka “Captain Beefheart”) (vocals, multiple instruments) Jeff Cotton (aka “Antennae Jimmy Semens”) (guitar, vocals) Bill Harkleroad (aka “Zoot Horn Rollo”) (guitar, flute on “Hobo Chang Ba”) Mark Boston (aka “Rockette Morton”) (bass, narration on “Dachau Blues and “Fallin’ Ditch”) Victor Hayden (aka “The Mascara Snake”) (bass clarinet, backing vocals on “Ella Guru,” speaking voice on “Pena”) John French (aka “Drumbo”) (drums, percussion)

Rating: 3.820 out of 5.00 (average of 24 ratings) Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

Art That Hurts Your Head In his 1983 song “Keep Under Cover,” Paul McCartney asked, “What good is art if it hurts your head?” As one of music’s greatest masters of music that dared to push boundaries while simultaneously remaining commercial and accessible, was abundantly qualified to pose the question. And while he wasn’t referring to Captain Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica specifically, the line is the perfect starting point for analyzing this “extended adventure in surrealism” TM which author Chris Smith called “one of the most disputed works of art in the American musical canon.” CS This “notorious, avant-garde double LP masterwork” PM “sounds like somebody throwing around nails and falling over drums and breaking guitar strings and scratching blackboards - against the sound of random nonsense ranting vocals on a first listen. Even on a fourth of fifth listen.” AD It “seemed to be a stab at the complete deconstruction of music itself.” CS As “one of the most idiosyncratic albums ever released,” TB Trout Mask Replica demands that the listener confront the very definition of art. What role does it have in reaching an audience while also challenging and subverting expectations? Is it art if it alienates more people than it attracts? Is it art if it doesn’t particularly challenge its consumers but simply gives them something palatable and easy to digest? Trout Mask Replica “didn’t make Beefheart a star, but it did establish him as one of rock’s great eccentrics.” TM It is “a fascinating, stunningly imaginative work that still sounds like little else in the rock & roll canon.” AM The “slightly unhinged poetry against rampaging guitar-as-spearchucker backdrops can challenge even the most open-minded listener.” TM The album served as “a territorial marker, indicating the point where conventional notions of rock music end and enchanted Day-Glo electric preposterousness, piled high and served with extra sauce, begin.” TM “Beefheart was absolutely the first of those shattered fractured ‘geniuses’ (save perhaps Syd Barrett) to be appreciated at all…but in certain ways his unabashed deitydom made possible a kind of elite reverse-prejudice…that is, that anything discordant was more desirable than anything even remote tuneful (like the Beatles, for instance).” JSH Don Van Vliet and Frank Zappa Don Van Vliet (Beefheart) was “a free-spirited experimentalist even by the standards of late-1960s rock music.” CS He was just thirteen years old when he won a scholarship to study art in Europe. His parents, however, had “a dim view of the art world, and rather than allowing him to take the scholarship, they moved to Lancaster, California in the sunshine state’s desolate backcountry.” CS There Van Vliet met Frank Zappa, the “man who would become rock’s ultimate freak-out king.” CS As adolescents, they spent their time listening to music but they drifted apart after high school. After a failed effort to become a sculptor, Van Vliet delved into music. The early works from his Magic Band included a handful of blues-based singles followed by the 1967 “comparatively straightforward, blues-based” TB album Safe As Milk and 1968’s “more challenging Strictly Personal.” TB Dismal sales and Van Vliet’s dictatorial style led to a revolving door of members (which included future legendary guitarist Ry Cooder). By chance Van Vliet ran into Zappa at a KFC. Zappa invited Van Vliet to record at his studio CS and signed him to his label, Straight Records. The Making of the Album Beefheart would later dismiss Zappa’s influence on the album, suggesting Zappa just sat in a chair and fell asleep and that he marketed Beefheart as a freak. AD Nonetheless, if it weren’t for Zappa’s “classic inmates-running-the-asylum move [that] gave Beefheart full creative control” TM the album likely would have never happened. “The collaboration would yield one of the most bizarre albums of the decade.” CS Van Vliet reportedly wrote the 28 songs that became Trout Mask Replica in just nine hours. TB He normally wrote on piano, but since he wasn’t really a piano player he could only play short phrases. These “were then translated to the