Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band—Trout Mask Replica

Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band—Trout Mask Replica

Trout Mask Replica—If there is an album that can truly be called idiosyncratic, it's Trout Mask Replica. Nothing could have prepared anyone for it in 1969, and its existence continues to baffle listeners in 2015. Its reputation precedes it, of course; it has been constantly cited as a turning point in rock and, for that matter, popular music. Its purported influence can be hard to hear outside of Tom Waits (namely Swordfishtrombones), but its role as a game-changer is hard to deny, especially considering the volume of acclaim and supporters in both music and general pop culture.

Its famous weirdness was not entirely unprecedented. Captain Beefheart (Don Van Vliet) and the Magic Band were already one of the more curious psychedelic blues groups of the '60s, and compositions like "Safe as Milk" and "Beatle Bones 'n' Smokin' Stones" from Strictly Personal (1968) were as lyrically strange as anything yet to come. What didn't exactly mesh with the standard on Trout Mask were the wild new arrangements—namely Beefheart's newfound fascination with a wide array of brass instruments—and just the peculiarities of the melodies and rhythms. This experimentation was made possible by Beefheart's collusion with childhood friend Frank Zappa, who had recently founded the record labels Bizarre and Straight. Zappa, an avant-garde artist in his own right, both allowed the band room to create music free from expectations and produced the record himself.

The details of the album's preparation, creation, and credits as well as the circumstances surrounding its recording are subject to some confusion. The original double LP's liner notes state that all 28 songs were written by Captain Beefheart, though in a 2005 interview with the blog vanity project, Magic Band drummer Drumbo (John French) disputed this and other points:

"Don was the initial creative force in the band, there’s no denying that. Lyrically, he is unsurpassed ... However, he was not very organized, nor did he at all understand the extreme learning curve it took to actually bring his vision to life. As a result, the band members—some more than others—contributed a great deal more to the actual completion and arranging of the music than Don ever realized."

Drumbo referred to Beefheart and the Magic Band's living situation as a "cult atmosphere ... manufactured by Van Vliet ... as one of the methods he used to control us." This is corroborated by Zappa, who recalled in The Real Frank Zappa Book, "The whole band was living in a small house in the San Fernando Valley (we could use the word cult in here)," where Drumbo reported the conditions were such that Zoot Horn Rollo (Bill Harkleroad) "while writing his book ... once had to run outside and collapse on his lawn—vomiting—from reliving the trauma." He elucidated:

"I'm sure he viewed our comradeship as a threat to his leadership, and so [he] felt he had to keep us compartmentalized by nurturing hostility. He did this by betraying confidence, mostly. Something said privately about a third party would be injected into a group 'talk,' which would usually be quite embarrassing and sometimes humiliating. These talks would go on for days until the targeted person 'in the barrel' finally broke down, usually either in tears or just in complete submission to Don. It was very much like brainwashing combined with a very bad form of group therapy."

Beefheart admitted at least once in his lifetime to being a "dictator," saying in an interview for the December 10th, 1977 edition of Sounds, "I can't think of myself as doing something wrong, because I asked them every day, 'Are you sure you want to do this?'" which paints the Trout Mask Replica recording as something of a sadomasochist venture. Rollo claimed in a 1997 interview for Hi-Fi Mundo, "80% of it was done by him kinda beating the shit out of a piano in a rhythmic sense ... John French, the drummer, transcribed it, notated it all, and would dole out the parts to the players. So he had a concept of being away from tonality, but using rhythm as the main input, because that's what he had to offer ... he didn't know what he played after he played it." He referred to Beefheart as "a non-musician" who "[had] no idea what any of those black and white things were on the piano." Assuming this is true, Trout Mask Replica actually falls under an uncommon heading, genre-wise: aleatoric music. The album has been often cited as an example of jazz music, but this is not entirely apt; jazz is largely based around improvisation, and while Beefheart's original sketches were improvised, they only were as such insofar that the geneses of all songs are inherently improvisational. Beefheart and the Magic Band famously rehearsed most of the album's finished songs "to death," as Zappa explained (International Times, March 1977), recalling that "they did all the tracks in 5 hours, and that's doing some of them several times. I couldn't tell the difference between the takes."

