Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band's "Trout Mask Replica"

This album rules how can you not love it on first listen?

how is it not enjoyable? It’s so much fun

“where’s the drop”

decals is better tho

Yeah, he said that when they were rehearsing in the house, they were all plugging in to one amp and then when they recorded, it was some solid state amp that he didn't like.

Ah, that's right, a solid state amp, I remember him talking about that.

don't get me wrong I like TMR fine, but I like some of his other records a whole lot more. I think its drawbacks include some of the failings typical of double albums - its overstuffed, with some lesser material mixed in (dumb sex jokes etc.) I don't really love that super-clean solid-state guitar sound. Everything is so clean and dry and close-mic'd that it often feels a bit claustrophobic. Beefheart's horn playing is bad.

If I had to chop it down to just stuff I love it would include all of side 1 (with the exception of Hair Pie - delete both of those actually), China Pig, My Human Gets Me Blues, When Big Joan Sets Up, and Sugar an' Spikes.

as a lil baby listening to TMR for the first time it was not fun bc I had no experience of jazz or blues or cross-rhythms or sense of really any of what they were up to so it sounded like an oppressive mess

I don't remember the first time I heard it tbh

it was definitely the first Beefheart album I was aware of though

"Doc at the Radar Station" was my first Beefheart, borrowed it out of the local library. I owe my first hearing of "Trout Mask Replica", to Phil, the singer out of the Stretchheads(!), he gave me a cassette of his dad's copy - I should point out his stint in the Stretchheads lay some years in the future!

I hated my first encounter with it because I was only into emo shit with heartbreaking melodies at the time.

maybe it's time to finally get into this album. i should probably spraypaint my windows black and crank up the heat if i want the full effect, though.

I wouldn't call the guitars on, say, "Moonlight on Vermont" super-clean.

side 4 was my gateway into this album, still love that whole run of tunes along with most of the rest

(xp) Yes, but that was recorded before the main body of the album - the, er, more problematic material.

also, probably not coincidentally, my favorite track on the album

I think "Sugar 'n' Spikes" and "Veteran's Day Poppy" are from the same session?

i'm guessing i got my first copy second-hand in my first year at college (1978-79), i definitely had it while i was a student

(saw him at the venue in london on the doc tour in i think 1980: doc is probably actually my favourite)

yeah my top 3 are Clear Spot, Doc at the Radar Station, and Safe as Milk

Can't argue with those choices!

Andreyev asks him about the Trout Mask guitar sound here at 43:40:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWgfVVbK4bA&t=3484s

ha I was just going to say - if a 30 minute compositional analysis of frownland by a man in a suit&tie sounds like fun to you then hoo boy does samuel andreyev have a treat for you:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FhhB9teHqU&

He's awesome and it's cool that Harkleroad and French were both appreciative. The MIDI transcriptions he does of the parts are so spot on.

I think the guitars were distorting somewhat on the Zappa sessions, Οὖτις. You can certainly hear it on "Dali's Car."

Guitars sound great on TMR, in fact the production is perfect because it's so straightforward and unadorned.

Trying toi think my chronology with beefheart.
Maybe it was Decals first after hearing the birthday party compared to them. Got it in a not brilliant state on vinyl in mid to late 83. Probably a few of the earlier late 60s lps after that then got given TMR for my 18th Birthday. So I think I had Strictly personal before it.
Odd very untimely stuff but still somewhat rooted in teh late 60s I guess.

Haven't heard the version that the zappa estate released a couple of years ago , is it very different?

OH & it was a record taht had started turning up on lists of the weirdest lps ever recorded by some time in the mid 80s. Which might be a lure in itself.

I can't listen to music from the 60's anymore, it's too old.

it’s not the music that grew old

I meant that very broadly, but it's true that the captain's Richard Brautigan shtick has not aged well.

Whatever floats your boat, but I only came to love the Captain in my 40s and his mutant blues still thrills me.

Now, if you mean you've simply heard it too many times, sure, I can understand that. Not everything can move us in perpetuity.

what's wrong with richard brautigan? i mean as a writer, not the crippling depression and alcoholism.

His reputation has fallen far, don't know how high it ever was, but I still have a soft spot for Dreaming of Babyon. Seem to remember something interesting about it being translated into Norwegian by the author off Naïve. Super about a decade ago. Also maybe the guy who wrote the book Angel Heart was based on wrote a biography.

And what exactly does he have to do with Captain Beefheart?

