Sound Advice: CD Reviews - Captain Beefheart (Trout Mask Replica)

CD Review:
"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." - John Peel (1995)

"The music is dense and frenzied; Van Vliet's saxophone wails, and fractious time signatures and demented compositions reveal debts to Ornette Coleman, John Cage and Zappa without ever losing their original visionary qualities. Some may find the album so disturbing as to be unlistenable, but it is a manifestation of forethought and precision masquerading as anarchy: Van Vliet and his Magic Band knew exactly what to play, where to play it and why it works." -Buddy Seigal (1993)

"Trout Mask Replica shattered my skull, realigned my synapses, made me nervous, made me laugh, made me jump and jag with joy. It wasn't just the fusion I'd been waiting for: it was a whole new universe..." - Lester Bangs (1978)

There are two main reasons why you begin a review with quotes from famous people. The first is because you are not sure what to say and the greats will always say it better. Or, and this why I started my review in this way, you want the people reading it to see the mountain you have to climb when you decide to go against the mainstream.

Captain Beefheart (a.k.a. Don Glen Vliet) and his Magic Band were given total freedom to put out this enigmatic album from Frank Zappa and you hear the result. Zappa didn't take a hands off approach totally, as he produced this damn thing, he just let Don and the band write and play the music they wanted.

When taking on the world (you will hardly ever see a bad review of this album anywhere) you have to stick to a point and drill it home as much as possible without lying or slandering anything about the merits of an album. Especially one that is placed along side all the greats without much effort. So I must give kudos where kudos are due.

You will never hear an album quite like this ever again. The chaos spewed out on this double album is one amazing vision of jazz fusion, blues and any other genre of music you want to add. Don's vocals are at their most erratic. The lyrics are visionary even if they are hard to crack. From electric guitars to an over abundance of saxophone, add in clarinet, drums, bass, harmonica and flute and you come prepared to have your ears blown away from the explosion of sound.

But as the sharpest sword always has two sides to the blade and the person that can hurt you most is the one closest to you, all the things that you can say to praise this vision of an album, you can also use to shoot it down.

The Achilles heel of this album is that it is, as Seigal stated in between accolades, unlistenable. When you create music and make the effort to put it on vinyl you obviously want people to listen to it. Every artist, no matter what they say about commercialism, wants to be heard, whether by a few or preferably by many. Trout Mask Replica slaps this listener in the face, insults him, and instead of rewarding him for the effort he made to find and buy the album, and the time spent listening to it, stabs him in the back like a modern day Brutus. I wonder if Don is actually laughing at everyone who bought this thing.

Anyone who has read The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand will remember the character Ellsworth Toohey, the villain in the novel. He was based on what Rand thought Joseph Stalin would be like if he was in a capitalist society. He had a lust for power but no talent other than manipulation. One of his ploys was to create different societies for the advancement in the arts. One of these societies involved literature. Toohey, who had a well read column in the local newspaper, promoted a playwright who wrote an awful play. On Toohey's advice, people went in droves to see this play and acclaimed it as one of the greatest plays to be put on stage. The playwright new it was bad and Toohey knew it was drivel, but the point of the exercise was to create in society the want of the mundane and untalented. If Toohey could convince everyone that bad was great, then he would become the leader of this new world.

Trout Mask Replica is the musical equivalent to this play. Promoted by every reviewer on the planet since 1969 as a great album, it has stayed on all the lists that matter, and has become the most famous album never listened to more than once. If you want to be on the inside of the musically aware, you must own this album. If you don't have it, or don't like it, then you have no understanding of great music. So they say. Just like Ulysses by James Joyce or War & Peace by Tolstoi, it is put on the shelf and never read. They are mentioned again and again as great books, but everyone reads the Coles Notes version as these books are unreadable.

Everyone can continue to buy this album, listen to it once so they can sooth their conscience when they say it's a great album, and they can leave it on the shelf for friends to see and gather dust since it never again enters the CD player.

If you have ever had a conversation with a schizophrenic you may listen intently. You may attempt to follow what he says and if you are easily influenced you may misunderstand babble for messianic insight and follow the man to your death. But I'd prefer to listen to someone other than Charles Manson or the Reverend Jim Jones and keep my life and that of others.

I have listened to this album at least five times and squirmed and became agitated, not from its greatness, but from the denial my mind forced on my hand, arresting its movement and urge to press the stop button and moving on to something that is actually listenable.

So Seigal, Peel and Bangs can listen to this album and continue to tell us it is great. But I would bet they have left it on the shelf like I have and moved on to something more palatable.

For those who actually listen to this tripe on a regular basis, and you are very few, revel in your musical awareness, you know something that I don't. I will move on and when I want to listen to some actual great jazz fusion Hot Rats will enter my player and I will only have to listen to Don for one song, which I can take for the team, I guess.

Scott D. Brown