Captain Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica

Is this the Emperor’s New Clothes?

Certain people of a certain age, listened to certain types of music, and would certainly know of this album and then become most uncertain.

Just the name with the album cover is enough warning. This is not for faint hearted. This is extreme weird shit.

For the few that are initiated this is Captain Beefheart’s masterpiece. The pinnacle of his music accomplishments and the most avant garde ‘rock’ album this side of the Mississippi, in fact any side you like.

Don Van Vliet known as Captain Beefheart assembled his Magic Band in the late sixties to take over a two bedroomed rented house in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles. The small band of gifted musicians were presented with Van Vliet’s compositions, recorded on piano — an instrument he could barely play. The compositions were rehearsed over the next eight months in conditions that were described as cultish. Van Vliet was around ten years older than the members of his band and he exerted a dominant and tyrannical influence over them. According to reports at the time, the musicians were emotionally, and sometimes physically, berated by Van Vliet until they bent to his will. They lived in material…