I love every single thing about this. Every note, every blurred image, every nuance of the Captain's voice. One of my all-time favourite bands - gets right into your bones.
"To support the album's release the group had been scheduled to play at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival. During this period, Vliet had severe anxiety attacks that made him convinced that he was having a heart attack, possibly exacerbated by his heavy LSD use and the fact that his father had died of heart failure a few years earlier. At a vital "warm-up" performance at the Fantasy Fair and Magic Mountain Music Festival (June 10-11) shortly before the scheduled Monterey Festival (June 16-18), the band began to play "Electricity" and Van Vliet froze, straightened his tie, then walked off the 10 ft (3.0 m) stage and landed on manager Bob Krasnow. He later claimed he had seen a girl in the audience turn into a fish, with bubbles coming from her mouth. This aborted any opportunity of breakthrough success at Monterey, as Ry Cooder immediately decided he could no longer work with Van Vliet, effectively quitting both the event and the band on the spot. With such complex guitar parts there was no means for the band to find a competent replacement in time for Monterey." - French, John, "Beefheart, Through the Eyes of Magic" p. 253
Had this on 8 - track as a teen along with Mothers of Invention Absolutely Free and Live at the Filmore East. My parents hated it and I kept driving them crazy with it til they finally ran away from home!
@@HappyHermitt can you do it? No. Do you know any band today that could play this song? No. Check your trash can, you probably threw some gold bars in there. Get me?
I am a very old person and believe the saying that 'when you've seen and heard the best, why be satisfied with copyists?' The Captain and Ry and the rest of his Magic Band are in a league of their own. Thanks to whoever made it possible for me to re-live this gem.
1968 a friend at work introduced me to Captain Beefheart. Safe as Milk. Became an instant fan from the first minute. No introduction necessary. Genius. Hits me in the heart. Pure American something. Love him.
I first heard of him when I was about 15 (1972) and I'll bet I still can't come with more than three people who are not dj's that have ever heard of Capt. Beefheart. Many thanks to my older brother Ray for turning me on to all the bands that were not top 40 bubblegum.
I Still got my tape "Lick my decals of baby" He did alot of music with F Zappa I think the Capt is the vocalist on Zappa's epic Willie the Pimp on the Hot Rats album, my personal favorite Zappa recording.
unfortunately I'm too young to ever have seen him live (I was born in 82), but I've loved the 60s psychedelic rock since I was very young (strangely I'm a dead ringer for Janis joplin), and have loved Zappa since I was around 13. It's due to my love of Zappa that I found out about this guy... but thanks to his music, I hear music everywhere now. I'm sad that he is gone, but like all good musicians, he gave us one amazing body of work that will live on far longer than he did.
Emerald Kat, that's funny to hear you say the part of a Janis double, the reason being is I was told one day that I looked exactly like Andy Gibb (now I must look like the old version, had he lived) I didn't know what he looked like personally, mostly cuz I hated Disco! Two old men were in a casino seated not far away from me when I got pissed sort of & asked em' "WTF?" they both quickly said "we were looking at you cuz you look like that rock n roll singer that just died, but couldn't remember his name, I said Andy Gibb, they both jumped in & said "that's his name! I told em' "yea, I've heard that I do. I saw his pic. in the paper after he died, it could have been my driver's license photo!
This is on the beach at Cannes, early Beefheart, pre-Trout Mask. The Captain was so far ahead of his time nobody will ever catch up. Huntsman likes him? Cool. Better than if he hated him. Some people get the Captain, most don't. Never the twain shall meet. Nobody's neutral about him. He's so avant garde he has to go back in time just to stay here, now.
for some, this wasnt "unique" enough...i guess Trout Mask is for them, but ill take this twisted blues anyday. i get him, i know this is perfectly as good as it gets...anyone who forgets this in favor of Trout is just dying to be tricked. i like a lot but this is my crown jewel.
@@DaveAnchovies I think Electricity might be my favorite track of his, but as good as the album Safe As Milk is, Trout Mask Replica remains the crown jewel of rock n roll.
The use of the word " sick " in the slang or hip way it's used just-right-now meets the use of the word in the conventional sense and gets mixed up together to form a new use of the word "sick" . And somehow it works. And that new word is called " sick ".
