How does it compare to the artist's other releases
Value for Money
Advantages:
Total Groundbreaking Art
Disadvantages:
It Should Have Six Stars
Recommend to potential buyers:
yes
Full review
...Is Fast And Bulbous
Strictly speaking this should be credited to Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band, I'll email Ciao about it. I was amazed to find this as I browsed the rock artists section of Ciao.
No I've not lost my marbles , but am about to educate you about one of the greatest albums by one of the greatest artists of all time. The title is an extract from the lyrics from the said album , so as you may guess, Hear'say it ain't. The cover features a guy in a stovepipe type hat wearing a trout mask. You know you're in for something out of the ordinary. This album is available from Amazon for a very reasonable 7.99 GBP, is available on the Warner Brothers label , catalogue number 7599271962 .
~~ Some Background
Don Van Vliet was a friend of Frank Zappa's and had made several groundbreaking albums before this, such as "Safe As Milk" an "Mirror Man". An excellent blues harp player and possessed of a reputed eight octave vocal range, almost everything the guy does is special. He quit music in 1981 to concentrate on painting , from which he reputedly makes a fortune. He lives in a caravan on a beach somewhere and communes with whales. Not your average Joe.
In the late sixties he got some guys together who supposedly had never played an instrument before. When he was satisfied with his band they returned to relative civilisation and cut a double artefact that became this album. Interesting or what? This isn't so much a different type of music, it's a different universe.
~~What the Critics Say...
Rolling Stone (7/26/69, p.37) - "...[TROUT MASK REPLICA] is a total success, a brilliant, stunning, enlargement and clarification of [Beefheart's] art....the most unusual and challenging musical experience you'll have this year."
Q Magazine (11/94, p.136) - 5 Stars - Indispensable - "...the acme of true psychedelia and the most liberated music ever recorded...few musicians have ever worked so hard at bucking the perimeter of the fence of the rock song..."
~~ From The Sleeve
Original liner information:
ZOOT HORN ROLLO: glass finger guitar, flute ANTENNAE JIMMY SEMENS: steel-appendage guitar CAPTAIN BEEFHEART: bass clarinet, tenor sax, soprano sax, vocal THE MASCARA SNAKE: bass clarinet & vocal ROCKETTE MORTON: bass & narration DRUMBO: drums CAPTAIN BEEFHEART plays tenor & soprano sax simultaneously on Ant Man Bee, simran horn & musette on Neon Meate Dream;
ANTENNAE JIMMY SEMENS sing lead vocal on Pena & plays flesh horn on Ella Guru;
special guest artist DOUG MOON plays guitar on China Pig;
Frownland The Dust Blows Forward 'N The Dust Blows Back Dachau Blues Ella Guru Hair Pie: Bake 1 Moonlight on Vermont Pachuco Cadaver Bills Corpse Sweet Sweet Bulbs Neon Meate Dream of a Octafish China Pig My Human Gets Me Blues Dali's Car Hair Pie: Bake 2 Pena Well When Big Joan Sets Up Fallin' Ditch Sugar 'N Spikes Ant Man Bee Orange Claw Hammer Wild Life She's Too Much For My Mirror Hobo Chang Ba The Blimp Steal Softly Thru Snow Old Fart at Play Veteran's Day Poppy
~~ OK , SO What's it all about
The music on this CD is challenging and interesting. If you need a point of reference it's free form jazz played by a "rock" band fronted by a huge blues vocalist / harpist. "Orange Claw Hammer" features Beefheart singing unaccompanied in the style of a sea shanty. Although the album seems spontaneous and improvised, instrumental precursors to the tracks here on the "Grow Fins" boxed set demonstrate that there is in fact an absolute precision at work here.
A common response to initial listening of this album is utter hatred. It's not background or elevator music, but play it over and over and it's hidden depths will be revealed. What they are differs from person to person, but for anyone who has a genuine interest in music as an art form this is an absolutely essential purchase. If you do take the plunge , prepare yourself for a shock, easy listening pop it isn't.
Radiohead recently said they wanted to experiment , ditching melody, hence Amnesiac and Kid A. The good Captain beat you to it lads thirty years ago. An essential purchase (as I've already stated).
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