Captain Beefheart – Clear Spot

★★★★✰

   Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band were probably most uncompromising performers of crossover music during sixties. Its original style covers wide span of different directions from experimental rock to free jazz, and from R&B to protopunk. They were in situation of outcasts. After they met some artistic freedom in late sixties, when any kind of music was easy to sell just because of its counter-culture aspect many things have changed. Next decade became slow pursuit of solutions with commercial potential. This was much easier for naïve pop stars than for natural rebels, but in both cases it was inevitable.
   Like many others in early 1970’s, Captain Beefheart was evolving towards fulfilling audience expectations and to achieve commercial success. In his music the only reasonable solution was to merge experiments with blues and R&B sound. He was moving towards such idea for two years already. In fact, it was since Lick My Decals Off, Baby and Mirror Man when band was moving back to folk roots of progressive rock. Published in October 1972 Clear Spot became just next step in this direction, because it was also the last of Captain Beefheart’s albums before two commercial albums of 1974 – Unconditionally Guaranteed and Bluejeans and Moonbeams.

Captain Beefheart – Clear Spot (1972)

   The Magic Band played in 1972 sessions with guitarists Zoot Horn Rollo (Bill Harkleroad), Rockette Morton (Mark Boston), drummer Ed Marimba (Art Tripp) and Orejon (Roy Estrada) playing bass guitar. The guest guitarist was Russ Titelman (in Too Much Time). This lineup was augmented by horn sections and singing back vocals The Blackberries ensemble with Venetta Fields. And since The Magic Band was never only a psychedelic group, such lineup was quite clear vision of its development. The Magic Band sound quality was always on the level of best ensembles of progressive rock and rhythmic precision exceeded even these levels was comparable to modern jazz. With producer Ted Templeman who also co-authoring horns arrangements and engineer Donn Landee they created thick, expressive sound with strong rhythmic continuum, showing the ambitious plan of market expansion.

   Also original cover conception with transparent vinyl inside was the idea of provocative exposure. It was abandoned as too expensive. Original edition was sold in transparent plastic cover with white insert. The photo is showing Captain Beefheart and three musicians of the Magic Band in control desk of Griffith Park Observatory Planetarium in Los Angeles. This became the base for cover design of later editions. Clear Spot is seventh album in official discography of Captain Beefheart. Commercial success was moderate – 191st position on Billboard Top 200. In fact this album is quite average Captain Beefheart’s release, what means it’s still great. Every song here could be a hit. In 70’s times Circumstances, Crazy Little Thing and Big Eyed Beans from Venus were great alternative for ABBA, today whole dozen of songs sounds just perfect. Four and a half star for drive and clear intentions.

Captain Beefheart – Translucent Fresnel

   Captain Beefheart is one of greatest personalities in psychedelic and early progressive rock movement. His best years in late sixties and early seventies passed under the sign of the series of great progressive recordings with Trout Mask Replica. He was also famous as stage personality and his European concert tours were legendary. In this very moment shows John Peel, a famous BBC Radio 1 disc jockey. He was a private collector of live recordings of public concerts of his favorite artists. He did a lot for Beefheart’s public recognition as well as for many other musicians. From his tapes and bail was made bootleg album of Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band Translucent Fresnel. The title of this bootleg is a reference to the Clear Spot album. Fresnel lantern producing soft-edge, translucent beam of light is a good metaphor for the content of double LP 180 gram black vinyl pressing which is subtittled as volume one of The Nan True’s Hole Tapes. The double LP album was published in gatefold sleeve and translucent plastic jacket by Dandelion Records and Ozit Records in 2011. It was released about a month after that as Captain Beefheart died. 
   Whole program is composed of materials recorded during different shows in Manchester April 1st, 1972, Leicester University May 1st, 1973 and Stevenage Locarno May 22nd, 1973. And the lineup is a stable The Magic Band with Captain Beefheart (Don Van Vliet) singing and playing harmonica. The core of the band was pretty much the same as in Clear Spot studio recordings Zoot Horn Rollo (Bill Harkleroad) playing guitar and slide guitar, Rockette Morton (Mark Boston) on bass guitar and guitar and Ed Marimba (Art Tripp) playing drums and percussion instruments. There were also two old Beefheart friends and members of The Magic Band, playing a slide guitar Alex St Clair (Alex Snouffer) – in fact he was the one who founded The Magic Band in 1965 – and Orejon (Roy Estrada) playing bass guitar.

