Trout Mask Replica

So i got this album years ago, big zappa fan and i heard he worked with him, had the most coolest album cover ever and got tons of praise from music reviewers. Even the guy in the record store said fuck yeah breh, captian beefheart, nice buy

i get home, light a joint and shove it in the cd player: worst annoying noise piece of shit i ever heard

tried to play it again last week and it's still the biggest piece of poop i ever heard, i mean i'd rather listen to a merzbow and justin bieber record played at the same time

am i missing something? someone please explain this album to me

the trick is U gotta play it 45 rpm not 33 rpm as it was released!!!!! Play it faster and it's over sooner than U know it :)

yes you are missing something.

Zappa got fuck all on Beefheart. This album is still massively ahead of its time.

Late period AE are pure Trout Mask era Beefheart (Sam & Bob even had The Magic Band play at their ATP).

wish i could see it the way you do spiral. AE for raels??

  On 5/6/2016 at 1:32 PM, cheeseburgerwalrus said:

the trick is U gotta play it 45 rpm not 33 rpm as it was released!!!!! Play it faster and it's over sooner than U know it :)

lol

It's absolutely wild - Only heard it through twice and both times I felt absolutely sick afterwards like someone had span me around for an hour.

The field recordings are amazingly clear, they must've had darn good equipment for the time

I recommend Disc 3 of the Grow Fins box set.

Instrumentals of all the Trout Mask tracks and extended versions of those field recordings.

It's like the audio eq of the The Shining doc shot by Kubricks daughter. Behind the scenes tour of a much loved album.

Was 13 y.o. when someone my age was always sending me a lot of experimental bonkers stuff, and one day he just sent "She's too much for my mirror" and "Dachau Blues". I was absolutely floored, fascinated by the announcing with the slate, Beefhearts insane voice, the lyrics and above all, the insane composition with the insane unfunky funky drumming. Then I discovered Zappa's connection to this album, (as a fresh Zappa fan already at that point) which made me even more curious about this. It turned into an all time fave over the years. In the context of what was going on at the time musically, this album was absolutely ridiculous and as said above, way ahead of its time.

What I also found interesting was the fact that Beefheart composed this album in lightning speed. I remember reading a lot about him having the mental age of a kid, him never having attended school and being very interested in sculpting and art, which explains the complete different way of doing things, he sure didn't take music theory 101 lessons.

These days I'd suggest people to listen to Mirror Man (LOUD) or watch this and try and feel the extreme demented funk in those, and hear / watch both drummers (two different drummers in both):

To reinforce the AE / Beefheart thing, Bat Chain Puller = deco Loc imo (never noticed they have the same track lengths until now too):

Also, the drumfunk from Drumbo was what I was feeling when I first heard Macc & Dgohn. Maybe that gives you another perspective on it.

  On 5/6/2016 at 2:11 PM, Herr Jan said:

These days I'd suggest people to listen to Mirror Man (LOUD) or watch this and try and feel the extreme demented funk in those, and hear / watch both drummers (two different drummers in both):

 

  On 5/6/2016 at 2:16 PM, mcbpete said:

 

  On 5/6/2016 at 2:11 PM, Herr Jan said:

These days I'd suggest people to listen to Mirror Man (LOUD) or watch this and try and feel the extreme demented funk in those, and hear / watch both drummers (two different drummers in both):

 

Absolutely bloody love Mirror Man ....

For sure, it was definitely one of the tracks for me to make sense of Beefheart. The sheer power of it is insane. It also made SO much sense when Autechre played that on one of their marathon mixes, like a bridge between different musical worlds I was exploring at the same time.

And I still have to listen to Grow Fins... Good trigger to put it on my phone right now.

fuckin lol that deco lock track does kinda have the same mental vibe, seeing them play live also helps a bit and i can definatly get more into those tracks you posted

still that fuckin album, like mcbpete said, in the end you feel like just been swirled around for an hour with a hangover, makes me fuckin sick haha

  Quote

 

Cartoonist and writer Matt Groening tells of listening to Trout Mask Replica at the age of 15: "I thought it was the worst thing I'd ever heard. I said to myself, they're not even trying! It was just a sloppy cacophony. Then I listened to it a couple more times, because I couldn't believe Frank Zappa could do this to me – and because a double album cost a lot of money. About the third time, I realised they were doing it on purpose; they meant it to sound exactly this way. About the sixth or seventh time, it clicked in, and I thought it was the greatest album I'd ever heard".

  On 5/6/2016 at 2:11 PM, Herr Jan said:

 

What I also found interesting was the fact that Beefheart composed this album in lightning speed. I remember reading a lot about him having the mental age of a kid, him never having attended school and being very interested in sculpting and art, which explains the complete different way of doing things, he sure didn't take music theory 101 lessons.

