Trout Mask Replica

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Trout Mask Replica
Studio album by
ReleasedJune 16, 1969
RecordedAugust 1968 – March 1969
Studio
Genre
Length78:51
LabelStraight
ProducerFrank Zappa
Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band chronology
Strictly Personal
(1968)
Trout Mask Replica
(1969)
Lick My Decals Off, Baby
(1970)
Singles from Trout Mask Replica
  1. "Pachuco Cadaver" / "Wild Life"
    Released: 1970[8]

Trout Mask Replica is the third studio album by the American band

20th century musical
canon.

The album was produced by

Mark "Rockette Morton" Boston on bass guitar, Victor "The Mascara Snake" Hayden on bass clarinet, and John "Drumbo" French on drums and percussion. Beefheart played several brass and woodwind instruments, including saxophone, musette, and natural horn, and contributed most of the vocal parts, while Zappa and members of the band provided occasional vocals and narration. The well-rehearsed Magic Band recorded all instrumental tracks[a 1]
for the album in a single six-hour recording session; Beefheart's vocal and horn tracks were laid down over the next few days.

Trout Mask Replica sold poorly upon its initial release in the United States, where it failed to appear in any charts. It was more successful in the United Kingdom, where it spent a week at number 21 on the UK Albums Chart.[12] In recent years, however, Trout Mask Replica has been widely regarded as the masterpiece of Beefheart's musical career, as well as an important influence on many subsequent artists.[9] It was ranked number 60 on Rolling Stone's 2012 edition of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list, and has appeared on the "best of" lists of many other publications. In 2010, the album was selected for preservation in the United States National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress for being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Background

Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band had a history of difficult relationships with record labels.

bubblegum pop, a style in which Captain Beefheart had no place, and the band again found themselves without a record label. In late 1967 and the spring of 1968, they had several sets of re-recording sessions for what became the albums Strictly Personal and Mirror Man.[13] However, due to contractual uncertainties, they were unsure if the material would ever be released. Around this time, Van Vliet's high school friend Frank Zappa started his own record labels Bizarre and Straight
, and offered Captain Beefheart, a name Zappa had given him, the opportunity to record an album with complete artistic freedom.

Victor Hayden (aka The Mascara Snake) at the house where Trout Mask Replica was rehearsed and recorded in 1968

In preparation, the band rehearsed Van Vliet's difficult compositions for eight months, living

paranoid schizophrenia, and he would see nonexistent conspiracies that explained this behavior.[19]

Recording

"Moonlight on Vermont" and "Veteran's Day Poppy" were recorded at Sunset Sound Recorders in August 1968, about seven months before the rest of the songs. These songs featured a lineup of Van Vliet, Bill Harkleroad and Jeff Cotton on guitar, John French on drums, and Van Vliet's friend Gary Marker serving temporarily on bass as a replacement for the recently departed Jerry Handley. About a month later, Mark Boston joined the band as full-time bassist. The lineup of Van Vliet, Harkleroad, Cotton, French, and Boston recorded the rest of the tracks, with Van Vliet's cousin Victor Hayden occasionally guesting on bass clarinet and vocals.

Zappa originally proposed to record the album as an "ethnic field recording" in the house where the band lived. Working with Zappa and engineer Dick Kunc, the band recorded some provisional backing tracks at the Woodland Hills house, with sound separation obtained simply by having different instruments in different rooms. Zappa thought these provisional recordings turned out well, but Van Vliet became suspicious that Zappa was trying to record the album on the cheap and insisted on using a professional studio. Zappa would say of Van Vliet's approach that it was "impossible to tell him why things should be such and such a way. It seemed to me that if he was going to create a unique object, that the best thing for me to do was to keep my mouth shut as much as possible and just let him do whatever he wanted to do whether I thought it was wrong or not."[17] "Hair Pie: Bake 1", one of the tracks recorded by Zappa and Kunc at the house, appeared on the finished album. Three other tracks on the album were recorded on a cassette recorder at the house, the a cappella poems "The Dust Blows Forward 'n The Dust Blows Back" and "Orange Claw Hammer", and the improvised blues "China Pig" with former Magic Band member Doug Moon accompanying Van Vliet on guitar. "The Blimp" was recorded by Zappa in his studio while on the phone with Van Vliet prior to the album's sessions; Jeff Cotton was put on the phone to recite Van Vliet's latest poem, which Zappa recorded and put over a Mothers of Invention backing track (which had been known to the Mothers, uncredited on Trout Mask's credits, as "Charles Ives").[20]

