#Captain Beefeheart

[bestfrozentreats2]

SAFE AS MILK album cover autographed by Magic Band guitarist Ry Cooder

[itsmorefuntohavebadtaste]

Braving the RS 500 Greatest Albums of All Time: #60, Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band - Trout Mask Replica

(Start date: April 19th, 2018 / Day 325)

From Rolling Stone:

On first listen, Trout Mask Replica sounds like a wild, incomprehensible rampage through the blues. Don Van Vliet (a.k.a. Captain Beefheart) growls, rants and recites poetry over chaotic guitar licks. But every note was precisely planned in advance – to construct the songs, the Magic Band rehearsed 12 hours a day for months on end in a house with the windows blacked out. (Producer and longtime friend Frank Zappa was then able to record most of the album in less than five hours.) The avant-garde howl of tracks such as "Ella Guru" and "My Human Gets Me Blues" have inspired modern primitives from Tom Waits to PJ Harvey.

Okay. I’ve done my best. Part of this experiment has been to improve my writing ability in the context of legitimate professionalism. I’ve put a lot of effort into sustaining that, albeit not all of my album notes have exactly been Pitchfork or Village Voice material. It’s a learning process and I’ll be competent eventually.

But this. Oh my god. This. I had to restrain myself from making my album notes consist solely of “fuck this hideous garbage” ad nauseum.

This is my fourth listen of “Trout Mask Replica”. My first listen was because of a recommendation, the second was because I went back to the person who initially recommended it and said that this was terrible and he insisted I listen to it again, the third was after I tried to impress a girl that I wanted to befriend upon finding out she was a Zappa fanatic. Let me tell you... It’s still terrible. It’s still unlistenable. It’s still a hack piece.

I’m at the point of listening to it where it’s supposedly supposed to start clicking, but it still isn’t. I honestly don’t care if it’s deliberate, or visionary, or imaginative, or what the hell ever the appeal of this is supposed to be. It’s terrible. It’s intolerable. Nothing can sway me into believing that this is anything other than a, frankly, absolutely batshit fucking insane extension of the idea that influential white men can get away with anything in music. Not VanVliet, necessarily, but Zappa. I can’t imagine any reason for this to get greenlit aside from his name being attached to it.

And Zappa and the Mothers of invention were already pitiful excuses for art rock musicians.

I think this is the soundtrack to Hell. I think this is what’s played while you’re being burned alive, without the embrace of death to look forward to, because your physical body had already met its demise, and in perpetuity, you’re forced to feel the disintegration of your entire being while being harassed by this infernal dumpster fire over a distant set of Bose speakers.

There’s a point to be made here, about how white men with an established reputation can attach whatever disaster they see fit to their names and have people search for a meaning that doesn’t exist, and perhaps invent one to fit their narrative. Maybe it’s a testament to industry bias. Maybe it’s a testament to the desire of people, whether they be critics or not, to want to understand something that seems incomprehensible at first glance. Maybe it’s a testament to diagnosable insanity. I honestly couldn’t tell you.

There’s some interesting instrumentation and compositions in this tornado of untreated sewage, which likely accounts for its influence. But that’s not enough to offset what happened here. This is a goddamn disaster. This is an egregious slap in the face to the many artists who founded the bedrock upon which rock cannon was built––to be weighted above Bo Diddley, above James Brown, above Ornette Coleman, above so many honest to God genius musicians... It’s fucking disrespectful. It’s ignorant. It’s naive. It conflates arbitrary nonsense with the daringness and deliberation of artists like Davis and Coltrane. Its lyrical incompetence pales in comparison to everyone on this list, and upon a list that contains Marshall Mathers, it’s not a criticism I’m dishing out lightly.

Perhaps the intention was parodic. I honestly could not care less. It has no business being cited for any reason, and the fact that it is regarded so highly is absurd.

The better “inaccessible” albums I’ve experienced––“Remain in Light” and “Kid A” come to mind––had clear intention. This does not. Nothing about this is good, or daring, or what the Hell ever. This is the most disgustingly overrated hack piece in the history of music. I hate it for what it is. I hate it for that.

Year: 1969 Standout Track(s): N/A Rating: Irredeemable - Everything that’s hideous about the music industry, summed up in one concise piece. Cheers!