Ashtray Heart

By Captain Beefheart, from Doc at the Radar Station

Don Van Vliet, aka Captain Beefheart, died of MS last weekend. I learned of it from a fellow traveler here in Blogistan, otherwise I'd be clueless.

I found Beefheart late in his music career. I was sixteen in 1980, listening to some fairly edgy stuff, like Robert Fripp, The Residents, Devo's first records, Zappa. I read a rave review, and picked up the new Beefheart (a good review was all it took back then, with disposable cash spilling out my pockets). One more record followed in 1982, then he gave up music to concentrate on his painting.

Doc at the Radar Station was a brutal thumping, with heavy rhythms, fractured blues guitars, the Captain alternately growling and screaming his poetry, occasional stretches of atonal saxophone. It was love at first listen. Not quite the sound of anarchy, maybe of a society near collapse.

I almost went with a performance clip here, but decided that the uninitiated might get a better taste with lyrics deciphered. Rock on, Captain.

"Somebody's had too much to think"