You know, I watched a couple Captain videos as i've never heard of him before. His later stuff is extremely out there and hard for me to get into, but this entire show he did in 67 or 68? Absolutely brilliant. THE sound is amazing and blows everything prior completely away.
Let me be the second to say that nobody is this cool anymore. Or this ambitious, or this talented, or this awesome, or this...this energy the Captain has, I don't know how to describe it....it's schnitz.
...did you just reply to a 14 year old comment? This comment is old enough to be in high school. I'm...impressed. Also I agree with you. Black Midi, King Gizzard, so much good weirdness out there these days.@@dsnodgrass4843
@patrickmyers9169 I cant agree with that. it is kinda like saying that Beatles is so Oasis. Even their hair. Or that Led Zeppelin sounds quite a lot like Greta Van Fleet. Or that a horse-drawn carriage is basically a car, with the engine replaced by a horse. Which may be accurate way of describing the relation of these bands, if you are coming from future on your way to past. I would say that DEVO was heavily influenced by captain beefheart. Captain Beefheart was likely not at all influenced by DEVO. Musically DEVO really had nothing on them. So they took the hats, and the funny movements. (I think that the movements of the magic band are not a choreographed performance but directly reflecting the angles of the music. With everyone playing intricate, intertwining rhytms on top of each others, that one way to make sure you fall in your rhytmic pocket, and not get distracted by the next guy playing in different time signature, is to make your body remember it. So you move accordingly. Also DEVO's music lacks ANY danger. Whereas C B F sounds like Voodoo, something forbidden and inherently volatile. ... Anyways, thats the rant for today....
DIG HIS VOICE AND ORIGINALITY OF HIS MUSIC. HIS SONG HER EYES ARE A BLUE MILLION MILES GOT ME LAID IN HIGH SCHOOL WHEN I DEDICATED THAT TO A CHEERLEADER.
The reason CB started recording his own music was because he had an idea for an album when he was still in Zappa's band. He went to Zappa with it and Zappa told him that if he wanted to record his ideas to go off and record his own album. So he did, and the rest is history.
I was a fan of Don from the 1st album later got to be good friends w/him until he died. When he was around we would hang out for hours he told me alot of great stu ff & often invited me to his house
just left school at 15 saw safe as milk on a second hand market for 1 shilling and sixpence intrigued by the cover i bought it, loved half of it thought the other half was rubbish. when trout mask replica in came out in 69/70. as an apprentice a double album was a lot of money to me but apache dropout was ringing in my ears so i got it. went home put it on my stereo worst shit i'd ever heard in my life. love every thing about it my life would be missing something had i not heard it.
Yes, yes, that is true - there are still people who'd rather go hungry than be weird. Still, I could count on one hand the number of bands formed during this decade that I've come up with who really are great.
Extraordinary! Timeless! So much for the theory that bands need fancy equipment to make great music. Don doesn't have a monitor so he uses bone conduction from his ear to hear what he's doing. And I think I see a K-Mart label on the drum set. ;o) We can only imagine what might have happened if they had made it to the Monterey Festival . . . sigh.
You're right, the theremin was SO cool on the Safe As Milk version. So was the reverb. But any live video of early Captain is worth its weight in gold.
Possibly it's because one had a genuine rank of captain and was a tank commander and the other was just called Captain and the Grim Reaper is scared of tanks?
I finally decided to see the original Electricity song from listening to Sonic Youth version for so long, and for some reason I feel upset that I didn't heard some of his stuff a lot earlier before reading these youtube comments. RIP Capt'n, I'm going to start listening to your other stuff now
Only saw Beefheart, The Magic Band, twice. Spotlight Kid, Lighting up a six intro time.. Still want it to come across to as many are open to It. Cheers to,,Matt G, my man with the same name, Mr McF(you.still in Aberdeen) and all of you who love music.
@kenjd111 Left to right: Jeff Cotton aka Antennae Jimmy Semens (guitar), Jerry Handley (bass), John French aka Drumbo (drums), Alex Snouffer aka Alex St. Clair (guitar)
