There is a certain kind of madness that when controlled, and focused can be likened to a biker, hammering down the motorway at 120 miles per hour against the traffic, weaving in and out, ready to explode into a million pieces should he so much as flinch.  This is the kind of madness that we can call genius, and it applies so fittingly to Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band’s Trout Mask Replica that the very sound of it makes you feel unsteady, out of control, inspired and excited.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, this is the conclusion that many of us reach after several listens, but it is by no means an easy album to get on board with.  On the first listen you think ‘what’s going here?’ You take the CD out, examine it for scratches and give it another spin.  Confusion takes hold, your logical mind desperately trying to make sense of the arrangements.  These musicians...as passionate as they may sound, are surely not all marching to the same tune? The lack of rhythm, the absence of a repetitive groove gives you a nasty feeling of nausea, as if frantically trying to stay upright in choppy waters.  No, this certainly isn’t anything you’ve heard before.  You take it out of the player, toss it aside, angry at this ‘music’ that you’ve heard so much about, frustrated that you don’t ‘get it’.  But the raspy sound of that crazed maniac calls to you, for some curious reason you can’t seem to let it go.  So you give it another shot, and then, all of a sudden it begins to make perfect sense.

Captain Beefheart, aka Don Van Vliet, with his growling delta blues howl, was a determined avant-gardist (if there is such a word), refusing to let those record company weasels who began to arrive on the scene in the late sixties, turn his vision into a market ready, radio friendly sing-along.  Despite having a grounding in the blues Van Vliet felt strongly that a rock n’ roll groove was corny and a catchy riff was the height of dullness.  But let’s not pretend for a second that Van Vliet intended to get a bunch of talented junkies together for some kind of depraved party-come jam session, recording the results as he knocked back shot after shot of absinthe.  From all reports there was barely any food in the run down shack that the poverty stricken band lived in whilst writing the album, let alone drugs and wild parties. No sir, every toot, strum, beat and crash was written out by the Captain for his disciplined Magic Band to play, there is no improvisation, no chance, the man is a composer and the orchestra, after living the music for months on end, interpreted the harsh madness of his genius in one six hour recording session.

So on the third or fourth listen, as you get to grips with the manic, twanging guitars, the heavily syncopated rhythms and Van Vliet’s bluesy squawks and screams, their jumbled phrases coming together in a twisted kind of sense that captures the soul of those early bluesmen, you speed past that first instinct for a shallow beat, and hit a harder, deeper, altogether more satisfying groove that flows below the surface, holding the cacophony of jarring and violent sounds together, weaving the motorcycle through on-coming traffic and sending it howling into the night.

Beefheart and the Magic Band went on to release some pretty fantastic if not all together tamer music, before Van Vliet became successful as a serious painter in the 80’s. However, nothing they’ve produced will ever be quite as special, unique and downright crazy in its calculated execution as the mind bending Trout Mask Replica.

Posted In Classic Albums, Sep 19 2009. Words - Pete