When they entered the studio, the band completed twenty instrumental tracks in a single six-hour recording session.[21] Van Vliet spent the next few days overdubbing the vocals. Instead of singing while monitoring the instrumental tracks over headphones, he heard only the slight sound leakage through the studio window.[22] As a result, the vocals are only vaguely in sync with the instrumental backing; when asked later about synchronization, he remarked, "That's what they do before a commando raid, isn't it?"[23]

Van Vliet used the ensuing publicity, particularly with a 1970 Rolling Stone interview with Langdon Winner, to promulgate a number of myths which were subsequently quoted as fact. Winner's article stated, for instance, that neither Van Vliet nor the members of the Magic Band ever took drugs, but Harkleroad and French later discredited this.[24] Van Vliet also claimed to have taught both Harkleroad and Mark Boston from scratch; in fact, the pair were already accomplished musicians before joining the band.[22] Van Vliet also took complete credit for composition and arranging, a claim that band members strongly disputed in later years.[25]

Composition

According to Van Vliet, all of the songs on the album were written in a single eight-hour session. Band members have stated that two of the songs ("

recording engineer, was learning how to splice audio tape. He practiced by combining sections of various recordings so that they would join smoothly and maintain a consistent beat despite being from different sources. When Van Vliet heard the tape, he said excitedly, "That's what I want!"[26]

Van Vliet used a piano, an instrument he had never played before, as his main compositional tool. Since he had no experience with the piano and no conventional musical knowledge at all, he was able to experiment with few preconceived ideas of musical form or structure. Van Vliet sat at the piano until he found a rhythmic or melodic pattern that he liked. John French then transcribed this pattern, typically only a measure or two long, into musical notation. After Van Vliet was finished, French would piece these fragments together into compositions, reminiscent of the splicing together of disparate source material on Marker's tape. French decided which part would be played on which instrument and taught each player his part, although Van Vliet had the final say over the ultimate shape of the product. Band member Bill Harkleroad has remarked on "how haphazardly the individual parts were done, worked on very surgically, stuck together, and then sculpted afterwards". Once completed, each song was played in exactly the same way every time, eschewing the improvisation that typifies most popular music in favor of an approach more like a formal, classical composition.

French has stated that about three-quarters of the songs were composed at the piano. The rest mostly consisted of parts that were whistled by Van Vliet. In a few cases, part of the song was composed at the piano while others were whistled. Three of the pieces were unaccompanied vocal solos ("Well", "The Dust Blows Forward and the Dust Blows Back", and "Orange Claw Hammer") while one was a spontaneous improvisation ("China Pig"). "Bills Corpse" was titled for the emaciated condition that Bill Harkleroad suffered before leaving an LSD cult to join the band, and possibly to similar conditions Van Vliet created within the band's house.[27] Van Vliet called the song "Dali's Car" a "study in dissonance".[28] "Hobo Chang Ba" was based on Van Vliet's stories "as a young teenager in Mojave of going down and hanging with the hobos. He said they were really nice people and he got to know the regulars."[29] Drummer John French states of "Old Fart at Play", "[it] was never intended to have these lyrics. This is the only other time I saw Zappa aggressively put on his 'producer's hat' and assert his will on Don. The original title to this song was 'My Business Is the Truth, Your Business Is a Lie'."[30] The album's title was adapted from some lines in "Old Fart at Play": ". . . the nose of the wooden mask / Where the holes had just been uh moment ago / Was now smooth amazingly blended camouflaged in / With the very intricate rainbow trout replica."

