Conductor, artist, poet, and favorite eccentric of ours, Don Vilet (better known as Captain Beefheart) has long captured our hearts. The steam engine voice of his exhausts the ghosts of bluesmen past, most identifiably Howlin’ Wolf’s, after a cigarette and shot of well whisky. He dances their bones around bouncing and weaving to odd but contagious rhythm after rhythm.
Songs like "I’m Gonna Booglarize you" may not only terrify the faint of heart, but he wouldn’t have it any other way. The guttural vocal delivery comes cannonading out of him wet and still smoldering. How’d you learn to talk real low like that?
Other strutting and cutting guitar driven vehicles can be found wheeling all over the double album. Songs like “Low Yoyo Stuff” and “Crazy Little Thing” are, as Buddy Guy would proudly exclaim, “so funky you can smell it!”.
The real genius in Beefheart’s craft lies in his ability to orchestrate weaving, clashing melodies into something not only in sonic agreement, but with instruments you wouldn’t reach for first. It’s here that he is able to paint his sonic landscapes with hues of blues, funk, r&b, and psychedelia, mix them all together, and throw them at the wax canvas like Jackson Pollock would have liked to. How many songs can you name with a Xylaphone in them?