Trout Mask Replica [Import, CD]

Opinions are divided about the Captain, as evidenced by the rabid one-star reviews and the equally rabid five-star reviews. I have never seen a page this polarized. Let's just make one thing clear - you will never get this album on first listen. Once you give it a couple of thorough listens, you can easily hear ideas, and then after that it will be pretty easy to see this album for what it is - rock music's equivalent of James Joyce's "Ulysses", which I wouldn't call the greatest novel ever, but certainly one of the greatest. Listen to "Ella Guru" - this is the best individual example of the Captain's method. At the beginning, the guitars play one riff, one lead guitar, one rhythm (the rhythm part, though, admittedly is in a different time signature from the rest of the group) and keep playing that riff until the "She got all the colors that nature do" line. They then abruptly switch to a different riff, over the bassline (which is in a different key, but harmonizes in odd places with the guitars) and drums' previous parts. When we get to the "High yellow high red high blue she blew/Hi Ella, high Ella Guru" line, everything switches again to a different riff. This riff is transitional, with the guitars harmonizing, the bassline snaking around and around, and the drumming (which I believe is what turns many people off the most - the drumming is almost never in 4/4 and focuses on truly offbeat accents for most of the album) doing its stuff. Then they go to the chorus, with that cowbell, and then the next section is a solo section, with the solo in the left speaker, with rhythm parts and bass and drums, then it changes again briefly, then back to the chorus. Throughout, everything that sounds "wrong" is repeated in a cohesive way, therefore becoming the song's riffs. And all the songs here, except for the a capella songs, "Moonlight On Vermont", "Veteran's Day Poppy", and "China Pig", are like this. It's really not all that hard to comprehend. Beefheart's lyrics are fantastically visual and very humanistic glimpses of another universe. So I should really leave this to you to decide, but to me, this is crazed, wild genius splattered across the face of popular music. I should also say that "Moonlight On Vermont" and "China Pig" are actually pretty conventional blues songs, and that "Veteran's Day Poppy" is a '60's protest song. Not everything works here - I'm no fan of, say, "Hobo Chang Ba" - but mostly it does, which is why most of the one-star reviews sell the album short. Please give "Ella Guru" another listen with the step-by-step I gave - you might get it this time. I'm not trying to sound patronizing, because it is really very hard to get into. But once you do, you'll never see music the same way again. Come on - are you gonna listen to Good Charlotte for the rest of your life?

That is how I would describe all of you mudslinging soldiers of the amazon.com battlefield. I just read through a monstrous heap of 1 star and 5 star reviews and hardly anybody wrote about what they themselves liked or hated about the music and for what reason. Music is about the personal experience, nobody is right or wrong (probably).

Now I'll write about myself. A couple of adjectives come to mind when I think of this cd, particularly absurd, excessive, extreme, childish, messy, and spontaneous. While I'm sure this sounds like a recipe for musical disaster to many people, this album puts me in a wonderful mood. It has that hilarious and wonderful feeling of childs play (eric dolphy's "out to lunch" comes to mind) that very few musicians are able to capture. Its that feeling that makes you forgive the music for its flaws, and love it for its highlights, which i feel outweigh the failures by a ton. At times this album sounds so cacaphonic that its funny, and while this could have made for a terrible album, its the conviction in the playing and singing that keeps it balanced (teetering precariously though); the harmonies, melodies, rhythms... music in general on this cd is pretty damn interesting and pleasing in a bizarre way. Overall, the album has that flowing feeling of "rock and roll" that draws you in and keeps that rocking feeling even when the band sounds as if its falling to pieces.

On the down side the album is a bit long and i think a couple of songs could have been cut without too much loss. The production is pretty harsh and probably could have been better, but on the other hand i feel that it works well with the music. I guess some people might find the lyrics a bit pretentious (if you consider intentional half-sense to be pretentious), but I find them funny in their glorious absurdity

The unlistenability of this album is completely overrated (aside from maybe the song Pena, which i happen to like a lot). I wont deny that it might be a difficult album to those unfamiliar with avant garde music, jazz, rock, blues... yeah just go into this album with as open a mind as possible, see what happens. beefheart never does what you think he'd do, and thats not a bad thing at all. this is music that cracks me up and has substance at the same time, balances things out. music doesnt have to be serious all the time. Fast and bulbous!

O.K. PEOPLE, GET A HOLD OF YOURSELVES!!

The reviewing page for this cd has turned into a forum for the slanderous voices of many people whose votes get appreciated for similarity of opinion and not quality of review!

Literally I see a feeding frenzy of those who despise Captain Beefheart, for whatever reason, uniting in a campaign to support each other. This is not what reviewing is all about, and you people know it. One to three sentence reviews don't cut it, and personally I, nor any other near objective observer cares to read or be puzzled by the support of these pi$s poor reviews.

TO A REAL REVIEW::

**Preface:: Many of the previous reviewers wish to convey their beliefs that Captain Beefheart is an elitist, who thinks his gibberish is, "more smart," than regular language. They also wish to convince you that musicians such as Frank Zappa are where it is really at. For the purposes of comparison, allow me to quote some Zappa to show you where the real elitism is: "all you Jesus Freaks go home, no one wants to hear you," and "I experienced the real depths of life." Now, by no means am I a Jesus freak, and my own beliefs are not applicable in this review, but I wish to illuminate both judgment and elitism by a musician that thought so highly of himself he decided to melt from drugged out pop/folk into musical theory and compose a series of symphonies. I would be exhibiting repetitive language to explain myself here.

**NOW, Beefheart and his band of unstable (pre-avant-garde) musicians made no attempts to create their own language, like the pretentious Sigur Ros, or to recreate music. THEY ACTUALLY ARE BEING TRUE TO A STYLE OF MUSIC AND LANGUAGE THAT EXISTS. *****Trout Mask Replica is based on the musical themes, (more importantly style and impatience) of hobo music. That's right, hobo music. The American Hobo has more than a simple right to be represented artistically; he is the bedraggled bard of previous times, he is the source for authentic folk music.

Beefheart chooses to not romanticize the hobo aesthetic, but to portray it accurately and goofily, as the dispositions of hobos predominantly are. (I can speak from experience here, having been homeless in Boston for a time, and having traveled well across America.)
This cd is out there, as is the mental meanderings of most homeless people or vagrants. Beefheart himself appears to stutter in the midst of his performance, so swept in the insane pseudo-improvisational style he chooses to adapt. Just look at the cd in simile to James Joyce's, "Finnegans Wake," only in the sense that there is a synonymous artistic utilization of 'stream of consciousness'; but with a sense of humor, and (especially) without all the pretension. ;)

This cd is a light-hearted hilarious journey to the heart of the hobo aesthetic. If you can have a sense of humor about the performing arts, and don't have an inferiority complex when things confuse you; instead your response is laughter and wonder, then this cd will make your day.

4 and 1/2 stars.