UNDERRATED ALBUMS #3

‘The first and finest flowering

 of his more accessible style.’
 
Clear Spot (1972)

by Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band

Consult any Best Albums Ever list and you’re likely to find Trout Mask Replica (1969) significantly placed. Beefheart’s third album, it’s a world away from the psychedelic blues-pop of his debut, Safe As Milk, released less than two years before.

A double-LP of brutally atonal, abstract blues, TRM is an album that I’ve gallantly tried to listen to several times over the years to see if older ears would find what I was missing originally, but I’m afraid it requires not so much an open mind as a full-on commitment to the avant garde which I simply don’t have the energy for. The album became a freak flag waved by Rock critics eager to demonstrate their cool bona fides, but I’ve often wondered how often they actually played the damn thing.

By the time the 1970s had got under way, Beefheart was following what was, by his standards, a more ‘commercial’ path, and Clear Spot is the first and finest flowering of his more accessible style. Co-produced by Beefheart with Ted Templeman (fresh from success with The Doobie Brothers and Van Morrison), the record is the only recognisably rock album of his career. Having said that, it’s not a very close relative to Van The Man and is only a distant cousin to the Doobies…

If you’re not familiar with Beefheart (1941-2010), then you need to know that he had an unusually powerful, multi-octave voice and was a fine harmonica player. His singing was influenced primarily by Blues giant Howlin’ Wolf, whilst his song-writing, informed by a powerful urge to deconstruct and subvert, was influenced by no-one. Many of his lyrics were written in a spirit similar to the way he painted (colourful and abstract:  after retiring from music in 1982, he earned a more lucrative living from his art). His music – often jaggedly challenging – could also be melodic and, at its best, extended the Blues-Rock genre more imaginatively than many of its practitioners who were his contemporaries. He was a school friend of Frank Zappa in Los Angeles and the two of them occasionally worked together. Eccentric in the extreme and until the last, he suffered with MS in his later years.

Clear Spot opens in catchy style (yes, catchy!) with a priapic paean to hip-swivelling girls and masturbating men called ‘Low Yo Yo Stuff’ (‘I bin doin’ that low yo yo yo yo / Like any other fella / Away from home all alone’). It’s funny and sexy, like ‘Long Neck Bottles’ which praises a certain lady’s prowess at putting away the alcohol, nudgingly telling us that ‘Woman like long neck bottles / And a big head on her beer’. Meanwhile, ‘Nowadays, A Woman Gotta Hit A Man’ finds the Captain playing around with those new fangled notions of feminism and reversing the cartoon cliché of the club-wielding caveman. This last features a terrific bottleneck solo by lead guitarist Zoot Horn Rollo.

At this point, we should pause to consider the revolving door of the Magic Band, many of whose members were given their fabulous stage-names by the Captain (whose actual name was Don Van Vliet). On Clear Spot, apart from Rollo, we find Rockette Morton on rhythm guitar, Orejon (Spanish for ‘Big Ears’) on bass, and Ed Marimba on drums.

The album also features a couple of straight soul songs which demonstrate that Beefheart may well have forged a more conventional career in that sphere had he been so minded. ‘Too Much Time’, complete with brass and girl backing group The Blackberries, might easily have been a credible cover by Otis Redding had he lived that long.

There are several churningly energetic rock numbers including the title track, but the set peaks towards the end with two of the best songs you’ll find anywhere on Beefheart’s twelve studio albums. The first, the beautifully titled ‘Her Eyes Are A Blue Million Miles’ is a simple love song arranged with chiming acoustic guitars which really should have given the band what would have been their only hit (‘Too Much Time’ was the flop single). It would though, turn up twenty years later in a film by the Coen brothers, stoner classic The Big Lebowski.

Then comes the record’s tour de force, ‘Big Eyed Beans Of Venus’, a dollop of Sci-Fi nonsense set to an electrifying arrangement and possibly the most exciting cut in the band’s catalogue. Beefheart is on top form here – check out his announcement at 0.55: ‘Mister Zoot Horn Rollo, play that long lunar note and let it float’ - which it does, and how! An epic riffarama of electric guitars with thunderous volleys of drums kicking in the changes, this really should have been the album’s climax, although the poem, ‘Golden Birdies’ which actually brings proceedings to a close, is an effective coda. Declaimed with loony authority by the singer, it ends ‘And the pantaloon duck, white goose neck, quacked / Webcore, webcore.’ What could be clearer?

Despite its more commercial intentions, material and production, Clear Spot failed to sell, reaching only #191 in the US and nowhere in the UK (amazingly, Trout Mask Replica had, in 1969, surfaced on the British chart at #21 for a single week before sinking back of sight). Perhaps, in an age of extravagantly artistic sleeve art, people simply failed to notice the uninspiring, small B/W cover shot of Beefheart in the studio, leaning over a mixing console, wearing a Chinese hat – or possibly a lampshade…     

 

N. B.

Received wisdom has it that Beefheart’s next two albums, both issued in 1974 following his move to Virgin, are worthless: merely cynical forays into commercialism - the cover of Unconditionally Guaranteed featuring The Captain leering out over fists full of dollars didn’t help. But UC is actually not bad at all, and includes some strong melodies and fine guitar-playing by Rollo and Alex St. Claire. It’s a different, funkier band on Bluejeans & Moonbeams and yet another line-up on Shiny Beast (1978) but I’d strongly recommend the following tracks from these records:-  

 

‘Upon The My-O-My’; the guitar showcase ‘This Is The Day’ and ‘Peaches from UC.

 ‘Same Old Blues’ (a J. J. Cale cover); ‘Observatory Crest’ and the title-track from

 B & M  (a soaring guitar and synthesiser ballad, no less).

‘Love Lies’; the Mariachi-drenched ‘Tropical Hot Dog Night’ and ‘Owed T’Alex’ (a crazed tribute to guitarist St. Claire with wild harmonica and maniacal laughter) from SB.             

If listened to without prejudice, there is much to be enjoyed on these records. Had they been issued by an artist carrying less baggage in the form of the critical snobbery surrounding his earlier releases, then they might have reached a wider audience.

                                    c. 2012 IGR