Ice Cream for Crow

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ice Cream for Crow
Studio album by Captain Beefheart
Released	1982
Recorded	1982
Genre	Rock
Length	37:29
Label	Virgin
Producer	Captain Beefheart
Professional reviews
All Music Guide link
Captain Beefheart chronology
Doc at the Radar Station (1980) Ice Cream for Crow (1982) The Legendary A&M Sessions (1984)

Ice Cream for Crow is the twelfth LP by Captain Beefheart, originally released in 1982. It is the last record he released before retiring from music. It charted briefly in the UK at #90, but failed to make the Billboard Top 200.

Although many of the songs on Ice Cream for Crow stem from musical ideas from sessions for earlier albums, Beefheart composed a good deal of new material for the album. In fact, he wrote "Skeleton Makes Good" in one evening. According to Captain Beefheart's biographer Mike Barnes, "the most original and vital tracks [on the album] are the newer ones." Thus, Ice Cream for Crow, while rooted in past musical ideas, points toward a new musical direction for Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band. Indeed, Barnes writes that the album "feels like an hors-d'oeuvre for a main course that never came." ^[1]

A video was made for the title track but MTV refused to air it, feeling it was too bizarre to fit in with the mainstream format the network promoted in the earlier years of its existence.

[edit] Track listing

All songs written by Captain Beefheart.

1. "Ice Cream for Crow" – 4:35
2. "The Host the Ghost the Most Holy-O" – 2:25
3. "Semi-Multicoloured Caucasian" – 4:20
4. "Hey Garland, I Dig Your Tweed Coat" – 3:13
5. "Evening Bell" – 2:00
6. "Cardboard Cutout Sundown" – 2:38
7. "The Past Sure Is Tense" – 3:21
8. "Ink Mathematics" – 1:40
9. "The Witch Doctor Life" – 2:38
10. "'81' Poop Hatch" – 2:39
11. "The Thousandth and Tenth Day of the Human Totem Pole" – 5:42
12. "Skeleton Makes Good" – 2:18
13. "Light Reflected Off the Oceans of the Moon" - 4:47 [Bonus Track]

[edit] Personnel

• Don Van Vliet (Captain Beefheart) - vocals, harmonica, soprano sax, Chinese gongs, prop horn
• Jeff Moris Tepper - steel appendage guitar, slide guitar, acoustic guitar
• Gary Lucas - glass-finger guitar, slide guitar, guitar, National steel duolian
• Richard Midnight Hatsize Synder - bass guitar, marimba, viola
• Cliff R. Martinez - drums, shake bouquet, glass washboard, metal drums
• Eric Drew Feldman - Rhodes piano, synthesized bass

[edit] Notes

v • d • e Captain Beefheart Main albums (discography) Safe as Milk · Strictly Personal · Trout Mask Replica · Lick My Decals Off, Baby · Mirror Man · The Spotlight Kid · Clear Spot · Unconditionally Guaranteed · Bluejeans & Moonbeams · Bongo Fury · Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller) · Doc at the Radar Station · Ice Cream for Crow