Several of the compositions include brief passages from other songs. Some were childhood reminiscences, such as

Concierto de Aranjuez used as the basis for the bridge of "Sugar 'n Spikes". The ending of "Moonlight on Vermont" also includes the refrain from the spiritual "Old-Time Religion". A nonmusical influence was the art of Salvador Dalí; the instrumental "Dali's Car" was inspired by the band's viewing of an installation of Dalí's Rainy Taxi.[31]

Reception and legacy

Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
Encyclopedia of Popular Music
[33]
Pitchfork10/10[34]
Q[35]
The Rolling Stone Album Guide[36]
The Village VoiceB+[37]

Trout Mask Replica is considered to be Captain Beefheart's magnum opus,[38] and has appeared on lists of the greatest albums of all time.[citation needed] BBC disc jockey John Peel said of the album, "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."[39] Peel later ranked the record as the best pop album ever made.[40] Lester Bangs, in his original review for Rolling Stone in 1969, hailed the album as "a total success, a brilliant, stunning enlargement and clarification of [Captain Beefheart's] art", and said that, on "a purely verbal level", it is "an explosion of maniacal free-association incantations".[41] Years later, he wrote that "it was not even 'ahead' of its time in 1969. Then and now, it stands outside time, trends, fads, hypes, the rise and fall of whole genres eclectic as walking Christmas trees, constituting a genre unto itself: truly, a musical Monolith if ever there was one."[42] Steve Huey of AllMusic lauded the album as "stunningly imaginative", and wrote that its influence "was felt more in spirit than in direct copycatting, as a catalyst rather than a literal musical starting point. However, its inspiring reimagining of what was possible in a rock context laid the groundwork for countless experiments in rock surrealism to follow, especially during the punk/new wave era."[9] The Guardian called the album "the standard by which almost all experimental rock music is judged, its reputation as a fearsomely difficult listen undimmed by the passing of time or its influence."[43]

The album's unconventional nature often alienates new listeners. Cartoonist and writer Matt Groening tells of listening to Trout Mask Replica at the age of fifteen: "I thought it was the worst thing I'd ever heard. I said to myself, they're not even trying! It was just a sloppy cacophony. Then I listened to it a couple more times, because I couldn't believe Frank Zappa could do this to me – and because a double album cost a lot of money. About the third time, I realised they were doing it on purpose; they meant it to sound exactly this way. About the sixth or seventh time, it clicked in, and I thought it was the greatest album I'd ever heard".[17][44] The Signal's John Henry wrote in 1969 that the listeners will either love or hate it, "with no middle ground",[45] while journalist Will Smith, writing in the Omaha World-Herald in the same year, found that the album "becomes quite listenable after the initial shock" but was "not for the weak listener".[46] John Harris of The Guardian later discussed the idea that the album requires several listens to "get it", concluding it still sounded "awful" after six listens.[47] Critic Robert Christgau, in his 1969 "Consumer Guide" for The Village Voice, said that its "weirdness" prevented him from granting it a higher grade, but called it "very great played at high volume when you're feeling shitty, because you'll never feel as shitty as this record".[37] In 2003, Rolling Stone stated that "On first listen, Trout Mask Replica sounds like raw Delta blues", with Beefheart "singing and ranting and reciting poetry over fractured guitar licks. But the seeming sonic chaos is an illusion ... Tracks such as 'Ella Guru' and 'My Human Gets Me Blues' are the direct predecessors of modern musical primitives such as Tom Waits and PJ Harvey".[48]

In 2000, it was voted number 50 in Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums.[49] He stated "This record is living proof of his bizarre genius." In 2003, the album was ranked at number 59 by Rolling Stone in their list of 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, and it was ranked number 60 on the 2012 revision of the list:[50] In his 1995 book The Alternative Music Almanac, Alan Cross placed the album at number two on his list of "10 Classic Alternative Albums". In 1995, Mojo put the album at number 28 on their "The 100 Greatest Albums Ever Made" list and at number 51 on their list of "The 100 Records That Changed the World".[51] The album was also included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.[52] Writer Al Spicer called it "in many ways the ultimate blues album, conveying intense experiences under intense pressure".[53] The A.V. Club called it an "avant-garde masterpiece."[54] Entertainment Weekly called it "an astonishing, influential onslaught of avant-garde blues that still reveals fresh lunatic nuances on the umpteenth listen."[55] Academic Langdon Winner referred to it as "the most astounding and important work of art ever to appear on a phonograph record".[56] On April 6, 2011, the album was added to the United States National Recording Registry for the year 2010 by the Library of Congress.[57] On January 13, 2012, as part of its "Inside the National Recording Registry" series, the public radio program Studio 360 broadcast a tribute to the album featuring drummer John French, biographer Mike Barnes, and Beefheart devotee Waits.[58]