rest of the band onto guitar, drums, etc. Which explains partly the fractured, seemingly cut-up then stitched back together again nature of the music.” AD He spent “the best part of a year perfecting the arrangements of these songs in a rented house in Woodland Hills, California, with what is generally considered to be the seminal line-up of his Magic Band.” TB They were an assemblance of “nonmusicians, friends from the artistic community” CS although “the truth is that Van Vliet was the most amateur musician of the bunch.” CS Reportedly Van Vliet was so controlling that only one band member was allowed to leave the house at a time to go get supplies. AD Band member John French said, “I remember once going for a month and all we had to eat every day was one four ounce cup of soya beans.” AD When they finally recorded the album, they did the whole thing in one four-and-a-half-hour session. TB Musical Soup Beefheart “took avant-garde rock to the extreme” RV revealing “his unique blend of Delta ‘n' Dada in all its quirky sophistication” WR by “combining delta blues, beat poetry, funk jazz and garage rock.” RV “On first listen, Trout Mask Replica sounds like a wild, incomprehensible rampage through the blues.” 500 The Magic Band “parades all sorts of non sequiturs in sound – screeching jazz-gone-awry dissonance followed by Delta blues howls followed by thunkety-thunk cartoon rhythms followed by radio-drama gibberish.” TM “The rustic and trippy imagery and the coarse-cut, earthy performances drew as much on free jazz techniques and beat poetry as well as the blues.” WR Beefheart “growls, rants and recites poetry” 500 along with “atonal, sometimes singsong melodies” AM accompanied by “jagged, intricately constructed dual-guitar parts [and] stuttering, complicated rhythmic interaction.” AM “Instruments rush by in seemingly arbitrary flurries, only to cohere into brief moments of harmonizing clarity, before disintegrating into carefully orchestrated cacophonies once again.” PM It’s “all delivered by characters who sound like they long ago stopped questioning life down this Alice on Wonderland rabbit hole.” TM “All of these elements float out seemingly at random, often without completely interlocking.” AM The result is “some of the most eccentric music of the late 1960s – or, for that matter, ever.” AZ Planned Chaos However, “every note was precisely planned in advance – to construct the songs, the Magic Band rehearsed 12 hours a day for months on end.” 500 When Zappa finally recorded their efforts, he got most of the album down in under five hours. 500 Some of the “disjointedness is perhaps partly unintentional – reportedly, Beefheart’s refusal to wear headphones while recording his vocals caused him to sing in time with studio reverberations, not the actual backing tracks.” AM Nonetheless, “by all accounts, the music and arrangements were carefully scripted and notated by the Captain, which makes the results even more remarkable.” AM For Adventurers Only This is an album “only for the adventurous music listener.” RV It “fully explains the expression ‘far out.’” AZ The album “is so impossible to ever fully grasp that its inscrutability has emerged, over time, as the main reason for why it remains such a marvel decades later. Like that old adage about trying to teach a fish to bike, trying to describe the appeal of Trout Mask Replica is like trying to deliver repair instructions after the fall of the Tower of Babel.” PM “Perhaps, like a deep sea expedition, we may never completely chart Trout Mask Replica’s eccentric depths, but that’s the joy in diving back into its choppy waters time and time again.” PM Inspiration to Other Musicians Trout Mask Replica’s “inspiring reimagining of what was possible in a rock context laid the groundwork for countless future experiments in rock surrealism, especially during the punk/new wave era.” AM It has also “inspired modern primitives from Tom Waits to PJ Harvey.” 500 Author Tom Moon echoes the sentiment that Beefheart has “influenced generations of artists,” TM specifically noting how Waits and Beck “snatched Beefheart’s strategies for nonlinear storytelling, while countless punk and post-punk acts borrowed the abrasive, needling attack of the Magic Band.” TM The Songs Here are thoughts on the album’s individual songs. “Frownland” Frownland features “the sound of a drummer seemingly falling over his drum kit whilst he attempts to play it. You've got two guitars – neither of which sound like they are played by a musician, rather some chubby fingered oaf who only just that minute had picked up the instrument for the first time in his entire life. On top of all of this, we have Beefheart himself, seemingly