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Captain Beefheart RIP


Flaneur

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The Captain died on friday, aged 69, after a long illness. Singer, horn and harp player, artist, poet, long-time Zappa associate and legendary band leader, Don Van Vliet was a very strange person and great performer, on record but particularly in concert.

Don't know where to start categorising his music, for the uninitiated. Free-form psychotropic blues? Howling Wolf meets John Coltrane, on a subway platform?

He was one of my early musical heroes. It's a sad weekend.

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The Captain died on friday, aged 69, after a long illness. Singer, horn and harp player, artist, poet, long-time Zappa associate and legendary band leader, Don Van Vliet was a very strange person and great performer, on record but particularly in concert.

Don't know where to start categorising his music, for the uninitiated. Free-form psychotropic blues? Howling Wolf meets John Coltrane, on a subway platform?

He was one of my early musical heroes. It's a sad weekend.

I think it's pointless to bother categorise it.

Feel awful about this.

Favourite albums? Doc at the Radar Station and Safe As Milk, for me.

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Sad sad news indeed,

I reckon Ice Cream for Crow is my favourite album out of his catalogue. A brilliant album from start to finish for me; it has fragments of beefheart from throughout his catalogue and it flows really well.

TMR is obviously totally out there and is a seminal classic, but for me I can't listen to it again and again whereas with ICFC I can.

The Spotlight kid got a lot of stick from the band, the cap'n and Beefheart himself, but I think it's a great album.

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I own the majority of his albums (Ive avoided the couple from the mid-70s that are widely regarded as being pish), Ive always struggled with TMR. Was listening to the Spotlight Kid/Clear Spot CD just the other day in memory, its more straightforward but definitely a good un. I like The Mirror Man Sessions, mainly due to the presence of the near 20 minute skronk fest that is Tarotplane, awesome song.

For the uninitiated there was a cheap compilation called Electricity that has loads of decent earlier stuff on it, it was my first exposure that I bought out of interest, if you can find it, buy it.

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