TROUT MASK REPLICA

Just as there are people who think Picasso didn't know how to draw (myself included, until I took a look at some of Picasso's early sketches years ago and realized that he did know), there will no doubt be people who think Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band can't play music. I dare those people to pick up a guitar and TRY to play any of the songs on "Trout Mask Replica" note for note. Of course, jokesters will take up the dare, making random noise and atonal squawks, but once you realize that the music on "Trout Mask" was INTENTIONALLY written in this manner, even the most doubtful will realize that Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band are superior artists who successfully created Cubist music out of the remains of free jazz, Delta blues, and Imagist poetry.

Cubism is the art movement that Picasso popularized, and it had to do with viewing multi-dimensional perspectives simultaneously. Thus, Picasso's Cubist figures have 3/4 profile eyeballs on the sides of their heads, almost the way Egyptian hieroglyphs distort the eyes when drawing profiles. The musical equivalent would be to have three or four different instrument parts (in different meters and styles) competing in the same linear space of one song-- kind of like being in a parking lot before a concert and hearing the stereos of several cars mixing together to create a new, bastardized version... which is what The Flaming Lips did on their album "Zaireeka".

The fact that The Lips get applause for this move while Beefheart remains relatively obscure underscores a uniquely American trait: giving credit for originality not to the originators but to the imitators. I like The Flaming Lips, but knowing that "Trout Mask Replica" did it three decades earlier only makes me like Beefheart's music even more. It was the most original American music made prior to the "invention" of rap music, but because rap is all about "the beat" it has a wider appeal. However, everyone from Tom Waits to The Butthole Surfers to Devo to The Minutemen owe Beefheart a huge debt.

This album is perfect in my estimation, but many will disagree.