Captain Beefheart has critics raving over "heroic" album Doc at the Radar Station

Captain Beefheart : Dirty Blue Gene

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"Commercial potential? Why not? Since I breathe air, I am commercial. Everybody's commercial. There just aren't that many good publicists and ad people  and there aren't that many good record companies. I think kids are bored enough that if they got a chance to hear my music, they'd like it"

- Captain Beefheart in Trouser Press.

In September of 1980, Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band released Doc At The Radar Station, an equally good if not more forceful follow-up to the comeback album Shiny Beast ( Bat Chain Puller). Again Beefheart brought in a group of very talented musicians willing to work for a dictator under a tight deadline. They recorded the album in a week! The first song they tackled was "Dirty Blue Gene", originally recorded during the Clear Spot sessions in 1972. 

Mike Bares describes the recording in his book Captain Beefheart :The Biography.

From the new convoluted guitar and drums introduction, the band blaze away in a tricky stop/start creation, fast and furious -bulbous,even - with guitar lines bursting out in bloom all over its surface and (John) French yelling the lyrics behind Captain Beefheart (Don) Van Vliet's ecstatic vocals. Charles Shaar Murray opined: "Something like the intro to 'Dirty Blue Gene' literally could not be the work of anybody else.

Beefheart did a lot of press for the album. At 39, he dismissed the current music scene, telling Lester Bangs 

"I don't ever listen to 'em, you see, which is not very nice of me but ...then again why should I look through my own vomit? I guess they have to make a living though".

Guitarist Gary Lucas invited some of the top music journalists to his apartment to listen to the album and they lavished Doc At The Radar Station with praise. "Captain Beefheart's Most Medititative, Heroic Album" was the headline in Ken Tucker's Rolling Stone review. Downbeat gave the album four and a half stars. Doc finished #8 in the New York Times Ten Best list. "As brilliant as album as anyone has released this year," said Musician while  Creem said "Prime Beefheart Like You Haven't Heard In Years".

Robert Christgau gave the album a grade of A-, writing :

Beefheart is an utter original if not some kind of genius, but that doesn't make him the greatest artist ever to rock down the pike--his unreconstructed ecoprimitive eccentricity impairs his aesthetic as well as his commercial reach. Only don't tell grizzled punks now discovering the boho past, or avantish rockcrits who waited patiently through the cleansing storm for musicianship to come round again. In synch with the historical moment for once, Beefheart offers up his most uncompromised album since Trout Mask Replica in 1969--never before have his nerve-wracking harmonies and sainted-spastic rhythms been captured in such brutal living color. Me, I've always enjoyed his compromises, which tend to be crazier than normal people's wildest dreams, and wish he'd saved some of his melodic secrets for the second side.

So Oblique and Easy

Magazine : Give Me Everything

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On November 17, 1978 Magazine released the non album single "Give Me Everything" b/w  a cover of Captain Beefheart's "I Love You, You Big Dummy". Few bands were releasing such exciting, forward thinking singles. Dave Formula's organ and Barry Adamson's bass are especially on point. One of those tunes that might take the 4th or 5th listen before you recognize its greatness. It did not chart. By the way, this week there were three songs from the GREASE soundtrack in the U.K. Top 5.

Like Two Flamingoes in a Fruit Fight

Captain Beefheart : Tropical Hot Dog Night

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In October of 1978, Captain Beefheart returned from a four year hiatus with Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller), an album some critics believe to be the best of his career.

"I'd never just want to do what everybody else did. I'd be contributing to the sameness of everything," Don Van Vliet told Richard Cromelin of Wax. "Finally I got a completely perfect picture. These people I have now are playing it better than ever before. They're playing more of a spell, right where I want it. I was dealing with a lot of shapes, textures, releases, dissolves, all kinds of things. I've always tried to play spells. I don't think music gets enough of them"

Guitarist Don Tepper says the band rehearsed madly, taking direction from Beefheart.

