Labels: Cubby Control Records
Review by: Captain Fidanza
For me, 2013 will be remembered as the year I finally tuned in to Captain Beefheart.
Ever since I was a nineteen-year-old musical greenhorn living next to an outboard motor factory in Colchester, people have been lending me their copies of “Trout Mask Replica” with the assertion that it was the “best album ever made” and that upon first listen, my entire perception of what constituted music would be changed irrevocably.
Needless to say, my musical perception was not altered in the slightest by what I safely asserted to be the worst album I had ever heard in my entire life. Even the individual who introduced me to John Coltrane once handed me the album with the caveat that if I didn’t like it, he would have to seriously reconsider our friendship. Still nothing.
However, earlier this year I heard “Hot Rats” and was strangely drawn to the bizarre voice caterwauling on the song “Willie the Pimp” “” “what the fuck is that?” was I think my initial reaction to the sound of a man shouting as though he’d just dropped a box of bricks on his foot. Cursory investigation revealed it to be the Captain and from then on I was tuned in.
One of the many drawbacks of finally understanding something unreservedly accepted as a classic is that you start to recognise pale imitations almost everywhere. It is with this in mind that we come to consider Reptiel, who proudly proclaim their new album sounds not only like Beefheart, but Brian Eno and Cream.
It doesn’t, it sounds like David Devant and His Spirit Wife “” and they were shit.
Beefheart Discography with Fidanza Comments
- Safe as Milk “” Didn’t like. Now with British Heart Foundation in Palmers Green.
- Strictly Personal “” Good. Good envelope cover.
- Trout Mask Replica “” Good. Great fishman cover.
- Mirror Man “” Great. Good broken mirror cover.
- Other ones “” I haven’t heard them yet.