Posts Tagged ‘Captain Beefheart’
Ice Cream For Crow
January 9th, 2010
I just watched a video on youtube.com for a Captain Beefheart song called “Ice Cream For Crow” and I believe there’s a chance that this experience has changed my life forever, changed me as a person, as a man.
(There’s a leather thing under me.)
I’m not sure really where Captain Beefheart came from, like what planet because this fucking guy is undeniably from a planet that’s not this one. I can’t come to any other conclusion. Planet planet.
There’s a huge blues influence on the music, and it seems like it might be the only logical next step that rock and roll never took. Meaning that he’s not so much ahead of his time as just beyond any time that’s going to ever exist. To the extent that popular music deviates from this extraordinary music, that is the extent to which it is completely off course.
I can hear this music reaching back into a chant, something primal, something born with time or before it while reaching into the future, or into a future that’ll never exist. It is a music with the breadth and depth to stretch across and encompass all of time. It is the music it is because it is every music simultaneously, the one without beginning and without end. It’s a club and a raygun, a spaceship up on blocks in front of a cave. I’m wearing a loincloth.
All this music was meticulously composed by Van Vliet. If you watch and listen, you will be startled at this. These musicians are playing note for note compositions by the singer, they are not just jamming, this is the way the song was written, for each instrument. It’s the least corny music that could possibly exist because it takes you prisoner and never lets you go broadcasting something into your consciousness that you are not conscious of really, what music does what I just said? You can’t name one, except for this one. I’ve listened to it.
This is from his last album and it’s an example of him at his highest level. Where could this have gone beyond this? I think it’s appropriate that he retired from music for painting. It makes all the sense in the world. He carried it to this point, and now I have yet to hear anything that picks it up and carries it forward.
The greatest of all time is that way because it’s the only of it’s kind. This music is at once completely repetitive and constantly evolving. It it scripted, drawn up, meticulously crafted, diligently rehearsed and explosively executed chaos. What is the music that also answers to this description.
I can see something maybe in Ornette Coleman that’s similar, but here’s the difference: Captain Beefheart is doing this blasting rock thing and this deep blues groove and holler. There’s a lyrical element that you don’t really get with Ornette.
Not to be ridiculous by posting a challenge; but I honestly do not think it’s possible to watch this, to become totally absorbed in it, the music and the images, and to not have some sort of religious experience.
There are also a series of concert videos by the man that are astounding. This is not the way humanoids play music. Z rhymes with K. Flonk.
CLICK THE LINK BELOW
Ice Cream For Crow watch?v=iqRHr5pEIFU
Tags: Captain Beefheart, fucking awesome, music, Pat Dixon
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