Filmmaker David Lynch has called Trout Mask Replica his favorite album of all time,[59][60] and John Lydon has also listed it as one of the albums that shaped him, arguing: "It was anti-music in the most interesting and insane way ... all the bum notes I was being told off for by the teachers were finally being released by well-known artists. That was my confirmation. From then on, there was room for everything."[61] Guitar virtuoso Steve Vai also praised the album and admitted that the first time he heard it, he was appalled by how out of tune the album was and by Van Vliet's vocals, but after meeting him, he gave the album another chance and compared it to "a liberation".[62] In an October 1991 interview with Guitar Player magazine, when asked about his influences, guitarist John Frusciante of Red Hot Chili Peppers said, "the most important inspiration is undoubtedly Zoot Horn Rollo's playing on Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica. If I listen to it first thing in the morning, I'm assured of a day of unbridled creativity."[63]

Track listing

All tracks are written by Don Van Vliet and arranged by John French

Side one
No.TitleLength
1."Frownland"1:41
2."The Dust Blows Forward 'n the Dust Blows Back"1:53
3."Dachau Blues"2:21
4."Ella Guru"2:26
5."Hair Pie: Bake 1" (instrumental)4:58
6."Moonlight on Vermont"3:59
Side two
No.TitleLength
1."Pachuco Cadaver"4:40
2."Bills Corpse"1:48
3."Sweet Sweet Bulbs"2:21
4."Neon Meate Dream of a Octafish"2:25
5."China Pig"4:02
6."My Human Gets Me Blues"2:46
7."Dali's Car" (instrumental)1:26
Side three
No.TitleLength
1."Hair Pie: Bake 2" (instrumental)2:23
2."Pena"2:33
3."Well"2:07
4."When Big Joan Sets Up"5:18
5."Fallin' Ditch"2:08
6."Sugar 'n Spikes"2:30
7."Ant Man Bee"3:57
Side four
No.TitleLength
1."Orange Claw Hammer"3:34
2."Wild Life"3:09
3."She's Too Much for My Mirror"1:40
4."Hobo Chang Ba"2:02
5."The Blimp (Mousetrapreplica)"2:04
6."Steal Softly thru Snow"2:18
7."Old Fart at Play"1:51
8."Veteran's Day Poppy"4:31
Total length:78:51

Personnel

Musicians

  • hunting horn, jingle bells, producer (uncredited), engineer
    (uncredited)
  • Drumbo (John French) – drums, percussion, engineer (uncredited on the original release), arrangement (uncredited)
  • Antennae Jimmy Semens (Jeff Cotton) – guitar, "steel appendage guitar" (slide guitar using a metal slide), lead vocals on "Pena" and "The Blimp", "flesh horn" (vocal with hand cupped over mouth) on "Ella Guru", speaking voice on "Old Fart at Play"
  • Zoot Horn Rollo (Bill Harkleroad) – guitar, "glass finger guitar" (slide guitar using a glass slide), flute on "Hobo Chang Ba"
  • Rockette Morton (Mark Boston) – bass guitar, narration on "Dachau Blues" and "Fallin' Ditch"
  • The Mascara Snake (Victor Hayden) – bass clarinet, backing vocals on "Ella Guru", speaking voice on "Pena"

Additional personnel

  • Doug Moon
    – acoustic guitar on "China Pig"
  • Gary "Magic" Marker – bass guitar on "Moonlight on Vermont" and "Veteran's Day Poppy" (uncredited)
  • Roy Estrada – bass guitar on "The Blimp" (uncredited)
  • Arthur Tripp III – drums and percussion on "The Blimp" (uncredited)
  • Don Preston – piano on "The Blimp" (uncredited)
  • Ian Underwoodalto saxophone on "The Blimp" (uncredited/inaudible)
  • Bunk Gardnertenor saxophone on "The Blimp" (uncredited/inaudible)
  • Buzz Gardner – trumpet on "The Blimp" (uncredited/inaudible)
  • Frank Zappa – speaking voice on "Pena" and "The Blimp" (uncredited); engineer (uncredited); producer
  • Richard "Dick" Kunc – speaking voice on "She's Too Much for My Mirror" (uncredited); engineer
  • Cal Schenkel – album design
  • Ed Caraeff and Cal Schenkel – photography

