Bought when it came out and a seminal influence on my musical taste and hanging around with musicians who could play ’note for note’ (Dale and John!) the entire album and memorised the lyrics as a matter of course this album is uniquely special to me!
"If there has been anything in the history of popular music which could be described as a work of art in a way that people who are involved in other areas of art would understand, then Trout Mask Replica is probably that work.” - John Peel
"Trout Mask Replica shattered my skull, realigned my synapses, made me nervous, made me laugh, made me jump and jag with joy. It wasn't just the fusion I'd been waiting for: it was a whole new universe, a completely realised and previously unimaginable landscape of guitars splintering and spronging and slanging and even actually swinging in every direction, as far as the mind could see..." - Lester Bangs
Don (Captain Beefheart)
Mark Boston
Bill Harkleroad
She’s Too Much For My Mirror
Bill Harkleroad aka Zoot Horn Rollo remembers his favourite gig with Don and the band at the Royal Albert Hall, London in March 1972:"Obviously it’s a huge gig, I guess there were about seven, eight thousand people, we packed it and we were the headliners. How in the f**k did that happen? Captain Beefheart filling Albert Hall? Something was up, and I don’t know why. There was the Beatles in the audience, so we knew that, and I opened the show. I run out, start whamming on some power chord, E chord – I didn’t know it was a power chord then, but I played it – and, my amps off. You run out in Albert Hall, the biggest gig in your life, balconies, people hanging out, you know, and I’m opening the show, heart beating clear through your chest, run out there and your amp is off. Mommy, I wanna go home!I mean, it really was that, my life passed before me. So, I hold up my finger a moment, ‘One minute’, and then I go back, flip the switch, get back and go behind the curtain, run out again, and pause a second, and start whamming the chord again, which, of course, brought down the house. I don’t know where that came from. that’s not my style of being this introverted little jerk. but, I pulled it off somehow.And then, the bass player (Mark Boston aka Rockette Morton) comes out, and his cord is wrapped around the amp, so he gets out there, and, boom!, the amp falls and slides down the stage. the crowd thought that it was totally choreographed, it was awesome."These photos of Don, Bill and Mark were all taken by Barrie Wentzell.
Old Fart at Play
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