This needs to be heard several times......but once having acquired the taste.....I now consider this as an absolute piece of genius....one of the most original brilliant bodies of musical work....PERIOD
A shame you never did a follow-up, because this is easily the best reaction to this album on RU-vid. You got through it like a champ on your first listen. No overly critical negative talk. If you want the full story, listen to Drumbo's story on the album. He arranged all the music from Beefheart's ideas, but never got credit. Also, "Veterans Day Poppy" is a beautiful compelling track, and I would have loved to hear you comment on it specifically. The fact the album is closed off with a fairly straightforward track that's still very ahead of its time, and then with those somber guitar riffs coming in, and Drumbo's expert drumming. Just phenomenal. Thank you. P.S. I think the word you were looking for was either "surreal" or "Dadaist".
Still planning on doing a follow up! I stopped doing them promptly after 1-2 weeks, and instead focused on doing them when I felt like I had formed cohesive thoughts/when I had time since I'm now a busy dad of 3. So stay tuned, and thanks for the kind words!
Just starting to listen to this only 10 seconds in. I hope you’re right. This is an incredible album. And I’m not a Beefheart cult member either, A but my guitar teacher in high school was Zoot Horn Rollo a.k.a. Bill Harkleroad, who played on this album. Still, tons of interesting stuff on this album, so while I might be biased a bit, it does not override my praise. This is just a weird genre-breaking album. Excited to check it out.
I bought the album about two years ago . I knew it was an excellent album so I listened to it five times the first weekend. I then listened to it once a month or maybe once every two months since I purchased it . Trout Mask Replica is one of my top 10 albums . It is a later copy but apparently it was remixed better than some of the earlier pressings .
@@PanasonicTooth I really enjoy the harmonica playing on Lick my decals off and the music leans more towards blues based rock and roll . TMR is all over the place with something crazy around every bend . TMR is more comical which is great .
Songs like "Moonlight On Vermont", "Suagr 'N Spikes", "Ella Guru" are actually very catchy tunes IMO. This is how I got drawn in: first vibe with the few most grounded, catchy tunes, then get used to the rest over time. Also the following album, Lick My Decals.... is a somewhat more structured and grounded revisit of the same style and it also helped me get used to these musical ideas. The Lick My Decals.... title track is amazing, I highly recommand.
Amazing! I've always said "I can't take a lot of Beefheart in a single sitting BUT I truly APPRECIATE his ability to create the music..." This was the first time I listened to "Trout Mask" all the way through and I found myself agreeing with your take on almost everything. Great experience...thank you!
This is similar to how Picasso deconstructed the portrait painting. We recognise the components but the classic form has been completely subverted. Listening to these tracks, you can hear the components of traditional blues and rock and roll but traditional time and chord sequences have been thrown out. As you may know the surrealists were trying to tap into ideas from the subconscious by throwing out form and surface meaning. Maybe this is the musical equivalent. I agree with you though. It is kind of alluring. Maybe my brain is trying to put the musical pieces back into something coherent and familiar.
This album could be like a sorbet to cleanse your musical palette. You must listen to this every few months as a kind of musical reset so you can better discern traditional pop/rock.
The choice to use “sorbet” as a metaphor for this music is enlightened, or at least enlightening. And I agree with your idea that TMR provides a tennis net, so to speak, over which very few returns are made in my estimation. But then there’s the occasional birdie.
Sorry if this has been answered but I didn't feel like reading all the comments but I think you might have been thinking of the term "stream of consciences".
This album is soooo good. For me it's just pure fuel for creativity! I get the same feelings when I watch Paul Clipson or Stan Brakhage films. Just amazing!
Not a mistake. Because there’s never a mistake that you can’t go back to correct. TMR is incredibly great. I agree with you on a clear spot. It is a much more accessible album. But give this a chance.
The problem is most people take things at face value. For those that listen to this and just think it's absolute trash, I understand that, but there is a lot more to Cpt Beefheart. He is definitely an eccentric. One of the most unique people I've ever seen. I'm not saying anyone is dumb for not liking this, most people wouldn't like this, but I really appreciate the really truly weird and genius people, and this guy was the real deal, he wasn't being weird for weird's sake, this was him. I've probably listened to this album only about 10 times, with years in between listening, but it's the closest thing to taking LSD without actually taking LSD. What an absolute trip. It grew on me fast and I love it now.