Explanatory footnotes

  1. ^ Excluding the "home recordings" and "Moonlight on Vermont" and "Veteran's Day Poppy", recorded in 1968

Citations

  1. ^ "Captain Beefheat's Trout Mask Replica reissued on "fish scale" vinyl". April 3, 2018.
  2. ^ Helman, Peter. "Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica Is Finally Streaming For The First Time". Stereogum. Retrieved December 23, 2022.
  3. . Retrieved May 17, 2018.
  4. ^ Paul Sheehan (2020). "Demolishing the Blues: Captain Beefheart as Modernist Outsider". The American Weird: Concept and Medium. Bloomsbury.
  5. ^ Meagher, John. "Ten avant garde albums that will challenge you". The Independent. Retrieved December 23, 2022.
  6. ^ "A beginner's guide to the weird world of Captain Beefheart". The A.V. Club. November 6, 2014. Retrieved July 8, 2017.
  7. ^ Vozick-Levinson, Simon (December 17, 2010). "Captain Beefheart, a.k.a. Don Van Vliet, dies at 69". Entertainment Weekly. New York City: Meredith Corporation. Retrieved September 29, 2016.
  8. ^ Johnston, Graham. "The Captain Beefheart Radar Station – Official Singles". Beefheart.com. Retrieved June 7, 2011.
  9. ^ a b c Steve Huey. "Trout Mask Replica > Review". AllMusic. Retrieved May 16, 2016.
  10. ^ "Captain Beefheat's Trout Mask Replica reissued on "fish scale" vinyl". April 3, 2018.
  11. ^ Helman, Peter. "Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica Is Finally Streaming For The First Time". Stereogum. Retrieved December 23, 2022.
  12. ^ Brown, Tony; Kutner, Tony; Warwick, Neil (2004). The Complete Book of the British Charts: Singles & Albums. Omnibus Press. p. 205.
  13. ^ "Search Results for CAPTAIN BEEFHEART from Piccadilly Records". piccadillyrecords.com. Retrieved August 8, 2017.
  14. ^ "vanity project interviews: The Magic Band". Vpinterviews.blogspot.com. April 21, 2005. Retrieved June 7, 2011.
  15. ^ "Burundo Drumbi! – John French's Series of Q&As, 2000/1". The Captain Beefheart Radar Station. Archived from the original on December 13, 2007. Retrieved December 9, 2007.
  16. .
  17. ^ a b c Elaine Shepard (Producer), Declan Smith (Film research) (1997). The Artist Formerly Known as Captain Beefheart (Documentary). BBC.
  18. ^ French 2010, pp. 389–391.
  19. ^ teejo. "captain beefheart – interview magic band member – drumbo's old dress (part of 'french redressing') – 2004". Retrieved September 29, 2016.
  20. ^ Courier, Kevin (2007). Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica. New York City: Bloomsbury Publishing USA. .
  21. ^ Miles, Barry (2005). Zappa: A Biography. Grove Press. pp. 182–183.
  22. ^ .
  23. ^ From Zig Zag magazine, No. 8, 1969 (as cited by M. Barnes in Captain Beefheart)
  24. ^ French, pp. 291, 301
  25. ^ French pp. 356–387
  26. ^ Captain Beefheart: Under Review. Music Video Distributors. 2006.
  27. ^ French, pp. 802–803
  28. ^ French, pp. 805–806
  29. ^ French, p. 810
  30. ^ French, p. 813
  31. ^ Captain Beefheart's 'Trout Mask Replica': An Astonishingly Puzzling Adventure - Odyssey
  32. ^ Huey, Steve. "AllMusic review". AllMusic. Retrieved July 10, 2013.
  33. .
  34. ^ "Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band - Trout Mask Replica Review". Pitchfork. Retrieved April 28, 2018.
  35. ^ "Q". Q. November 1994. p. 136. Archived from the original on January 2, 2013. Retrieved February 5, 2018.
