Captain Beefheart - Trout Mask Replica (1969)

I bought this album many years ago, when I was about 14 or 15 because I read an article about it in Spin magazine where Matt Groening said that this alum was one of the worst ablums he had ever heard, and it is now one of his all time favoriates.

I wasn't exactly ready for this album at that tender young age. It was too weird, too disjointed, too free-form, too non-sensical. There were a few songs, or even just parts of songs that would stick in my head long enough for me to consider them a "melody," there were a few non-sequiter comments that I understood as jokes, but over all, listening to this ablum was just a bit too much work. I had to try to understand it, i had to struggle to put the ideas together, and thus i had to work a bit to truly like it.

All these years later, Trout Mask Replica is still just as much of a struggle to listen to. But im starting to believe that all the hard work of trying to understand this album might just pay off.

Recorded in 1969, all the meterial was reportedly written in about 3 days, but took over 8 months of nearly non-stop practicing to get all the meterial down. Led by Captain Beefheart himself, the band lived in a comunal house in what one member described as a "cult-like" atmospher. The end result?

The best description is that it is a product of the late '60 astetic of being weird for the sake of being weird. But there is defeinaly much musical influence here as well. There lots of delta bules, Beefheart sings with a Howlin' Wolf-like gravely vocals. The band plays with the disjointed off-key rythem of the Shagges (not that they would have ever heard of the New Hampshire all-girl mongaloid-rock band, but Frank Zappa loved the Shaggs and also produced this album). Frank Zappa himself is a big influence on the weird-cuz-weird-fucks-with-the-Man ideas that are here. Beat free-from poetry. Jazz. Country. Expermintal art rock.

And in the end it sound like none of these anticednets and nor much of the other weirdness that would come after it. The more you listen to it the more it makes sense, but I don't know if I myslef am "totoaly there" yet. This album is still a stuggle, but if your interested at all at where the limites of rock and roll oddities can go, give this album a spin. "Fast and Bulbous! That's right the Mascara Snake! Fast and Bulbous!"

- overview by denez

Tracklist:

1. Frownland
2. The Dust Blows Forward 'n The Dust Blows Back
3. Dachau Blues
4. Ella Guru
5. Hair Pie: Bake 1
6. Moonlight on Vermont
7. Pachuco Cadaver
8. Bills Corpse
9. Sweet Sweet Bulbs
10. Neon Meate Dream of a Octafish
11. China Pig
12. My Human Gets Me Blues
13. Dali's Car
14. Hair Pie: Bake 2
15. Pena
16. Well
17. When Big Joan Sets Up
18. Fallin' Ditch
19. Sugar 'N Spikes
20. Ant Man Bee
21. Orange Claw Hammer
22. Wild Life
23. She's Too Much For My Mirror
24. Hobo Chang Ba
25. The Blimp (mousetrapreplica)
26. Steal Softly Thru Snow
27. Old Fart At Play
28. Veteran's Day Poppy
    

Variable bit rate, ripped from cd, so that filesize is a bit larger and has to be split into two files

Buy this madness here.

or don't:

link 1:
http://rapidshare.de/files/22047092/trout_mask.part1.rar.html

link 2:

http://rapidshare.de/files/22051160/trout_mask.part2.rar.html