Captain Beefheart

DISCOGRAPHY

Legendary A&M Sessions (EP, 1966) 6.5/10

Safe As Milk (1967) 7.5/10

Strictly Personal (1968) 6.5/10

Mirror Man (1968) 8/10

Trout Mask Replica (1969) 8/10 +

Lick My Decals Off, Baby (1970) 6.5/10

Spotlight Kid (1972) 6/10

Clear Spot (1972) 5/10

Unconditionally Guaranteed (1974) 4/10

Bluejeans and Moonbeams (1974) 3.5/10

Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller) (1978) 7/10

Doc at the Radar Station (1980) 6/10

Ice Cream For Crow (1982) 7/10

   The freakiest of the freaks, the most alien of the outsiders, Don Van Vliet (stage name "Captain Beefheart") is the icon of experimental rock. Developing one of the most painstaking approaches rock songwriting, he would also represent Frank Zappa's childish counterpart. 

There is nothing about Rock music that isn't peaked, celebrated, and redefined in Trout Mask Replica. The album is pretty much its own genre of music, its own entity for historians and students of the human race to marvel at as time goes on. But its freakiness is not its charm: it's a fun barrage of blues, jazz, slamming rhythms and funky grooves played with the violence of proto-punk.

Every time I think I'm done with the review I listen to TMR again and find something else to say about it. So far my thesis is that the album is basically Van Vliet's attempt at reproducing the experience of infancy and/or childhood -- with so much distressing information pouring out from the grooves and raspy vocals reciting abstract poetry, it puts me in this stream-of-consciousness state of someone experiencing the fear and fun of life itself for the very first time.

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