Trout Mask Replica

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Trout Mask Replica
Trout Mask Replica cover
The LP's cover art was produced by Cal Schenkel.
Studio album by Captain Beefheart
Released June 16, 1969
Recorded Whitney Studios, LA April 1969
Genre Experimental rock, psychedelic rock, blues-rock, avant-garde, proto-punk
Length 78:51
Label Straight Records
Reprise Records
Producer Frank Zappa
Professional reviews
Captain Beefheart chronology
Strictly Personal
(1968)		 Trout Mask Replica
(1969)		 Lick My Decals Off, Baby
(1970)

Trout Mask Replica is the third studio album by Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band. The album was produced by Frank Zappa, a friend and former schoolmate of Beefheart (also known as Don Van Vliet), and was originally released on Zappa's own Straight Records imprint in 1969. 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.

Contents

[edit] Production

Trout Mask Replica was released in June 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." According to Van Vliet, the 28 songs on the album were quickly written in a number of milliseconds, though band members have stated that he worked on the compositions for roughly 3 weeks using a piano as his writing tool. Drummer John French took the parts, transcribed them to musical notation, and assigned them to each instrument. The group rehearsed Van Vliet's difficult compositions for eight months, living communally in conditions drummer John French described as "cultlike".[1] The Magic Band was holed up in Van Vliet's home in Los Angeles, restricted from leaving the house, eating very little, and practicing for 14 or more hours a day. Van Vliet wanted the whole band to "live" the "Trout Mask Replica" album. When the time finally arrived to record, the band was able to knock out the pieces flawlessly and lead to a very brief recording process.[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, looping 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]

[edit] Legacy

BBC DJ John Peel said of the album: "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."[4] Peel's playing of the record on late-night radio in Britain was largely responsible for its reaching 21 in the UK charts.

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."[citation needed] 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] In his 1995 book, "The Alternative Music Almanac", Alan Cross placed the album in the #2 spot on the list of '10 Classic Alternative Albums'. In 1995, Mojo named it the 28th on their "The 100 Greatest Albums Ever Made" list [1] and 51st on their "The 100 Records That Changed the World" list [2].

[edit] Track listing

All songs written by Van Vliet. The album was produced by Frank Zappa.

Side one
  1. "Frownland" – 1:41
  2. "The Dust Blows Forward 'n the Dust Blows Back" – 1:53
  3. "Dachau Blues" – 2:21
  4. "Ella Guru" – 2:26
  5. "Hair Pie: Bake 1" – 4:58
  6. "Moonlight on Vermont" – 3:59
Side two
  1. "Pachuco Cadaver" – 4:40
  2. "Bills Corpse" – 1:48
  3. "Sweet Sweet Bulbs" – 2:21
  4. "Neon Meate Dream of a Octafish" – 2:25
  5. "China Pig" – 4:02
  6. "My Human Gets Me Blues" – 2:46
  7. "Dali's Car" – 1:26
Side three
  1. "Hair Pie: Bake 2" – 2:23
  2. "Pena" – 2:33
  3. "Well" – 2:07
  4. "When Big Joan Sets Up" – 5:18
  5. "Fallin' Ditch" – 2:08
  6. "Sugar 'n Spikes" – 2:30
  7. "Ant Man Bee" – 3:57
Side four
  1. "Orange Claw Hammer" – 3:34
  2. "Wild Life" – 3:09
  3. "She's Too Much for My Mirror" – 1:40
  4. "Hobo Chang Ba" – 2:02
  5. "The Blimp (mousetrapreplica)" – 2:04
  6. "Steal Softly thru Snow" – 2:18
  7. "Old Fart at Play" – 1:51
  8. "Veteran's Day Poppy" – 4:31

[edit] Personnel

[edit] References

  1. ^ Burundo Drumbi! - John French's Series of Q&As, 2000/1. The Captain Beefheart Radar Station. Retrieved on 2007-12-09.
  2. ^ Miles, Barry (2005). Zappa: A Biography. pp. 182–183. Grove Press
  3. ^ 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
  4. ^ Barnes, Mike (February 1999). Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band: Trout Mask Replica. Perfect Sound Forever. Retrieved on 2007-12-09.
  5. ^ Groening, Matt (December 1993). "Plastic Factory". Mojo.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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Captain Beefheart
Main albums (discography)