Often he'd use colours like 'Play that like a smoky yellow room, make it more sulphur yellow; or 'Play it like a bat being dragged out of oil and it's trying to survive, but it;s dying of asphyxiation...or 'Play like your arm's being ripped of" or he'd say 'Play it like trailer-park trash, inbred, monkey-headed cat'. The process took some time, but when I knew him more and more his language became very easy to understand."

Some of the songs had been recorded in 1976 for the original Bat Chain Puller, which wouldn't see the light of day for nearly 40 years due to a lawsuit between Frank Zappa and his Discreet Records partner Herb Cohen. Among them, "Harry Irene" and the title track which came by its odd rhythm from the windshield wipers on Van Vliet's car.

Robert Christgau gave the album an A grade, writing:

Inspired by the Captain's untoward comeback, I've dug out all his old albums and discovered that as far as I'm concerned this is better than any of them--more daring than Safe as Milk, fuller than Trout Mask Replica, more consistent than Lick My Decals Off, Baby. Without any loss of angularity or thickness, the new compositions achieve a flow worthy of Weill or Monk or Robert Johnson, and his lyrics aren't as willful as they used to be. Bruce Fowler's trombone is especially thaumaturgic adding an appropriately natural color to the electric atonality of the world's funniest ecology crank

From Down Beat Magazine:

It is impossible to describe this LP without using phrases as meaningless as “excellent” or “fascinating”. Let it suffice to say Shiny Beast is an important alternative to contemporary popular music.

40 Year Itch : A Tattered Friendship Renewed

"I said some silly things because I'm a spoiled brat and I don't understand business to the degree that Frank does...I said 'I'm sorry Frank and I don't mean that for an excuse.' We shook hands and that was that. 

-Captain Beefheart, 1975

Zappa/Beefheart : Debra Kadabra

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    With his career in tatters and both his legendary Magic Band and the so-called Tragic Band dissolved, Captain Beefheart, hat in hand,  renewed his tattered friendship with Frank Zappa and joined the Mothers for the following tour. He would sing. And when he wasn't singing, he would often sit in a chair on the side of the stage, rifling through some papers.

   At the Armadillo Club in Austin Texas, they recorded a large part of Bongo Fury, an uneven but affectionate album consisting of bizarre stories and funny memories from their high school years together.  "Debra Kadabra" is the opening track. "Muffin Man" is the best known. "Advance Romance" is the deep cut treasure. 

40 Year Itch : The Camel Wore a Nightie

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   They said Beefheart was trying too hard to go mainstream on Clear Spot too. And that's my favorite of his albums.  Kate Bush called this one of her ten favorite albums of all time. So of course I wanted togive a listen to Bluejeans and Moonbeams, released in November of 1974. 

      Well, it's no Clear Spot but "Observatory Crest" especially, and maybe that very Beefheartian cover of J J Cale's "Same Old Blues",  make Bluejeans and Moonbeams at least worth checking out. Most fans, band mates and Van Vliet himself tried their best to forget Beefheart's self-described "horrible and vulgar" work for Virgin Records in 1974. (This was the year he exchanged all of his best musicians with the kind of people "who groove along pleasantly"). To top it off Beefheart claimed he never received a royalty check for Bluejeans or its predecessor Unconditionally Guaranteed.

40 Year Itch : Captain Beefheart Sells Out?

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What does Don Van Vliet , The Doobie Brothers and David Lee Roth have in common? The answer is producer Ted Templeman. For Captain Beefheart's second album of 1972, Templeman somehow talked the  avant-garde dictator into trying something  accessible. The result is not only my favorite Captain Beefheart album, Clear Spot , but probably the easiest way to turn the casual rock fan onto the Captain. It's also his most romantic album and his biggest seller, peaking at #191 on the Billboard 200.

