Plankton

Oh, you're in for a treat there. Can't wait.

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Frownland

That's pretty similar to my own first reactions on the album, and as you can tell by my namesake, it's one of my all time favourite albums. Trout Mask Replica is the definition of the grower album, and because of this I'd recommend listening to it again in the future. If it turned you off to such an extent that you don't want to look at it that's fine, but most people come to like the album through repeated listens.

I don't know all that you've listened to, and I'm sure it's quite a prolific list, but here are some suggestions of albums you might want to add to your list.

Cabaret Voltaire - Red Mecca
Silver Apples - Contact
Sun Ra - Space Is the Place

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Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth.

Trollheart

Thanks Frownland for the reply and comments. I know it may indeed be a grower, it's just that a) it's a double album, so if I hate it still then I have a long way to go through it a second time and b) I heard very very little that I even thought well you know maybe I would get into that, as I often do with albums. It just really annoyed me. Mind you, I do recall hearing my first ever Tom Waits song. It was "Tango till they're sore" and I thought it was awful! A while later my brother, who was in Boston at the time, sent me a tape of his favourite Waits material and I pretty quickly became a fan. But the thing about Captain Beefheart is I just hear no real melody, nothing to hang my interest on. It's all like just noise and confusion to me, and with so much to listen to I doubt I'd be making the time to give him another chance. I just don't see it.

It's like with "Loveless". I didn't really like that on the whole, but there were some good moments and I could end up getting into that. Nothing of that nature on "Trout" I'm afraid. I do like how he sounds like Tom Waits (I know, other way round) and thought my experience with Waits would stand me in good stead to weather the eclectic nature of the album, but for me Waits wins out every time. At least he plays melodies, which I just don't hear in Beefheart's music.

I'll check those albums out, add them to the list. Thanks!

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Frownland

I agree with Unknown Soldier about not holding the album to the very standards it's trying to break. Maybe save the album for a time when you're feeling adventurous, but I wouldn't force it, that can lead you to disliking the album even more. The albums Safe As Milk and Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller) are very good and far more accessible, so if you want to find more of that Waits-iness that you enjoy, I would go there. I still prefer TMR, but I'm just a hipster trying to preserve my indie cred, right Gavin B?

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Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth.

Gavin B.

I applaud Trollheart's brave decision to give a thumbs down to Trout Mask Replica which is a sacred cow album among hipsters. It's taboo to make negative remarks about a sacred cow album and doing so results in your immediate banishment from the ranks of hipsterhood.

I love Captain Beefheat's music, but I think Trout Mask Replica is a mediocre album. The entire album is Captain Beefheart's bombastic recital of his contrived Dadaist, stream-of-consciousness poetry backed by the amateurish imitations of delta blues musicians by the Magic Band. I challenge all of those Trout Mask hipsters to sit down and suffer through the 78 minute run length of the album and still pretend like it's a brilliant landmark album. You'd have to be a masochist to enjoy this sort of punishment.

Over the past four decades, Trout Mask Replica has become a fetish object for hipsters because of it's musical inaccessibility and the obscurantist themes of the album. These are the same hipsters who hailed Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music as a brilliant avant garde masterpiece. Lou Reed bitch slapped the hipster types who attempted to deify Metal Machine Music with the self effacing but hilarious one-liner: "Anyone who liked Metal Machine Music is dumber than I am."

Safe As Milk, Captain Beefheart's first album is a far more inspired effort. It's probably the best psychedelic garage band album of the era. Safe as Milk features the slide guitar playing of Ry Cooder, who could really play authentic delta blues. Most of the players on Safe As Milk were selected by Ry Cooder and were far more accomplished players than the members of the Magic Band.

My favorite Beefheart album is Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller) (1978). In the decade following the release of Trout Mask Replica, Captain Beefheart fired every member of the original Magic Band. It was apparent that the original band members lacked the musical chops play the sort of ambitiously experimental music that Captain Beefheart was writing.

Shiny Beast came along in the wake of the two worst albums Captain Beefheart ever recorded: Bluejeans and Moonbeams and Unconditionally Guaranteed. Both albums seemed like make-work projects in which Beefheart accommodated himself to the musical limitations of the remaining members of the original Magic Band line up. Captain Beefheart didn't release a single album over the next for years, having dissolved the original Magic Band. The players on Shiny Beast were all hand selected by Captain Beefheart as the new lineup of the Magic Band.

The Magic Band line up on Shiny Beast is the most accomplished group of musicians who ever backed Beefheart among the members were: Art Tripp (Mothers of Invention), jazz trombonist Bruce Fowler, and Eric Drew Feldman (future keyboardist for Frank Black & PJ Harvey). Those three musicians were multiple instrumentalists and Captain Beefheart used their versatile talents to augment the sound of the band by adding several layers of overdubbed parts to the final mix of the album.

The two youngest members of the reorganized Magic Band, Richard Redus and Jeff Morris Tepper, were selected as guitarists by Beefheart. Redus and Morris stayed with the Magic Band until Captain Beefheart retired from the music business to become a highly successful artist under his birth name of Don Van Vliet.

In the last 10 years of his life Don Van Vliet earned far more money as a painter than he ever did during his 30 plus years as a musician. At the time of his death in 2010, Van Vliet's oil paintings were selling at prices between $30,000 and $350,000.

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There are two types of music: the first type is the blues and the second type is all the other stuff.
Townes Van Zandt

Stephen

Didn't know that. Consider me interested .

Powerstars

Gimme three steps, gimme three steps, mister
Gimme three steps toward the door?



So, you're saying I should buy this? I'm kinda interested.

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Trollheart

Aw yeah man! It's Skynyrd! It has "Free bird" on it. It's a classic! What more do you need?

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Gavin B.

Free Bird was Lynyrd Skynyrd's 1973 tribute to the recently deceased guitarist Duane Allman, whom the group idolized.

Lynyrd Skynyrd's first two albums were rock and roll masterpieces. They began showing signs of wear on their third album. The players in Skynyrd lacked the musical skills to play imaginative jazzy improvisational jams, like the Allman Brothers or the Grateful Dead. The three guitarists in Skynyrd mostly played standard 12 bar blues jams which began to sound repetitive after about 5 minutes.

The Dead could jam for 30 minutes on the theme of Dark Star and every live performance of Dark Star was a completely unique version of the song. The Allman Brothers did a similar transformation of Mountain Jam, every time they played it live. By contrast, every live performance of Free Bird by Lynyrd Skynyrd was an exact replica of the 5 minute triple guitar "jam" on the original studio album, which led me to believe that Synyrd's guitar players weren't improvising but playing the guitar parts on Free Bird by rote memorization.

The biggest strength of Skynyrd was the songwriting of vocalist Ronnie Van Zandt, who died in 1977. Without Van Zandt, Lynyrd Skynyrd became just another redneck band playing generic southern rock.

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There are two types of music: the first type is the blues and the second type is all the other stuff.
Townes Van Zandt

Screen13

I have been going through your thread and read the Beefheart review. Try some of his very early stuff like the cover of "Diddy Wah Diddy" and the Safe as Milk album. I'm sure you will at least find something to hear and kind of like - more Blues involved. I liked the "Garage" era before all of the free form stuff.