It is incredible. He was my band’s guitar teacher throughout high school. And he is an incredibly serious musician. And an incredibly good dude. Also the mallard albums that he did after Beefheart are unbelievably great. m.ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-CCkL6b6NkrQ.html
When I listened to this album for the first time, it reminded me of the first time I read Prof Steven Hawkins’ book ‘A Brief History of Time’. I have now read that book and listened to this album many many times and still get to end of both thinking……”Errr……nope still got no idea what’s going on here, gotta give it another go”!!!! By the way, I love them both 🤪🔨
1. Before I start my Beefheart commentary, re your closing remarks on THE CURE - there are actually at least five "extra tracks" to take into account, namely World War, Killing An Arab, Boys Don't Cry, Plastic Passion and JSETrain. You could make that nine by throwing in the other related single-only cuts: Pillbox Tales, Do The Hansa, I'm Cold, and AJBTrain. 2. OK - now the Trout Mask song comments - Frownland - possibly the last song written for the album, hence the data-overload Hair Pie #1 - on the Grow Fins box set you can hear the full version - the album track is preceded by [a four-minute soundcheck, and then...] another four minutes of Don's soprano soloing. Odd how this guy who supposedly couldn't really play the sax is "intuitively" chancing across Lol Coxhill-esque phrases. (And again, on the extended edit we hear Victor Hayden trying to interact but audibly struggling to get any air through his horn). Bill's Corpse - post-nuclear war horrorscape, or coded death-threat addressed to a certain goldfish-loving guitarist? Neon Meate Dream - John French in his book seethes over the fact the backing track is so buried and distorted it's impossible to hear what the guitars are doing. All we can hear is Don's vocal dubbed onto his - count 'em! - two horn solos (btw, they're both on double-reed instruments - one fed through the Leslie, the other just close-mic'd) Dali's Car - John French is inconsistent in his recollections, but this is, possibly, the only tune where Don actually took the trouble to memorise his piano parts and explain how to orchestrate them ("this is Bill's guitar,...this is the bass")...very quickly it became "who plays what part, and how many times?" "oh, you know...just write it, man!" Pena - coincidence, I'm sure, that Don's background gibbering sounds like some of Estrada's eruptions. The poem is one of a group of related texts - most are lost, another later became Hey Garland... Well - it's chanted in the style of an Edda, but the imagery is very LSD...unless it's the hallucination of a man dying of starvation...hmm, bet that went down well with the band. When Big Joan Sets Up - Don's finest studio soprano solo. Lyrics - Joan might be a post-op transexual (ill-fitting hand and foot shapes are a giveaway). Sugar 'n Spikes - a reworked 1967 song, definitely not a Bermann co-write - but maybe Victor had lyrical input Ant Man Bee - a reworked 1967 song, with some Bermann lines left intact - also it's Don's only real-live two-horns-at-once moment on the album Orange Claw Hammer - my theory re the lyric: the sailor hasn't literally been at sea for 30 years, it's just 30 years since the kidnapping, and since that he's been sailing away periodically as a means of visiting his other family [those seven black babies] somewhere in the tropics Wild Life - in which the man who supposedly couldn't play the sax echoes some of the phrasing of that other inspired amateur David Bowie The Blimp - subject is neither blimp nor dirigible - more like some kind of Frankensteinian sex monster? Musical backing courtesy of Underwood, Estrada, Tripp and Zappa. Steal Softly - possibly the first song written specifically for this album Old Fart - text salvaged from an unfinished novel - Don wrote tons of literature only to destroy it during his fits of depression or paranoia Veterans Day Poppy - the transition is genuinely live
Back in 2010/2011, I was somewhat aghast at the lack of mainstream-media attention to the recent death of Don Van Vliet - especially months later when we had wall-to-wall discussion of the early death of the dreaded Anal Wineglass. Compare the two - one sang some derivative r'n'b, got wasted, then drank herself to death, the other sang some derivative r'n'b, got wasted, then made some actually inventive r'n''b-influenced music, then proceeded to effectively invent a whole new form of music, one which sort-of did for the blues what Coleman had done for jazz...and the achievement is not diminished at all by the fact that Don didn't exactly know how to do it and was dependent on a series of interpreter/editor/arrangers (famously the long-suffering French and Harkleroad, but also at other times St Clair, Cooder, Templeman, Smotherman, Whalley and Tepper) PS At least the mainstream media redeemed itself a little in 2016 [in Britain anyway] with tons of coverage of the death of Mark E Smith - accompanied by tons of ''...but I'd never heard of him!'' from newsreaders and talk-show hosts.
Words cannot explain how much I hated this album. Now I put it on whenever I need a pick me up However, while I completely agree that it is a MUSICAL masterpiece with so many ridiculous moving parts, band members playing at different tempos, and the players wrangling Beefheart's insane piano musings, I think Beefheart himself is sort of pretentious and rude. I don't think the lyrics have any deep meaning, I don't think he's a fantastic artist, I kind of dislike the guy. And yet, I like his whole catalogue at this point, so figure that one out
I don't believe anyone genuinely likes this album. You can admire it's weirdness if you want but there's nothing on it in a musical sense that's worth your time. Saying you like it is statement of non comformity, that's all. Yes, all the top 40 chart fans will hate it, all the Moms and Dads will hate it, all the nerdy squares will hate it, but saying you like it doesn't make you some cool artistic rebel, it just makes you pretentious. I first heard this in 1969, I thought it was crap then, and I still think it's crap. Captain Beefheart himself he was deliberately trying to make an album that would give you a headache.
Actually NOT TRUE I am a life long musician and played in scores of bands New York, Boston.....mostly east coast......but really appreciate this music....did you know this was all worked out?....this is carefully thought out and planned
@@timeagan893 You don’t genuinely like it, you’re either just a or contrarian or want to be seen as cultured. Be real, its simply jumbled unlistenable nonsense and really can’t even be considered music.
I like it because it’s just a very visceral album that makes really cool ideas out of its blues influences. Frankly I think it’s a bit pretentious for you, some RU-vid commenter, to deem themself the final judge on who is being genuine about their tastes or not. That sounds exactly like the kind of fart sniffers you think you’re so far from. While I don’t enjoy it because of this quality, TMR definitely has a way of weeding people like you out. Cheers!