   With its horn section and backing vocals by the Blackberries, "Too Much Time" sounds like a great Van Morrison cover. That's your golden wedge. Now turn your friends onto the gorgeous "My Head Is My Only House Until It Rains".

Things get wilder but they never challenge listeners the way Trout Mask Replica does. Unfortunately his most famous album is probably the first one people hear...and the last one.

Legend has it, Don Van Vliet wrote all the songs on Clear Spot on I-95 between Boston and New Haven. But several of the songs, including the title track were leftovers from Spotlight Kid. Still, I love the idea of the Captain writing "Too Much Time" as he rode past the Guilford, CT exits where I was growing up that year.

Lester Bangs And The Spotlight Kid: 40 Years Ago Today

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In the March 30, 1972 issue of Rolling Stone, legendary music critic Lester Bangs gave the new Captain Beefheart album, The Spotlight Kid, a rave review. Bangs said Beefheart had finally found that sweet spot where great artistry and mass appeal intersected.


He has been called everything in the past from a man wasting the clear ability to be the world's greatest white blues singer, to an impossibly complex musician who may or may not be the real avant-garde, but is certainly an elitist taste. While I have always held to the opinion that there's been nothing playing on the face of the earth as far out as Beefheart for about 3 or 4 years now, I also recognize that his former style was a bit beyond the attention span or interest of the average listener. Which is certainly not to slight mass tastes, either; after all, why should things have to be as far out as possible all the time?



Bangs singled out the single "I'm Gonna Booglarize Ya, Baby" and its B-Side "Click Clack", a train song he describes as the best thing on the album. Bangs summarizes:

There comes a time in the career of every pop musician who also happens to be a serious artist when he realizes the need for a balance between the most intensely personal type of statement and music of mass appeal. If he can strike that balance without compromising his integrity, he is probably a greater artist than even his staunchest fans previously suspected, and with any exposure at all the public would pick up immediately on the truth and beauty of what he is doing. With this album, Captain Beefheart has struck that balance with total success, and I wouldn't be surprised if he were a major star a year from now. Though you may have been a great shadow hovering over our music for half a decade now, Don, it can be said that in 1972 you've really arrived.

The Spotlight Kid was indeed Captain Beefheart's highest charting album, peaking at #131 in the Billboard Top 200. The follow-up album Clear Spot was another commercial attempt, released in October of 1972. I'll be writing about that one later this year.

Alice Cooper on the cover of the March 30, 1972 issue of Rolling Stone

#15 Captain Beefheart "My Head Is My Only House Unless It Rains" 1972

Arguably rock's most eccentric character, Don Van Vliet aka Captain Beefheart is best known for his ear bending avant garde gumbo of Delta Blues and Beat Poetry as heard on Trout Mask Replica.
This is something else entirely.

One story is that Beefheart wrote most of the album Clear Spot on an eight hour car journey from Boston to Yale.
I'd like to think he wrote this song passing my hometown in Connecticut at Exit 58.
With beautiful interlacing guitar work from Bill Harkleroad AKA Zoot Horn Rollow, this is Beefheart's most poignant love song.Ever.

My arms are just two things in the way
Until I can wrap them around you
You can make my sad song happy
Make a bad world good


I hate to hear other people hear me sing this song
If it reaches you before I do
Follow this song to I love you
That’s where I’ll find you
And my head is my only house unless it rains


Another fave from Clear Spot , "Too Much Time" sounds so accessible it could have been something Van Morrison recorded on Moondance, a mellow Memphis-styled R&B tune with a great horn section and lovely backing vocals.






Why did Beefheart record such a tame album three years after Trout Mask Replica? For one thing Warner Brothers brought in Van Morrison/Doobie Brothers producer Ted Templeman to guide Beefheart to do something a bit more commercial. Clear Spot cracked the Billboard Top 200 racing up the charts all the way to ...well, #191. So he failed miserably. But what a failure!


Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band My Head is My Only House Unless It Rains