ALBUMS: Ice Cream for Crow (Captain Beefheart, 1982) Sufficiently Breathless (Captain Beyond, 1973)
MCV Rating: Beefheart 4.0/$$$; Beyond 3.5/$$$
Two Captains. Passing in the night.
Captain Beefheart, and Captain Beyond.
Here are two albums I’m going to review together because, well, it seems like a good idea as I type this.
There’s nothing that really ties them together other than they were out of the mainstream of rock. Captain Beyond was a hard rocking psychedelic band made up of members of several well -known hard rock bands: Deep Purple, Iron Butterfly, and Johnny Winter.
Captain Beefheart, on the other hand, is kind of a legendary California artist who put the avant in avant-garde. Surrealism is another word associated with him. He collaborated with Frank Zappa some. He was apparently considered a child prodigy and sculpted at age 3. ‘Nuff said. The double LP Trout Mask Replica was considered his masterpiece.
The music of Captain Beyond starts promisingly enough with Sufficiently Breathless, which is the airy light and nicely played title track. But from here on, it’s hit and mostly miss including some spacey backward tracking loop leading to a sort of a Sourthern-fried jam band ditty called ‘Everything is a Circle.’ I agree. But am not too hot on the song which accelerates as it moves amid a glossy crunch of power chords, into nowhere, or maybe the beyond.
While Beyond take themselves seriously, Beefheart aka Dan Van Vliet and crew clearly does not. With songs like Hey Garland I Dig Your Tweed Coat, and Semi-multicolored Caucasian. The band flows in and out of traditional song structures (usually out), using accoustic guitar interludes, with switched up thrash as background to Van Vliet’s surrealistic raps.
For example: “Bumblebees, their wings arranged with pictures out of the past and the rainbow baboon gobbled fifteen fisheyes with each spoon’
That’s not surreal, that’s twisted Captain Kangaroo. Or just bad sushi?
For examples of both Captains’ strange music listen below.
Counting down my 678 vinyl records before I die of brain disease.