TROUT MASK REQUIEM: Don Van Vliet, better known as Captain Beefheart, has passed away at the not-quite-ripe old age of 69.
Probably I'm not the guy to try to say quite what he meant to music, or America, or the line between art and pop-culture in the back half of the 20th Century, or whatever all else one might deem relevant, but if you keep an eye out over the weekend I bet someone with a superior sense of music history will do something like justice to the legacy of this singular and -- let's face it, strange artistic genius.
For my part, I tend to think of him as one of the seminal comparatively ingenuous and straightforward innovators that every subsequent prog-rock project failed to improve upon. This may be entirely invalid, either on its face or as a symptom of the fact that I do not, generally speaking, like or "get" prog rock. If challenged, I'd probably have to concede that I don't know quite where it begins, or ends, or what it was arguably doing in between. So, please, if any of you know better, do say something. Indeed, say as much as possible. Even if not inaccurate, that view is certainly inadequate. The shadow he cast is much longer, and wider, and it has weirder things slithering about in it.
In the language of my own generation, Beefheart was "alternative" a quarter century before it occurred to anyone that that word might be used to sell music. Something about his legacy -- his inventiveness, his audacity -- I don't know, something about his music allows me to hope that the effort to sell music did not after all succeed in evacuating that word of meaning.
Rest in peace.
I always thought he was more an "avant-garde" guy who influenced the likes of Tom Waits, Laurie Anderson, Frank Zappa. When I hear "prog rock" I think of King Crimson, early Yes, ELP.
ReplyDeleteI pick a nit. Thanks for the post, Phil.
Oh, and the post-header is awesome.
ReplyDelete@kev-- Thank you. Exactly. That's not a nit at all. It's exactly what's needed, in fact.
ReplyDeleteI'm irritated that the association of Beefheart with prog is so strong for me. There was something much much much more programmatic and grandiose about prog rock; it was swollen up with weird long-haired neo-Wagnerianism, and quite a lot of it was British. But somehow I still think of Robert Fripp as a guy who either lacked the balls or the brains to be Captain Beefheart and so instead became King Crimson. Again, that's an uninformed slur built on my lack of enthusiasm for prog. It's not fair to anyone, perhaps least of all the departed.
Anyway, you are right on that Vliet was more an experimentalist or an American avant-garde. Those categories escaped me in the small hours this morning, and I instead shared a view that I knew was too myopic. Again, thanks.
I never listened to any Beefheart, but I read somewhere that Polly Harvey was obsessed with him, so we've got that to thank him for.
ReplyDeleteLong ago, I went to a Yes concert. Based on massive generalization from that experience, I'm here to tell you that prog rock blows.
ReplyDelete"Prog Rock Blows"
ReplyDeleteT shirt slogan we have been waiting for.
<span>Or, one could express the sentiment thusly.</span>
ReplyDelete