16 June 2019

This day 50 years ago, on 16 June 1969, the late great, eccentric and highly influential blues-rock phenomenon CAPTAIN BEEFHEART assisted by HIS MAGIC BAND released double album ‘TROUT MASK REPLICA‘. It was his third longplayer and probably the most lauded one by almost all critics, then and now.

The famous late Rolling Stone Magazine Lester Bangs wrote at the time: “It’s very gratifying to say that Captain Beefheart’s new album is a total success, a brilliant, stunning enlargement and clarification of his art. Which is not to say that it’s in any sense slick, “artistic,” or easy. This is one of the few bands whose sound has actually gotten rawer as they’ve matured—a brilliant and refreshing strategy. Again the rhythms and melodic textures jump
all over the place (in the same way that Cecil Taylor’s do), Beefheart singing like a lonesome werewolf screaming and growling in the night. The songs clatter about—given a superficial listening, they seem boring and repetitious. It’s perhaps the addition of saxophones (all played by the five men in the band) that first suggests what’s really happening here and always has been happening in this group’s music.” – Full review here.

You can stream the FULL ALBUM here…

CAPTAIN BEEFHEART: Facebook – Biography – All Albums