I wish today, for no good reason, to write about Captain Beefheart. I am not, or at least not yet, an affirmed fan of Captain Beefheart, and given my stands on the concept of fandom in general, I am unlikely to become one (especially if there’s a tribal name attached to it, like “Beefheads”… the horror…). In point of fact, I have deliberately avoided listening to him until this advanced age, for the good and simple reason that I hate the name “Captain Beefheart”. It is almost protypical Hippy Nonsense Naming, childishly throwing words together to create the branding illusion of wild creativity. I was not fooled, especially when reading Lester Bangs document the Captain’s habitual retreat into ostentatious esotericism to fuck with interviewers. That’s just as much bullshit as Harrison Ford or John Lydon acting too smart to be interviewed. You chose show business, asshole. Play the game or get played by it.

On top of that, like every other unfettered act of Hippie Creativity, the name is ugly as fuck. Say it out loud, and try not to make it sound like “Bee Fart”. It’s a gross oxblood name, macramé and brown, as dorky and boring as Anton LeVey or Manos: Hands of Fate. Names like that are why Punk Happened.

Ah, but the Punks, or at least, the Boomer First Wave of them, loved Beefheart! That’s because he was Obtuse and Difficult, the way they wanted to be. Punks of yore loved nothing, not methamphetamine, not safety pins, not T-Shirts bedecked with Swastikas, NOTHING, so much as they loved unpopular 60’s musicians. You think anyone before 1975 gave a fuck about the Velvet Underground? Decidedly not. As the poet* put it:

A war in outer darkness

flooding through the soul

a gibberish purveyor

holds out the begging bowl.

So I’m not especially interested in *CaPtAiN BeEfHeArT*, the Phenomenon. Fandoms are as Fandoms do, and I’m not joining one at this late a date for either of us. It’s been decades since I was aware of popular music trends, and decades since I cared. I know nothing about what These Kids Are Listening To, other than having heard of Greta Van Fleet. What I know about Greta Van Fleet is what everyone knows about it, which is to say, they sound like Led Zeppelin. I’ve never listened to Greta Van Fleet to verify this, because “Greta Van Fleet” is the worst name for a band I’ve ever heard, rivaling even “Archers of Loaf”. At least Lynyrd Skynyrd understood the need to twist something to make it a band name. So for all I know, what teenage fans have tried to tell me is true, and they’re just a blues-rock band that critics have decided to be lazy with, because blues-rock doesn’t excite them any longer, and “HURR DURR SOUNDS LIKE LEB ZEBLIN DERPA DERP” reviews can be run through a ChatGPT at this point.

So the only way forward, as it was when I was a young punkrock poser, was the Internet. Back in the day I got my education reading Amazon reviews, but today there’s Spotify/Tidal/AppleMusic/YewToob, which is destroying music under the guise of liberating it. You can have all the music you want for a flat monthly fee, which is the Way of the Future (Show Me the Blueprints), but money-wise the industry is back to the pre-LP days and musicians get paid half-pennies on the dollar for every stream. On top of that, you are not a collector or a curator in any form, you’re just a consumer inhaling at the end of an internet tendril, just a baby bird with its mouth wide open while your Streaming Service of Choice downloads into you. When you own vinyl, CD’s, Cassettes, etc., you have to have someplace to put them, and you have to have them readily accessible, and you have to organize your space. Hence every purchase must earn it’s place. Shit that you don’t listen to gets discarded. You are spared all that by Spotify, as you are spared the responsibility of purchase, as you are spared the ability to find something not in the store. Many folk have noted that if you don’t have a physical copy, they can take it away from you at any time, or edit it, or remove songs or episodes from an album or season (we will never see the original DnD episode of Community again, Fat Neal hardest hit). You’re paying for access to someone else’s property. It’s rent, not ownership.

Captain Befort exemplifies this. Currently all of his albums are on Spotify, except Trout Mask Replica. Which is the most famous work, the Exile on Main Street, the Zoso, the Nevermind. In other words, the album all Baefaert fanboys have made a point to have on 180-gram vinyl. I have been forced to listen to The Early (and Later) Stuff in order to absorb his style. This is good.

It is not, as you will readily recognize, difficult to get. It sounds like Blues mixed with four or five other things, and rhythmically wild, but not as batty as it is made out to be. It fits somewhere in the realm of Rock, albeit an offshoot untroubled by the need to be Popular. Unique, to be sure, but by no means mind-blowing. Does that mean half the clowns currently pouting on the Biefhardt subreddit about the lack of Trout Mask Replica (apparently there’s a new rerelease in the works, and they’ve yanked it from the Streamers until Premier. All these Zoomer tankies who talk about landlords the way Cotton Mather talked about witches would be easier to take seriously if they could analogize rent-seeking in the digital world they’re so “at home” in. Twerps) just name-dropping, using the Beaph Art brand for their own pseudo-hipster preening? Maybe. Maybe I should actually listen to Trout Mask Replica before I make statements like that.

Nahhhh…

I’m being way hard on the guy. But not really, since he died thirteen years ago, and even when he was alive he would rather spend a desert siesta talking to paint than reading a blogger’s spicy take on the postmodern distinctions of “Captain Beefheart” the media entity vs. Don Van Vliet (actual name, and I will laugh so hard if “Greta Van Fleet” turns out to be a shout-out to that, and they want to sound like His Magic Band and not Lep Zeddlin) the musician. I can’t hurt him; I can only improve people’s awareness of his art by writing this swill in the first place.

And if I’m being honest, that art has value. Not because it’s blowing my mind like no music ever has, but because it passes the acid test I impose on the whole art form: when I listen to it, do I feel something? Music is the language of the soul, and the mechanics of composition are meant to enhance the expression of that language, not to replace it. I’ll take an amateur with heart over a studied note-worker any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

Which doesn’t matter, because I don’t think Van Vliet and his Magic Band are merely amateurs. I think they have a clear idea of what they’re doing, and what they’re doing is dissolving as many genres as they can, including Rock, which becomes duller than a great thaw when it’s reduced to The Writing of Hooks. You need hooks, because people like hooks, but the true artist invents new hooks, or at least new hybrids of old ones. The trick to Rock is to make something obvious sound like a surprise, like the trick to Jazz is to make something spontaneous sound intended. Those two things go better together than anyone wants to admit, but it takes effort and intention above and beyond what those two art forms demand on their own. You pretty much have to be Miles Davis to pull that shit off consistently, and even he got weird with it.

So the safer route is to let Rock be other things than Rock, to let it break the mold and actually surprise the listener. My man Van does that, and consistently, without collapsing into self-overhearing and being Impressed With Himself as a Spiritual Entity, like a lot of Hippies did. He’s not relying on tricks, and he’s not selling himself as a Guru of Music like that pompous twat Zappa (Has anything ever disappointed me as much as Freak Out!?), he’s creating a song as the song wants to be created. Everything else, including himself, is unimportant, which is why he never wanted to talk about himself with interviewers.

You’ll note that I haven’t spent so much time going through the music, note by chord by bridge. I don’t do that because I know little about it, and because it’s boring besides. These are snapshot impressions, pulling understanding out of the air, which entirely fits what I’m hearing. You might listen to it and decide it’s undisciplined garbage justified by pharmaceuticals, or just a bunch of weirdo Hippie Crap irrelevant to anything in Current Year. You’re entitled to these wrong opinions, as I am entitled to vibe to his albums and ignore the famous one. Sure ‘Nuff n’ Yes I do.

*Me. The Poet is Me.