Alias Captain Beefheart: A Tribute to a Maverick Hero (SEVERELY INCOMPLETE?)

 Part One: Frownland

#58.  Out of the 500 albums judged most essential, by Rolling Stone magazine, in the year of our lord 2003.  At the time, as someone who had gotten into music later than most but was bitten hard by the drive to collect and hear (mostly collect at the time) as much as my poor brain would allow, this list became upon publication a canonical means by which I would become a Music Authority.  Naive then of corporate payola, hierarchy, stubbornness, racism, ignorance, or any number of other factors that essentially made this list a de facto "Baby Boomer Heritage" landmark, I rushed to collect the music contained therein as quickly as my partially-blocked Soulseek connection and college freshman funds would allow.  Certainly there were no extant albums more important than those by the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and the Rolling Stones that almost entirely made up the Top Twenty.  Surely the smattering of jazz albums included, which I already knew were Great because I had been told they were Great hundreds of times before, weren't a pathetic attempt to make a "rockist" bias seem less absolute.  Certainly the hip hop albums listed weren't a largely ill-informed and obvious attempt to remain current.  OF COURSE albums such as Elephant by the White Stripes (#386) and A Rush of Blood to the Head by Coldplay (#465), which had barely been released long enough to tear the shrink wrap off the jewel case, deserved to be judged as better than The Smiths' self-titled debut (#473), Gang of Four's Entertainment (#482), and Husker Du's New Day Rising (#487), all landmarks in their respective fields.  And I'm not even going to consider the glaring omissions, which are too numerous to even begin to list here, in this limited space on this vast internet.  Rolling Stone had spoken, and their guidance would eventually grant me the Authority that I so very needed in order to be confident enough to make pithy comments that would make bespectacled, bearded male PBR guzzlers in dive bars either nod in knowing amazement or scoff in bewildered derision.

But seriously.  Who the hell is this Beefheart guy?  And what the fuck is this stuff that he's trying to pass off as music?

Was this some kind of joke?

Part 2: The Dust Blows Forward 'n' the Dust Blows Back

I didn't get it.  But I would try.  And try I would.  If Rolling Stone said that Trout Mask Replica was essential, then obviously I was the one who was incorrect.

So I went about trying to "correct" myself.  The "noise" that came from my speakers when Trout Mask Replica's mp3 files were double-clicked seemed like abhorrent tonal vomit initially, so I checked out friendlier entry points such as the weirdo Nuggets contained on Safe as Milk and the stomping, fuzz-bass'd "Diddy Wah Diddy" instead.  It was easy to assume that the psychedelic atmosphere from whence these earlier recordings had come had gotten out of hand eventually and created the bizarro fish-scaled double album that so intimidated me, and that psychedelic drugs were necessary to craft some sense out of it.  In the meantime, I correctly judged that name-dropping the Captain and his wares in the right company, complete with knowing grin, would gain me a lot of credence with the music fans I wanted to gain the company of.  So I yukked it up, treating this "unlistenable classic" as an inside joke or "admirable" picture frame that most people claiming to be fans still think of it as.  I had transferred from a lame-o Catholic college to the bustling University of Pittsburgh after my freshman year, and with lightning-fast internet and Obsessive-Compulsive collector tendencies I eventually found myself in the possession of a nigh-complete Beefheart discography that barely graced my ears long enough to go in one and out the other.

Then, things started to change.

It started small.  I remember most distinctly being in a noted smoky dive bar on Pittsburgh's South Side, out with a friend on his birthday and appropriately intoxicated as such.  At the time, being young and snarky and pretentious and single and not realizing how common this was, we felt the urge oftentimes to assault our fellow bar-goers with such jukebox favorites as the twenty-minute two chord Velvet Underground noise jam "Sister Ray".  We justified this as getting "bang for our buck," and laughed amongst ourselves as these avant-garde choices went from the speakers straight over the heads of the other patrons.  This night in particular, we were feeling especially ambitious (and drunk).  So we went for Trout Mask.  Specifically, one of the bakes of "Hair Pie," which was an instrumental on top of merely being Beefheart.  Talk about being punk rock!

Except, when the song came on, it didn't sound as askew as we'd expected.  In this dank and hectic bar, it sounded right on.  The mismatched guitars, the gut-bucket bass, the skittering drums, which all sounded nigh-autistic in quiet dorm rooms, seemed a perfect complement for this smoky, somewhat sinister place.  We marveled at the insight.

That night, while I slept soundly on my top-bunk, my friend the birthday boy took our discovery a step further.  With no small help from added chemical agencies, he found the courage to listen to Trout Mask.  Straight through.  And he liked it!  He described it as a tremendous "tribute to the Delta blues" the next day, while I sat slack jawed, wondering just what he had been smoking that had given coherence where there had certainly been none before.

I felt, in some ways, ignorant.  Here I was, thinking that it was just enough to possess this warped music and pretend that I got something out of listening to it.  Was there actually supposed to be enjoyment to be had from listening to Trout Mask Replica?  Matt Groening, the erstwhile creator of the Simpsons, was among those that certainly seemed to think so.  He had even said that he "thought it was the greatest album (he)'d ever heard"!  After only six listens!  The first of which he had been as disgusted with this mutated monstrosity music as I still was!  Even if Rolling Stone seemed a little stodgy and ad-heavy by then, Matt Groening certainly seemed to be a bit smarter than the average bear.

So what was I missing?