One of the many profound revelations stemming from the commemorative Grow Fins set that Revenant released at the end of the twentieth century is how crucial Captain Beefheart's Magic Band was to the compositional process behind their askew, beautiful music. For years the emphasis was on the enigmatic Captain himself, and at the heart of his rock legend lay Trout Mask Replica, whose 28 songs-- as the story goes-- Captain Beefheart (né Don Van Vliet) spurted out in 8 1/2 hours, fully-formed, then laid down in the studio with the Magic Band in a half that time. A revealing book penned by drummer John French, and an all instrumental practice tape from that time that accompanied the box and nixed such instant creation myths. The Band worked assiduously with scant food or money in a cult-like situation to make random notes and patterns-- bare scraps of madman thought-- cohere, winding through wildly varied trains of musical thought and figuring how to converge and crash into some alien semblance of sound sense. While I was crestfallen to have the human hands behind the god-like apparatus of Trout Mask Replica revealed, my dismay was quickly replaced by respect for how luminous the band actually was, seeing the intricate, impossible moving parts glimpsed without the iconoclastic bellows and musings of Don Van Vliet overwhelming them.
Even without Van Vliet (who retired from music in the early eighties), the reconvening of this league of gentlemen for the last All Tomorrow's Parties in Camber Sands was something special. That it took over thirty years for a portion of this anomalous music to finally be appreciated by the populace was an incredible breakthrough, and the chance for these hard-working musicians to get any bit of delayed recognition is deserved. To commemorate the event, the band headed into the studio to tape their rehearsals for the comeback concert. They slashed their way through the strongest points of the Beefheart catalog, focusing on early tracks such as "Abba Zabba" and "Dropout Boogie" to warm up before heading into the serrated edges of several Trout Mask tunes like "Steal Softly Through Snow", "Moonlight on Vermont" and "Hair Pie".
This version of The Magic Band serves as strata for the various phases of the group. None of the members ever played together-- as this lineup-- before, an intriguing match-up in and of its own right. From their nascent beginnings comes John "Drumbo" French, whose musical transcriptions of Van Vliet's of-the-moment blurts helped lay out most of Trout Mask Replicas. It's his multi-dimensional tom rhythms and snapping cymbals that "tied together" the numerous Beefheart records, according to the Captain himself. Bassist Mark "Rockette Morton" Boston came into the Trout Mask commune and played through Clear Spot. Even with all the extensive research that went into the Grow Fins project, they failed to unearth him, and he only recently resurfaced, still powered by "laser beans." Denny "Feelers Reebo" Walley was a latter-day guitarist on the original Shiny Beast while Gary "Mantis" Lucas was the Captain's manager near the end of his career, actualizing the near-impossible guitar compositions like "Flavor Bud Living" and "Evening Bell". It's a shame that Bill "Zoot Horn Rollo" Harkleroad could not join in the proceedings.
The compositional oddness of differing meters and the clashing keys of jarring note crashes will always be the touchstones of the Magic Band in most folks' minds, but it's the more straight-forward blues palpitations of "Click Clack", "I'm Gonna Booglarize You Baby", "Floppy Boot Stomp", "Circumstances" and "Nowadays a Woman's Got to Hit a Man" that I return to most often these days (curiously, there's nothing after '72-- perhaps because Boston never knew any compositions after this period?) Built up from the relentless bottom end of a Hooker-like endless boogie, the drum rhythms also draw from more mechanical sources like train engines and windshield wiper patterns (Beefheart was a Lakers fan as well, loving the beats that the basketball would make), creating a lower-body pulse and chug. From these deep grooves, the two guitars would then slide and splatter like dueling paint brushes, freely coalescing colorful lines around Van Vliet, giving his voice ample space to growl and blow harp on.
Of course, Don's not here, and as admirably as the Band lays out the tracks, there's ultimately no steam engine train to smoke over them. French does his best Beefheart impersonation, hitting those weird coyote cackles and guttural blues lines, huffing some competent harmonica too; but his voice on ten of the seventeen selections is a bit much though, and I wish for more moments like that of the Trout Mask practice sessions, where you could finally glean the irregular cogs of the compositions interlocking. The best example of this is on an instrumental take of the only song resuscitated from Lick My Decals Off, Baby, "I Wanna Find Me a Woman That'll Hold My Big Toe Till I Have To Go". Freed from Van Vliet's genius, cheeky poetry, we can hear the gentle yet intricate flexing and relaxing of the band for the first time. More of these moments would have made this more crucial, perhaps even as a good single disc intro to the man, but while John French does the growl'n groan admirably, he's no Captain, and that man's presence is still sorely missed.