While Rollo's assessment is likely colored by his unpleasant memories, Trout Mask Replica does have an air of musical primordia. It has been argued over the many years since its release whether the music is carefully planned and forward-thinking or simply rehearsed nonsense. The real answer is almost certainly somewhere in the middle: there is no doubt that Beefheart's lyrical prowess was, as Drumbo put it, unsurpassed. His improvisational ability and imagination were keen and pure in that regard, as evidenced by next-level bouts of inspiration like the opening fragment of Trout Mask, "Frownland": "My smile is stuck/I cannot go back t'yer Frownland ... I cannot go back to yer land of gloom/Where black jagged shadows/Remind me of the comin' of yer doom."

The unaccompanied "The Dust Blows Forward 'n the Dust Blows Back" is excellent, evoking a sort of nostalgia. "Dachau Blues" is a curious story about World Wars I and especially II (Dachau having been a concentration camp) that borders on insensitive, though this feeling cannot be inferred with specificity. "Ella Guru" is one of the more traditional-sounding songs, but it is quickly run over by the flagellating horns of "Hair Pie: Bake 1," which is wordless aside from a conversation between Beefheart and some neighbors at the end. "Moonlight on Vermont," the closer of the side one and an overall highlight, quotes "Old-Time Religion" and Steve Reich's "Come Out."

"Pachuco Cadaver" is a mad blues that breaks down into a long bout of stream-of-consciousness. It naturally flows into the similar "Bills Corpse" and the somewhat-pretty-by-comparison "Sweet Sweet Bulbs." "Neon Meate Dream of a Octafish" [sic] sounds fittingly as though the vocals were recorded underwater. "China Pig" is great, and notably also seems to support Zoot Horn Rollo's claim that Beefheart was something of a novice; in the beginning of the song he asks Doug Moon to play "one of those [imitates slow blues number]" with no additional instruction. "My Human Gets Me Blues" seems to be a Beefheart statement on transgenderism. "Dali's Car" closes out the first LP with a bout of diminished chords and minor improvisation.

After the instrumental "Hair Pie: Bake 2," the "fast 'n bulbous" dialogue with The Mascara Snake (Victor Hayden) continues (from the beginning of "Pachuco Cadaver") before the crazed rant of "Pena," vocalized not by Beefheart but guitarist Antennae Jimmy Semens (Jeff Cotton). Another spoken-word monologue from Beefheart, "Well," precedes the album's centerpiece and longest song, "When Big Joan Sets Up." "Fallin' Ditch" exhibits just how rehearsed Trout Mask Replica actually was ("What do you run on, Rockette Morton? Say 'beans.'"). The jaunty "Sugar 'n Spikes" and soulful "Ant Man Bee" are a pair of high points.

The album's most lyrically dense song and final a cappella performance, "Orange Claw Hammer," opens side four. On "Wild Life," Beefheart's brass actually corresponds somewhat to his vocals. "She's Too Much for My Mirror" is possibly the least essential song in the set; "Hobo Chang Ba" is one of the few songs where Beefheart alters his delivery, and it even features jingle bells. On "The Blimp (mousetrapreplica)," Semens cries out about "the blimp" over the telephone while the Mothers of Invention accompany him with a generic roll, which is a refreshing change of pace. "Steal Softly thru Snow" actually sounds like traditional poetry. The album ends with a pair of musings on the old, the flat "Old Fart at Play" and the more simply psychedelic "Veteran's Day Poppy."

The legacy of Trout Mask Replica is rarely disputed, but the question of whether or not the music is good has always been a sticking point. Almost every song seems charming after enough listening, having each its own distinct personality. On the other hand, many are superfluous musically. This can probably be attributed to Captain Beefheart rather than the band, since he insisted on being credited as the sole writer, and there's only so much the band could have done with his rough drafts anyway. As it is, it's a fascinating record with a rich history, and it's a unique experience that shouldn't be passed up. It's just not a pretty one, and the complexity of the compositions should not be overstated as they often are.