Art of The Day II - Don Van Vliet

 

Don Van Vliet, 

“Feather Times a Feather”

Oil on Canvas 1987

Art of The Day : Don Van Vliet ‘Sixteen Chrome’ 1985

 Don Van Vliet 

"Sixteen Chrome", 1985

Oil on canvas

96 x 72 inches

Photo of The Day: Bongo Fury cover shoot

Rare photos from The Archive 

Rex Lowe

"This photo was taken at a cheap burger joint on Sierra Highway in Palmdale CA. A buddy’s mom owned it. She was paid a day’s receipts for closing for this shoot. It nor those pictured exist any longer"

Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band - Floppy Boot Stomp [Dust Sucker] Gary Lucas posts some Beefheart (obvs!)

  . . . and we could start as we mean to go on! Gary Lucas posted this one this morning! Why wouldn’t he?

It’s FLOPPY BOOT STOMP so obviously I dedicate this to the Boss of FBS and the Voodoo Wag, Silent Way and Brother Jobe of course and all their lovely boys!

Gary Lucas

Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band - Floppy Boot Stomp [Dust Sucker] 

Floppy Boot Stomp

Captain Beefheart - Topic

Don Van Vliet– vocals

John "Drumbo" French – drums, percussion

Denny "Feelers Rebo" Walley – guitar,

Jeff Moris Tepper – guitar

John Thomas – Rhodes electric piano, Mini Moog

 

Gary says: My friend French rocker Fred Pessoa shares some recent French comic art saluting Le Capitaine Coueur de Boeuf

Remembering Captain Beefheart (January 15, 1941 – December 17, 2010)

Don Van Vliet by Anton Corbijn

 oops nearly forgot we should celebrate Don’s birthday with some music for Pete’s sake ( who IS Pete and why is he drinking sake?) Big Eyed Beans From Venus . . . . ya get me?

Captain Beefheart - Big Eyed Beans From Venus (Recut/Synced)

wirewehear says: Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band, footage from The Rainbow Theatre 17th April 1973. This was broadcast by the Old Grey Whistle Test with 

audio from the 'Clear Spot' LP & a right botch job they made of it too. Firstly some creative genius thought it would be a good idea to add all those fairground-from-hell light effects all over the invaluable footage. That was bad enough, but then there was no effort at all made to sync the film to the audio, so I've rectified the latter at least. I also upgraded the audio.

Incidentally I don't think the band are even playing 'BEBFV' in this clip. In the original cut you can briefly see Don playing mouth organ at one point, an instrument which doesn't feature in the song. Therefore it stands to reason that it's not exactly synced, but re-edited & cut to fit the images, as best as I could manage. Smoke & mirrors me dears.

Artwork of the Day - Album cover art Don Van Vliet Doc at The Radar Station 1982

 Don Van Vliet's art on the original back cover of the 1980 Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band album "Doc At The Radar Station" - Don's art also featured on the front cover of the album.

Trout Mask Replica instrumental || The Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band Appreciation Society | member Zane Kordich drops a hot one . . .

 Wow check this out

Zane of the Appreciation society dropped by long enough tob their F/B page to  post this:

Zane Kordich

The Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band Appreciation Society

I recently compiled all the "Bush Recording" Trout Mask Replica instrumental takes from the Grow Fins boxset into a playlist (without all the dead air between takes on the boxset) in tracklist order. I've found this to be great as a way to isolate the astonishingly tight musicianship of the Magic Band. I thought I'd share it here for anyone interested!

Youtube playlist:

https://youtube.com/playlist...

Here's the playlist of Clear Spot instrumentals!

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6g54Z4LRgFQrwWjy2obNHH...

There's a great bootleg of instrumental takes from the Decals sessions that I've found similarly enjoyable to dive into (hearing Japan in a Dishpan and Flash Gordon's Ape without the horn overdubs is revelatory!), and the newest deluxe reissue of Clear Spot had some beautifully clear instrumental takes that really let you soak in Bill Harkleroad AKA Zoot Horn Rollo's incredible guitar lines.

so much was this noted that Drumbo dropped by to comment  (he does that!) 

John Drumbo French

"The guys all worked their asses off on the "Decals" stuff, and probably more so on the Trout Mask Stuff, because it was a completely new musical world we all entered, so it took a complete alteration of how we thought about music. "

Captain Beefheart - picture of the day

Don in his Chinese 'coolie’ hat [can you say that anymore? - ED] in the studio working on 'Clear Spot’ perhaps my favourite album (three or four tend to rotate SB, TMR, CS and LMDO . . . . )

 

Don Van Vliet [Beefheart] the painter . . . .ART TRIPP III

Photo by Philippe Gras of Art onstage with Beefheart 

at the Bataclan Paris, April 1972.

Ed Marimba

 

 Art Tripp : 

"Don Van Vliet was primarily a painter and sculptor. What he did in music was no different from what was represented by the images in his wonderful paintings. You could say that whenever Don was with other people, in most circumstances, they were participants in a painting. That was predominantly Don's view of life: as an art statement, with reality being a nuisance. Symbolism took precedence over substance."

Art in 2013

Artist of The Day | DON VAN VLIET ‘DRAGON GOWN’ 1989

 

Don Van Vliet 

"Dragon Gown", 1989

Oil on canvas 

148 x 122 cm / 58.25 x 48 inches

As someone [

Sue Forester] on the Appreciation Facebook page asked how much it might have gone for 

"Dragon Gown" Sold Lot #430  +235% above mid-estimate this year it seems 

$47,943  a record for Don’s work thus far sold at Van Ham Fine Art Auctions in 5th June 2025.

