Perhaps my favourite Captain Beefheart album is 'Clear Spot' and the main reason for which is we saw him and the Magic Band for the last time at Oxford Polytechnic college (now Brookes University) in 1973. It was perhaps my favourite of all live performances I ever witnessed and was truly extraordinary. The audience was extraordinary too and perhaps the most varied and eclectic I have ever seen; all ages, all walks of life from freaks to quite odd looking folk in suits, from babies or toddlers (as memory serves) and teenagers to 'heads' and an elderly couple near us who were frankly the coolest looking folk we ever met and the band were simply on fire. 

• Captain Beefheart (Don Van Vliet) 
• Zoot Horn Rollo (Bill Harkleroad) - guitar, slide guitar, mandolin
• Rockette Morton (Mark Boston) - guitar, bass
• Ed Marimba (Art Tripp) - drums., percussion
• Oréjon (Roy Estrada) - bass

noteworthy for this fan by being the only album without the legendary drummer and now Beefheart historian par excellence John French. I love Art Tripp III or Ed Marimba and they played together in an incarnation where Art was on percussion as John played drums proper but they are perhaps my two favourite drummers of all time . . . . . . 

So why am I banging on about one of my favourite albums of all time? Well recently someone posted a shot of the publicity billboard on Wilshire Boulevard in L.A. that featured an original Don Van Vliet painting and the thing is it was totally unique and so dissimilar to his more mature later work it is really worth seeing . . . . . . . 

not quite the full image as you can see by the shot above but it seems to be all we've got

Rolling Stone referred to Clear Spot as "sizzling . .  heavy metal flash" which frankly is the biggest pile of horse doo-doo! So we will leave it to the excellent Beefheart.com website for the full sp!

Doc at The Radar Station - Clear Spot