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Where’s the Beef?
The Captain’s Magic Band reunite
BY TED DROZDOWSKI

The Magic Band earned their name. Under the direction of mad-genius musician Don Van Vliet, who proclaimed himself Captain Beefheart, they built a stunning fusion of blues, rock, and jazz that clattered around in entirely unpredictable ways. Slide guitars and drums hurled conflicting rhythms at each other. Harmonica and horns cried like leg-trapped wolves. Melodies clashed over burping stop-and-start chord changes. Yet somehow Beefheart managed to tame the tigers in this music, finding just the right places to croak out his arch, rasping, and often absurdist poetry about generational conflict, morality, ecology, and general horniness.

Their sound was a mixture of the familiar and the totally alien that never met with wide acceptance, though a fledgling MTV did put the video for the title track of Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band’s final album, 1982’s Ice Cream for Crow (EMI), in rotation. Nonetheless, the Captain & his crew’s 15 years make them the definitive American rock cult outfit. And that cult has never grown silent. News of Van Vliet’s reconstruction as a successful primitivist painter, occasional showings of his visual art, and the release of sets like 1999’s five-disc Grow Fins: Rarities (1965–1982) (Revenant) and 2002’s Dust Sucker (Ozit Morpheus), a career-spanning anthology, have kept interest in his legacy alive.

Earlier this year, that legacy became livelier. John French, the Magic Band’s first drummer and a veteran of the group’s best-regarded classics, Trout Mask Replica (Reprise), Safe As Milk (Buddha), and Lick My Decals Off, Baby (Bizarre/Straight), re-formed a version of the group to perform the music they’d once made with their behatted and benighted leader. They played a series of live dates (they hope to do so again next summer) and recorded a recent disc that’s the finest tribute to Beefheart’s creativity besides the original recordings, the shambling and beautiful Back to the Front (ATP Recordings).

The current Magic Band line-up draws together early members French, whom Beefheart dubbed "Drumbo," and bassist Mark Boston (a/k/a "Rockette Morton") with guitarist Denny Walley ("Feelers Reebo") of the ’75/’76 edition and one of the final version’s six-stringers, Gary Lucas ("Mantis"). They reunite the best qualities of Beefheart’s classic numbers, playing material from the three aforementioned albums. There are intense slide-guitar blues workouts, including the bad-woman rant "Click Clack," and intricate abstract riff-riot instrumentals like "My Human Gets Me Blues." Eschewing horns, reeds, extra percussion, and the other instruments that sometimes appeared in Beefheart’s original arrangements, the quartet also tackle deranged widescreen workouts like "Moonlight on Vermont," where white elephants thunder — in both the lyrics and the sound — through suburban landscapes.

Rumor has it that the now-62-year-old Beefheart is "grumpy" about the new Magic Band, but fans have been mighty pleased. And so are the group. Without the iron hand and the flaring mind of Beefheart at the controls, playing this highly creative and challenging music, French says, has been a gas. "In the band’s former cult-like atmosphere, independent action or thought was frowned upon. I would personally hope that he likes it and knows that my emulation of his singing style [which nails Van Vliet’s sandpaper tones] is meant as nothing less than a manifestation of my admiration for his fantastic vocalizing."

The album’s title, Back to the Front, seems appropriate, because working with Beefheart was often said to be a grueling battle. Van Vliet has been portrayed as both a genius and a tyrant by almost everybody who knew him. The year-long rehearsals for his acknowledged masterpiece, Trout Mask Replica, found the Magic Band living a spartan communal life while Van Viet subjected them to insults, intimidation, outright threats, and communication breakdowns caused by his own lack of musical education. So for French, who is working on a biography and an album of original material in the Magic Band vein, do the Trout Mask songs that make up much of Back to the Front trigger nasty memories?

"At the time, I thought Van Vliet was perhaps the most sadistic and unappreciative person I ever met. He had some very dedicated people and certainly should have had no complaints about their loyalty and dedication to his projects. However, in my more ‘mature’ perspective, I am sure that there was some kind of chemical imbalance in the brain that at times caused him to have acute paranoia and suspicion of our motives. There was a part of Don which was very warm and understanding, but I think his perception of leadership was tainted by deep-seated insecurities. Also, he was really blazing a unique and highly criticized new trail in music. Since we were the people closest to him, we took the heat."


Issue Date: January 9 - 15, 2004
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