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?

A Simple Desultory Pitchfork Philippic (or How I Was Greg Gillis'd into Submission)

Them - Let My Song Through by mmmmcitricacid

The record “Let My Song Through” was released by the former Van Morrison vehicle Them in 1971. The Irish band had recently been pared down to a trio and now included Americans, as befit their new Los Angeles homebase. The song was included in the album Them in Reality, an album which followed no particular concept, but rocked in an agreeably non-pretentious way. Think Grand Funk. Think Cream before Clapton's blues fixation went over big live and turned into drug-fueled PG-13 rated circle jerks (in other words, check out the first album (Amazon hyperlink underscored)). The world wouldn't change if you listened to this album while in a transcendent state of mind, but the party would very likely be better.

In 1974, Southern Rock tentpoles Lynyrd Skynyrd released the album Second Helping. A song exists on this record that nakedly copies the main riff from the aforementioned Them composition. According to the latter piece's appointed Wikipedia entry (found catty-corner to one concerned with an eponymous movie), at practice the bass guy switched to guitar (likely his natural instrument) and found inspiration in something the other guitarist handy was playing. This is likely how the cross-pollination occurred. Successful businessmen (of the multi-platinum Skynyrd variety, in this case) know how to transform artifacts that embody current cultural cachet (moderately old-fashioned British blues rock, in this case) into product that will keep the originators wage slaves of theirs for a very long time. On-hand Producer Al Kooper, whose star had first shone as the guest star on keyboards for Bob Dylan's epochal “Like a Rolling Stone”, likely had learned a thing or two about this over the years.

Books have been written about “Like a Rolling Stone.” Entire books. Granted, they're by guys like Greill Marcus (aka the singular target viewing audience for Dylan's impenetrable 2003 film Masked and Anonymous), but that's not the point. The point is that when things like “Sweet Home Alabama” happen, things like Kid Rock happen. He laid this naked when he rapped over the same Them riff he re-contextualized (directly this time! through sampling!) from the previous copiers, and seemingly all of Middle America rocked right along with him.

It's hysterical to think that at one point, the “rawkers” of the high school music critic world found “creative bankruptcy” in keyboard/electronic/sample-based music the same way hipsters now are so quick to condescend to the emo kids that are becoming them. If you're creative, you find any fucking way you can to express it. In this author's case, you will sabotage your pristine, relatively easy, professionally laid-out life to follow this passion and later run around in circles, claiming that it's somebody else's fault.

The internet is starting to make it abundantly clear what possibilities exist when people as fucked up as the aforementioned writer (and perhaps you, the heretofore unmentioned reader, as well!) have access to the means of production, not to mention the eyes of others. If you're creative, you see that and you chase that, holding on by the stubs of bitten nails. And being a good soldier, trying to finance whatever beautiful personal figurative jewel it is that you happen to treasure at the moment, means compromise. Sastifaction can't be found working day after day for the man. Or in anything else for that matter.

Rather, as we kindly look back to our authenticity aficionados, we ask them instead to hate the fuckers who steal once-warmed-over material. Even if it is guys like Led Zeppelin who are sometimes guilty of this. They already probably have everything they ever wanted. Some subsection of the population somewhere is no doubt enraptured by their story; they probably just want more of whatever it is they fancy. Allegedly, these types are quick to send out the cyber police when people are discovering their second-hand music for free. At least I think that's what I learned about “rock stars” and “business men” and “selling out” from the Kurt Cobain Memorial Hipster Book Club and University. 

Have you ever been there? What a place. The football team always loses and is made up of “cool guys.”