Richard Brautigan is still good, dunno about the 60s stuff, but So The Wind Won't Blow It All Away is devastating.

xpost
"B" last names and the word "trout"

“you either love or hate this album” no you don’t. it’s ok

Yes, I hate that 'love or hate' thing. Or maybe I love it.

So The Wind Won't Blow It All Away is devastating.

fuck it, i'm in a rambling mood today so i just made my latest response to this thread into a blog post

https://weirdthingsonbetamax.blogspot.com/2020/04/on-richard-brautigan.html

doesn't have shit to do with "trout mask replica" anyway. which is a good record i think. a little overlong, a little uneven, but some good songs on it.

xpost
"B" last names and the word "trout"

― chr1sb3singer, Friday, April 17, 2020 10:54 AM (one hour ago

rushomancy, that's great, I agree with you almost completely, the other novel I was going to list was The Abortion, only thing tou didn't mention which I love about it is like half the book is just their walk from the library to the car. If I share something it will usually be that or Hawkline Monster, which has dated a bit but is the most fun to read. IWS and TFIA are odd choices and I think put a lot of people off. From a biography I read I remember Brautigan was actively anti-Hippie, there's a short story or a chapter in one of his books about telling a girl not to go to Haight-Ashbury (of course she doesn't care)

i could listen to the guitars on “veteran’s day poppy” on a loop for hours. what a way to close a record.

LOL at the turn this has taken, I very nearly wrote "be honest, how old do I look?" in place of the Brautigan remark.
I chose this thread I guess because TMR is purportedly atypical of "60's music", posting that to the Ultimate Spinach thread would have been a bit hollow, way less ridiculous.

last names and the word "trout"

Really tho?

I enjoyed coming across this:
https://brautigan.cybernetic-meadows.net/tiki-index.php?page=Sorrentino+1968+Review+of+The+Galilee+Hitch-Hiker

xp could you be more clear about you’re trying to say tho ? i’m actually curious to know.

i could see somebody regarding both brautigan and beefheart as being early touchstones for aspiring young intellectuals, later set aside in place of more “mature” pursuits. is that the joke ?

The "joke" was responding to your post as though the implication in it was "it's not the music that grew old (it's the vocals)". I am now considering the horrifying/hilarious possibility that this is what you actually were implying, and this whole thing has been a trainwreck of misinterpretation 😂

The statement that I can't listen to 60's music anymore because it's too old wan't humorless, but wasn't entirely insincere either. There's an earthy masculinity about it that feels utterly remote at this point, particularly in earnest and absent of campiness and much of the 'exceptional' music of the period is unexceptional in this regard, etc.

The comparison to Brautigan was basically superficial, along the lines of "reactionary hippie". I've only read TFiA/the pill/IWS and I thought the similarities to Beefheart were apparent enough (zany, surrealist imagery, pastorial utopian idealism/dystopic disharmony) though Brautigan's masculinity is more aggressive.

Am I mistaken? It's been 15 years since I read it and also years since I've listened to TMR in full. When I want to listen to Beefheart I usully go for 'Decals' or 'Grow Fins' and I can't even remember the last time I played either of those.

1. brautigan as "reactionary hippie"? he was neither. brautigan's work, particularly his '60s work, is certainly suffused with what we can call the "male gaze", though his perpetuation of it, to my sensibilities, has more similarities to, say, mayo thompson's "corky's debt to his father" than it does to "trout mask replica", and like "corky's debt to his father" there's considerably more to it than paeans to women he would like to fuck.

2. brautigan's '60s work is also, as mentioned upthread, nowhere near to a complete repesentation of his work.

3. lack of camp? i don't even know where to begin with this. i mean, yeah, he's dead serious in "frownland" and "dachau blues", yeah, "hair pie" is a crude and tasteless song title, but "ella guru" sounds to me not terribly far from walk on the wild side, his celebrations of women not terribly far from lou reed's. "pachuco cadaver", "pena", these aren't miniskirted hippie girls with creamy thighs. christ, we're talking about the album where, on one of its iconic tracks, he out and out envisions god as gender non-conforming! if this is what "earthy masculinity" looks like i figure we ought to have more of it.

4. but of course it is also terribly old and remote, he's from that generation of music that's informed by the harry smith anthology, he's got the spirit of hoyt "floyd" ming and his pep-steppers just as much as the holy modal rounders do, and why on earth would that be a reason to not listen to it? not everything has to be contemporary or relevant, you know.