For Steve Cain

@

The Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band Appreciation Society

Artist of The Week | Don Van Vliet ‘Dragon Gown' 1989

Don van Vliet

"Dragon Gown", 1989

Oil on canvas

148 x 122 cm / 58.25 x 48 inches

Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band

Painting of The Day - Gary Lucas’ choice of his gifted painting from Don " Chinese Fisherman” 1980

Don Van Vliet “Chinese Fisherman"
ink, watercolor, graphite and colored pencil on paper
"A gift from Don in 1980.” Gary Lucas

 

 As noted by Gary Lucas over on his Flickennabok page, actually really well recorded!

Son House - Shetland Pony Blues

At 1:07 you can hear an actual steam-powered freight train chug past the recording studio in Klack’s Store Lake Cormorant Missippi where this classic Son House side was recorded by Alan Lomax. The makeshift studio abutted a railroad track. I played this for Don Van Vliet who remarked: “He’s singing about a Shetland pony and here comes the Iron Horse!” G.Lucas

 

 

Art of The Day: Don Van Vliet gave Denny Walley a painting! (Gary Lucas)

A painting by Don Van Vliet from 1976, given by him to Magic Band guitarist Denny Walley. 

Denny commented: 'I think we had just gotten back from touring EU when Don gifted me with this amazing painting.

He was incredibly generous when it came to his drawings & paintings.

For me, there is no higher honor than to be able to say that Don was a friend & that I was a member of his Magic Band.’

this from Gary Lucas’ Facebook page and how lucky were these guys to work with the Captain and be given paintings!

 

Meanwhile nearly ten years later . . . . .. Cap’n stretches out to the best batch yet

Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band in Paris, 1980 

Don Van Vliet - vocals, harmonica, sax

Jeff Moris Tepper - guitar

Richard Midnight Hatsize Snyder - guitar

Eric Drew Feldman - bass, synthesizer, mellotron, piano

Robert Arthur Williams - drums

Gary Lucas - guitar*

• Nowadays A Woman's Gotta Hit A Man 0:18
• Best Batch Yet 3:43
• Dirty Blue Gene 8:47
• Safe as Milk 12:42
• Flavor Bud Living* 16:33
• Bat Chain Puller 17:47
• Big Eyed Beans From Venus 22:58

Painting of The Day - Don Van Vliet ‘Crow Dance A Panther’ 1988

Don Van Vliet, “Crow Dance a Panther”, 1988,

 Oil on canvas, 28 1/4 × 24 1/2 inches (72 × 62.5 cm)

©️Don Van Vliet

#DonVanVliet #MichaelWernerGallery

Don Van Vliet on Smoking

 photo by Nick Chase.

"They used to have this billboard at 'Hollywood and Vine' that sent out these huge smoke rings. Oh man, how could anybody not smoke after seeing those huge mechanical smoke rings? The circle in records, the circle of the smoke rings, the circle of the tobacco cylinder - a very clever campaign.

It was hard to quit cigarettes but I quit, because I was too green to burn (laughs). No, actually I quit so I'd be able to do anything I wanted with my voice, and I can finally hit really high notes now. I smoke a pipe now and keeping the damn thing lit is so hard it's really taught me patience.

"The Gentle Art of Smoking" by Alfred P. Dunhill is a very good book on the subject. I have a huge collection of pipes and I got this particular one on Duke Street in London in 1971. I like London."

 - Don Van Vliet, interviewed in the summer of 1984 at his home in Northern California by Kristine McKenna -

https://beefheart.xyz/argue/don/good.html

Painting of the Day : Don Van Vliet “Untitled” 1969

Don Van Vliet 

"Untitled", 1969

Acrylic, pastel on window screen (sic)

157 x 55.5 cm

 

Colour Television is for Corn Flakes! - Captain Beefheart interviewed (prior to Bluecoat Gallery show in Liverpool 1972)

Don outside the Bluecoat Gallery Liverpool 1972

Photo: Don Valentine, copyright Bluecoat Gallery.

Note he mentions a book Old Fart at Play, a collection of poetry Singing Ink and a new album  Brown Star . . . . .  . . . . . . 

 

After "The Artist Formerly know as Captain Beefheart" was aired, BBC Producer Elaine Shepherd sent me a bunch of footage on VCR tape. This was one of the pieces sent to me. My ex-girlfriend can be seen in the very end with her friend Pat ( last name forgotten). This is NOT shot in Liverpool, but in L.A. on Wilshire Blvd. My ex lived just down the street. And there's no way that she could have been in Liverpool. People have argued with me about this, but I'm absolutely positive it was footage shot in L.A. because she told me about going to this exhibit” 

John ‘Drumbo’ French

Personally I’ll take John’s word any and every day!

visitors at the Bluecoat Gallery ’72 photo George Tate

Captain Beefheart - Michael Tearson WMMR Interview (February 1972)

Michael Tearson of WMMR in Philadephia, Pennsylvania interviews Don van Vliet sometime in February, 1972. The topic is mostly about his new album at the time, the Spotlight Kid.  

Picture is of Don at the time.

"Never read a book in my life . . but my wife reads to me . . . . . . “ the crow and the wolf . . .”

etc etc . . . . 

Don at the BluecoatGallery 1972 copyright The Bluecoat Gallery