Trout Mask Replica
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Trout Mask Replica | ||
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| Studio album by Captain Beefheart | ||
| Released | November 1969 | |
| Recorded | Whitney Studios, LA April 1969 | |
| Genre | Experimental Rock/Protopunk | |
| Length | 78:51 | |
| Label | Straight | |
| Producer(s) | Frank Zappa | |
| Professional reviews | ||
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| Captain Beefheart chronology | ||
| Strictly Personal (1968) |
Trout Mask Replica (1969) |
Lick My Decals off, Baby (1970) |
Trout Mask Replica is a 1969 double album by Captain Beefheart (nee Don van Vliet) and His Magic Band with artwork by Artist Cal Schenkel. Combining blues, free jazz, and other apparently disparate genres of American music, it is regarded as an important work of experimental music and appears at number 58 on the List of Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. Critic Piero Scaruffi called it "the only record of rock music worth listening to" and the BBC DJ John Peel said: "If there has been anything in the history of popular music which could be described as a work of art in a way that people who are involved in other areas of art would understand, then Trout Mask Replica is probably that work." [1] Peel's playing of the record on late-night radio in Britain was largely responsible for its reaching 21 in the UK charts.
Regarded by many as Van Vliet's masterpiece, Trout Mask Replica was released in November 1969 on Frank Zappa's newly formed Straight Records label. By this time, the Magic Band included guitarist Bill Harkleroad and bassist Mark Boston. However, Van Vliet had also begun assigning nicknames to his band members, so Harkleroad is better known as "Zoot Horn Rollo", and Boston as "Rockette Morton", while John French becomes "Drumbo", and Jeff Cotton is "Antennae Jimmy Semens". The group rehearsed Van Vliet's difficult compositions for eight months, living communally in conditions drummer John French described as "cultlike".[1] According to Vliet, the 28 songs on the album were quickly written in about 3 weeks, but it took 8 months for the band to actually mold the songs into shape.[2]
The 28 songs on Trout Mask Replica draw on blues music, Bo Diddley, free jazz, and sea shanties but the relentless practice blended the music into an iconoclastic whole of conflicting tempi, harsh slide guitar, loping drumming, and honking saxophone and bass clarinet. Van Vliet's vocals range from growling blues singing to frenzied falsetto to laconic, casual ramblings. His lyrics often seem impenetrably strange and nonsensical, but closer examination actually reveals complex poetic use of wordplay, metaphor and all manner of references: music history, American and international politics, the Holocaust, love and sexuality, Steve Reich, gospel music, conformity. Although the album was effectively recorded live, Van Vliet recorded much of the vocals whilst isolated from the rest of the band in a different room, only being in partial synch with the music by hearing the slight sound leakage through the studio window.[3]
Van Vliet used the ensuing publicity, particularly with a 1970 Rolling Stone interview with Langdon Winner, to promulgate a number of myths which have subsequently been quoted as fact. Winner's article stated, for instance, that neither Van Vliet nor the members of the Magic Band ever took drugs, but guitarist Bill Harkleroad later discredited this. Van Vliet also claimed to have taught both Harkleroad and bassist Mark Boston from scratch; in fact the pair were already accomplished musicians before joining the band.[3]
Critic Steve Huey writes that the album's influence "was felt more in spirit than in direct copycatting, as a catalyst rather than a literal musical starting point. However, its inspiring reimagining of what was possible in a rock context laid the groundwork for countless experiments in rock surrealism to follow, especially during the punk/new wave era."[4] Matt Groening has written that his first reaction to Trout Mask Replica was that it was "the worst thing [he]'d ever heard", but now lists the album as one of his favorites.[5]
Contents |
[edit] Track listing
It should be noted that, in its double LP issue, one record contains sides 1 & 4, while the other record contains 2 & 3. This was a standard practice from when hi-fi sets had spindles capable of holding stacked records, which would release the next lowest record in the stack once the stylus tone-arm had finished with the current record side and had moved back to its rest position. Thus, if you placed the record with side one under the record with side two, when both sides had automatically played in succession, you could simply remove the two albums as a stack, flip them over, and replace them on the spindle to play sides three and four in succession.
All songs written by Van Vliet. The album was produced by Frank Zappa
[edit] Side one
- "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" – 4:58
- "Moonlight on Vermont" – 3:59
[edit] Side two
- "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" – 1:26
[edit] Side three
- "Hair Pie: Bake 2" – 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
[edit] Side four
- "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
[edit] Personnel
- Captain Beefheart – vocals, harmonica, tenor saxophone, soprano saxophone, bass clarinet, musette
- Bill Harkleroad (credited as Zoot Horn Rollo) – guitar, flute
- Jeff Cotton (Antennae Jimmy Semens) – guitar, vocals on "Pena" and "The Blimp"
- Victor Hayden (The Mascara Snake) – bass clarinet, additional vocals
- Mark Boston (Rockette Morton) – bass guitar
- John French (Drumbo) – drums, percussion
- Doug Moon - guitar on "China Pig".
[edit] Miscellanea
- Robert Rankin paid homage to this album by naming a novel he wrote in 1997, Sprout Mask Replica.
- The vocals for "The Blimp (mousetrapreplica)" were recorded over the phone, whilst Frank Zappa was in the studio rehearsing "Charles Ives" with the Mothers of Invention.
- The sax and bass clarinet parts on the intro to "Hair Pie (Bake 1)" began as a jam in the garden outside the house where the band rehearsed, and were recorded through the open windows.
[edit] Notes
- ^ http://www.beefheart.com/datharp/drumbo/paullewis.htm
- ^ Miles, Barry (2005). Zappa: A Biography. pp. 182–183. Grove Press
- ^ a b Chusid, Irwin (2000). Songs in the Key of Z: The Curious Universe of Outsider Music, pp. 129–140. London: Cherry Red Books. ISBN 1-901447-11-1
- ^
- ^ Groening, Matt (December 1993). "Plastic Factory". Mojo.