ignoring completely the music behind him – but still managing to fit on top of it, all the same.” AD “Moonlight on Vermont” His “mind-bending lyrics” AZ “are absurdist gems and the music, especially in” RV “the relatively straightforward onslaught of Moonlight on Vermont,” PM “revels in chaos.” RV The song “is aggressive and scary…the lyrics contain layers and layers and layers of meaning to seemingly be unraveled.” AD “The guitars are biting and aggressive and full of great melodic phrases, the vocals here are just astonishing – and the way the song progresses with so many different sections and short phrases and parts, yet still sounds totally together after repeated listening.” AD “Its spirit can be felt in the punk community, as bands like The Clash include the Captain among their influences.” RV “Ella Guru” This song “showcases the Trout Mask Replica dual guitar sound very well, layers and layers and layers of short melodic phrases played amidst challenging and different time signatures. Does it really sound like each musician is playing a different song? Well, sometimes it does, sometimes it sounds as if everybody is playing in a different studio oblivious to the other musicians and parts. But everything eventually falls together, and during certain phrases or sections, the band are playing together and sounding just so fucking glorious that it beggars belief.” AD “The Dust Blows Forward N’ the Dust Blows Back” This spoken-word track was likely influenced by Zappa, who was known for taping everything. “The crude lo-fi, cut-up nature of ‘The Dust Blows Forwards’ is clearly deliberate, and the words Captain Beefheart sings/speaks out, totally surreal – but the intention of the piece becomes clear with lines such as ‘the wind blowing up, me’ – it's humor, total surreal humor.” AD “Dachau Blues” This “is a total highlight - the sound is very dark and confusing, the way the music moves off in ten directions at once.” AD The “unflinchingly horrifying proto-Tom Waits track” PM “is just scary as…anything. Loud, fractured – then moving off into nearly sensible flowing phrases of graspable melody. Then, a farting trumpet sound arrives. Oh, but of course. And, the good Captain just seemingly ignores everything and does what the hell he damn well pleases over the backing track.” AD “My Human Gets Me Blues” “If at first the irregular rhythms of tunes like ‘Dauchau Blues’ and My Human Gets Me Blues seem intentionally off-putting, give them a second chance. As your ears become accustomed to Magic Band logic, you’ll discover astounding instrumental juxtapositions and delightful melodic ripples beneath the often-impenetrable surface.” TM “Sugar N Spikes” “It’s tough going at times, the relentless assault can dull your ears, but keep listening and something like the very catchy and almost pop melody of ‘Sugar N Spikes’ will pop up. Well, a pop melody broken into a dozen pieces then thrown seemingly randomly back together again, but it sounds like the only way anybody should ever make music once you get used to it.” AD Other Songs “The blues-by-way-of-free-jazz Hair Pie instrumental jam sessions” PM are “a daunting experiment in cacophony.” RV Songs like those and Pachuco Cadaver and Neon Meat Dream of an Octafish “actually sound as unusual as their titles.” AZ “The faux ‘live’ Mirror Man is a pretty impressive rhythmic exercise on the same level as Ornette [Coleman]’s Dancing in Your Head.” JSH “Technically proficient pisstakes like Pena and When Big Joan Sets Up hold just as much muster in the sprawling tracklist.” PM

Resources and Related Links: DMDB Encyclopedia entry for Captain Beefheart AM AllMusic.com review by Steve Huey AZ Amazon.com review by Billy Altman JSH Blastitude (2003). “A Loaded Proposition: Joe S. Harrington Picks the All-Time Top 100 Or…Who Pulled the Trigger?” by Joe S. Harrington KC Kevin Courrier (2007). 33 1/3: Trout Mask Replica. Bloomsbury Academic: New York, NY. AD Adrian Denning (3/30/2007). “Adrian’s Top 100 Albums, So Far” TM Tom Moon (2008). 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die. Workman Publishing Company, Inc.: New York, NY. Page 142. PM PasteMagazine.com (6/3/2024). “The 300 Greatest Albums of All Time” RV The Review (Oct./Nov. 2001). “The 100 Greatest Albums of All Time” by Clarke Speicher 500 Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums of All Time CS Chris Smith (2009). 101 Albums That Changed Popular Music. Oxford University Press. Pages 73-6. TB Thunder Bay (2005). Albums: The Stories Behind 50 Years of Great Recordings. Thunder Bay Press; San Diego, CA. Page 111. WR The Wire (June 1992). “The 100 Most Important Records Ever Made” First posted 6/16/2013; last updated 10/18/2024.