Love reading about the guy, he was a real character and eclectic musician. Also he a really weird kid

  Quote

 

Van Vliet claimed that he never attended public school, alleging "half a day of kindergarten" to be the extent of his formal education and saying that "if you want to be a different fish, you've got to jump out of the school". His associates said that he only dropped out during his senior year of high school to help support the family after his father's heart attack. His graduation picture appears in the school's yearbook. His claims to have never attended school - and his general disavowals of education - may have been related to his experience of dyslexia which, although never officially diagnosed, was obvious to sidemen such as John French and Denny Walley, who observed his difficulty reading cue-cards on stage, and his frequent need to be read aloud to. While attending Antelope Valley High School in Lancaster, Van Vliet became close friends with fellow teenager Frank Zappa, the pair bonding through their interest in Chicago blues and R&B. Van Vliet is portrayed in both The Real Frank Zappa Book and Barry Miles' biography Zappa as fairly spoiled at this stage of his life, the center of attention as an only child. He spent most of his time locked in his room listening to records, often with Zappa, into the early hours in the morning, eating leftover food from his father's Helms bread truck and demanding that his mother bring him a Pepsi. His parents tolerated such behavior under the belief that their child was truly gifted. Vliet's 'Pepsi-moods' were ever a source of amusement to band members, leading Zappa to later write the wry tune "Why Doesn't Someone Give Him A Pepsi?" that featured on the Bongo Fury tour.

This album was my first foray into the Captain. Still love this album, really good shit.

edit: actually it was Hello Spiral that got me into it. Thx m9

a squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is fast and bulbous. got me?

the jam during the second bit on veteran's day poppy always hits me right in the feels

and kandy korn on mirror man is also one of the great jams of all time.

  On 5/6/2016 at 5:56 PM, Kingdom of Heaven said:

a squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is fast and bulbous. got me?

also Doc at the Radar Station is pretty effin underrated.

used to put it on while playing minecraft back in highschool

hvnt revisited either since then but the captain deserves another whirl imo

Yeah, never really clicked with me either.

Whenever I get the urge to hear Captain Beefheart I always play it safe

  On 5/6/2016 at 6:09 PM, Kingdom of Heaven said:

also Doc at the Radar Station is pretty effin underrated.

Yup

Trout Mask, Decals, Doc, Shiny Beast & Ice Cream are The Captain's LP5, Confield, Draft, Untilted & Quaristice

Disclaimer: I am not making literal or direct comparisons here.

totally

Awesome catch with deco Loc, Herr Jan!!

Ivan Ooze, maybe try Lick My Decals off Baby, the album that came right after this? Its like a more coherent version

Doc at the Radar Station is my favvveee.

Fast n bulbous indeed.

The Captain owed a lot to Howlin' Wolf and while TMR aint a personal favourite the band practiced those jams for weeks on end. Its not some random loons fiddling with their instruments.

People promote Steve Reich & the avant garde for sounds & concepts deemed pretty "out there", but if if you want really indigestible wank just have a rummage round the Noise thread for pretentious guff. Idiots driving bulldozers into speaker stacks and calling it art? Plus that Faker bollix? There are limits, personally, but like a lot of things in life its horses 4 courses.

Prefer the bluesier, heavier Captain Beefheart sounds, tracks like:

"Triple Combination", "Tupelo (Live Avalon)", "Somebody In My Home", "Electricity" <---fuck yeah, "Sure 'Nuff 'N Yes I Do", "Ah Feel Like Acid", "Gimme Dat Harp Boy", "Son of Mirror Man/Mere Man" (not sure if this was Mirror Man demo?), "Click Clack", the more poppy "Crazy Little Thing", the genius "I'm Gonna Booglarize You", "Party Of Special Things To Do", the aforementioned "Mirror Man" (what a jam) & the incredible "Pompadour Swamp":

Played it twice, the second time was just to absolutely make sure that it was as bad as I thought it was. And it was worse.

Quite liked Clear Spot though.

  On 5/6/2016 at 2:11 PM, Herr Jan said:

What I also found interesting was the fact that Beefheart composed this album in lightning speed.

From what I've read, Don composing the album in 8 hours is something he just made up for interviews. They did RECORD the album in a matter of hours though.

Apparently John French (Drumbo) transcribed Don's piano noodlings (he didn't really know how to play) and arranged them into whole songs, including teaching the other players the parts and sometimes even deciding who played what and in what octave. Yeah - even though the music sounds like random notes, it's actually all completely planned out note-for note. Which is crazy.

Don wasn't even at rehearsals most of the time. While his lyrics were obviously well-crafted, his actual vocal delivery/timing wasn't really worked out before recording. That's why he said "“Shit, I don’t know how I’m going to get that in there” at the end of "She's Too Much For My Mirror"... he couldn't fit all the lyrics to the music.

I recently read John French's book on Beefheart where he really goes into detail about the making of TMR and how it was totally cult-like. It's really insane. Great stuff in this documentary too:

cheers for the vid,

*awaits Hawkwind thread