Captain Beefheart – Translucent Fresnel (2011)

   Poor technical quality of this material is a fact but it has nothing to do with musical and documentarian value of this edition. Recordings include mainly musical material of Clear Spot promotional tour, but also some songs from earlier albums Safe as Milk (Electricity), Trout Mask Replica (Sugar’n’Spikes), Lick My Decals Off, Baby (Peon), Mirror Man (Mirrorman) and The Spotlight Kid (great trance version of I'm Gonna Booglarize You Baby). There is also one instrumental piece published later in 1978 on Shiny Beast (Suction Prints). These songs, so well known from studio recordings are quite different when played during public performances. And there’s a big gap between Beefheart’s studio recordings and live gigs. While in studio musicians were precise like Swiss watch mechanism, what they did on stage was closer to happenings than typical concert event. 

   Does it mean they weren’t playing with precision? Of course not! They rather did it more jazzy way, with extra power and expressive means. This special attitude was mutual characteristic for many bands in late 60’s and early 70’s with the closest Beefheart’s friend Frank Zappa and his Mothers of Invention. Beefheart was always more radical even if he endeavor to the commercial success. Raw blues with some surrealistic sense of humor, expanded jamming with harmonica riffs make these recordings closer to trance. Some more orderly played songs Good example is opening Side Three fragment of Leicaster University show – first the song Low Yo Yo Stuff and then following jam in Mirrorman and Peon 2. Captain is howling, growling and improvising at the end of Mirrorman and this is completely magic moment with The Magic Band.

Captain Beefheart – Unconditionally Guaranteed

First of two commercial albums made by Captain Beefheart for Mercury Records in 1974 was Unconditionally Guaranteed released in April 1974. With following album Bluejeans & Moonbeams, recorded in August and released in November, this pair established most criticized group of Beefheart’s works. Although main idea of this productions was to show more soft and popular picture of Beefhearts music, no commercial success has been reached by these albums. They are example of big record company’s weakness and misunderstanding cultural niche’s needs. Captain Beefheart was extremely disappointed. After album was published, he encouraged buyers to “take copies back for a refund”.  

Due to legal issues, artist didn’t have a chance to decide on his music. Made out of Captain Beefheart’s sight this album became the beginning of serious crisis in artist's biography. The era of freaking out in sixties has gone without any alternative idea. Psychedelic and surrealistic formulas has no chance to exist in main stream pop music, in developing in Europe glam rock these elements became a kind of unimportant ornament. In 1974, the year of ABBA European and world triumph, for large audience the style of sixties was obsolete and sometimes just pathetic. In later recordings Don Van Vliet came back with his school friend Frank Zappa (Bongo Fury) and signing his own name (Shiny Beast and Ice Cream for Crow), but there was no new opening. Beefheart appear more fragile than average artist in show business and unable to fight against disco and commercialization of rhythm and blues music.

Captain Beefheart – Unconditionally Guaranteed (1974) 

Even if Don Van Vliet called it “horrible and vulgar”, Unconditionally Guaranteed is almost successful compromise between radical vision of RnB and musical genres popular in 1970s. The complete set of Van Vliet’s songs could be quite impressive if they were realized more firmly, with this rhythmic precision and more determined articulation we know from his previous albums. The performing style we known from his earlier recordings had gone. And what we got, can convince, the contract with Mercury was violation of Van Vliet’s artistic personality. One look into record cover gives explanation of the mood concurrent to the creation of this record. Distance and mockery were arrays contradicting to previous Van Vliets attitude. Some men in Mercury didn't take the trouble to understand more than customers' expectations.
Question is how much Captain Beefheart was guily himself. Musicians were disappointed, the known from Trout Mask Replica, guitarist Zoot Horn Rollo and bassist Rockete Morton came out of The Magic Band. At last line up of The Magic Band was always rotating. It was Captain Beefheart who tried to hit the market and hoping to convince wider group of consumers. In effect, he lost reliance of his fans. And this makes him totally responsible for the final effect. No matter he credited his wife Jan Van Vliet and producer of the album Andy Di Martino as coauthors of all songs. In such moments one have to admit, sometimes is better to refuse than publish anything.