Your Captain's Speaking

Don Van Vliet, known as Captain Beefheart, is one of the greatest eccentric and surrealistic genius in the history of popular(?) music. Also very debatable, it looks like if you don't love him you hate him. He started playing the blues and ended up upsetting the common musical rules, creating a totally new and alien style. The real Captain's fans love particulary the abstruse and astonishing masterpiece Trout Mask Replica, produced by Frank Zappa in '69. Others just dare to listen to some easier and almost normal (but still brilliant) records of the 70's, like The Spotlight Kid or Unconditionally Guaranteed.
On the first clip we can see the Captain and his Magic Band on their weirdest period (you'll notice their unusual look too...), performing two songs from the "Replica" record, during a concert in Belgium.
The second clip shows a memorable appeareance at the Saturday Night Live show in 1980. Introduced by Malcolm "Clockwork Orange" McDowell, the Magic Band is still able to play with caustic energy. At the end of the performance you can clearly hear someone shouting "shit!". Was it excitement? Disgust? Astonishment?...
A couple of years later he ended up his musical career, sick of the mediocrity in the music business scene. Don Van Vliet still lives as a painter, Captain Beefheart died more than 20 years ago, but his influence is stronger than ever for musicians trying to create somenthing out of the ordinary.

Captain Beefheart - She's Too Much For My Mirror/My Human Gets Me Blues (1969)
Captain Beefheart - Hothead/Ashtray Heart (1980)

More Beefheart's clips in the future, if you wish...

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