  36. ^ "Rolling Stone Album Guide – 5 Star Record List 1983". Rocklist.net. Retrieved July 10, 2013.
  37. ^ a b Christgau, Robert (December 11, 1969). "Consumer Guide (5)". The Village Voice. Retrieved October 5, 2020 – via robertchristgau.com.
  38. .
  39. ^ Barnes, Mike (February 1999). "Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band: Trout Mask Replica". Perfect Sound Forever. Archived from the original on November 20, 2011. Retrieved December 9, 2007.
  40. ^ "John Peel's 20 favourite albums of all time". faroutmagazine.co.uk. August 30, 2021. Retrieved June 14, 2022.
  41. ^ Bangs, Lester (July 26, 1969). "Trout Mask Replica". Rolling Stone. No. 38. San Francisco: Straight Arrow Publishers, Inc. p. 37. Retrieved September 10, 2015.
  42. .
  43. ^ Petridis, Alexis. "Captain Beefheart: dust blows forward and dust blows back - an appreciation". The Guardian. Retrieved January 14, 2023.
  44. ^ Graham Johnston. "The Captain Beefheart Radar Station – Plastic Factory". Beefheart.com. Archived from the original on October 14, 2009. Retrieved June 7, 2011.
  45. ^ Henry, John (August 22, 1969). "Kick Out the Doors". The Signal: 2 – via Newspapers.com.
  46. ^ Smith, Will (September 5, 1969). "Captain Beefheart Album Is Not for Weak Listener". Omaha World-Herald: 7 – via Newspapers.com.
  47. ^ Harris, John (August 4, 2006). "Mission: unlistenable". The Guardian. London. Retrieved May 26, 2010.
  48. ^ "58) Trout Mask Replica". Rolling Stone. November 1, 2003. Archived from the original on February 6, 2010. Retrieved February 11, 2010.
  49. .
  50. ^ "60) Trout Mask Replica". Rolling Stone. Retrieved August 7, 2012.
  51. ^ "Rocklist.net...Mojo Lists". Rocklistmusic.co.uk. Retrieved June 7, 2011.
  52. .
  53. . Retrieved May 17, 2018.
  54. ^ "A beginner's guide to the weird world of Captain Beefheart". The A.V. Club. November 6, 2014. Retrieved July 8, 2017.
  55. ^ Collis, Clark. "Captain Beefheart: Five Essential Albums". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved August 9, 2020.
  56. ISSN 0307-1235
    . Retrieved October 6, 2018.
  57. ^ "National Recording Preservation Board, 2010 Selections". LOC.gov. Library of Congress. Retrieved June 7, 2011.
  58. ^ "Captain Beefheart: Trout Mask Replica". Studio 360. Public Radio International. January 12, 2012. Retrieved March 11, 2020 – via WNYC.org.
  59. ^ David Lynch, Angelo Badalamenti Talk Lost Thought Gang Album - Rolling Stone
  60. ^ "David Lynch reciting Captain Beefheart track 'Pena'|Far Out Magazine". Archived from the original on March 21, 2020. Retrieved January 24, 2020.
  61. ^ Wray, Daniel Dylan (December 15, 2016). "John Lydon on the Music That Made Him". Pitchfork. Retrieved October 6, 2018.
  62. ^ Eglinton, Mark (July 31, 2012). "A Baker's Dozen: Steve Vai's 13 Favourite Albums Revealed". thequietus.com. Retrieved March 11, 2020.
  63. ^ Gore, Joe (October 1991). "The Red Hot Chili Peppers: Gods of Sex Funk". Guitar Player. Retrieved February 7, 2016.

General references

  • Barnes, Mike (2004). Captain Beefheart: The Biography.
  • Courrier, Kevin (2007). Trout Mask Replica.
  • French, John (2010). Beefheart: Through the Eyes of Magic. Dartford, Kent, England: Proper Music Publishing. .

External links