Frownland

As promised (luckily I broke TH's rules before he can find an excuse to not listen to more Beefheart), here's my first review:


Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band - Doc at the Radar Station (1980)

After getting the bad taste of his stint with Mercury out of his mouth with Bongo Fury and Shiny Beast, Beefheart went on to make Doc at the Radar Station and effectively rediscovered his edge. The musicians in The Magic Band on this record are the same as on Shiny Beast, but with one very important addition/return: John "Drumbo" French. Personally, I think that French is just as important to the music as the big man himself. Interestingly enough though, we're only treated to his namesake instrument on Ashtray Heart and Sheriff of Hong Kong. On the rest of the tracks we have him on slide guitar, guitar, marimba, and bass as Robert Arthur Williams manned the drums. Additionally, Gary Lucas was added to the group and later became a permanent member on Ice Cream for Crow. I think adding Lucas was a great move for the Captain since Lucas is an incredibly talented guitarist (demonstrated the most clearly on "Evening Bell") who could play the intricate melodies that Beefheart would throw at his personnel. Bruce Lambourne Fowler, most famous for being a member of Frank Zappa's backing band The Mothers of Invention, plays the trombone, Jeff Morris Tepper dominates the slide, nerve, and standard guitar, and lastly we have Eric Drew Feldman on synthesizer, bass, mellotron, grand piano, and electric piano. I had the pleasure of meeting Feldman when I saw The Magic Band perform. He was in the audience and told me and my mate that he liked our hats. Not realizing who he was we just chatted for a while until the show started. Later on in the show, John French pointed him out to the crowd and everyone was excited, people buying him drinks and such. I got him first so they can suck it. Pretty cool guy.

The album artwork is, unsurprisingly, an original from Don van Vliet (the Beef's real name for those unaware).

1. Hot Head
Kind of a conventionally based track for Beefheart. Starts off with a hard rollicking beat with brass, guitar, and mellotron (I think). The lyrics on this track are not as quirky as Beefheart's usual self, with them focusing on a crazy chick who's great in the sack. This track is a great introduction to the album, where Beefheart reworks his earlier style that we hear on TMR, Lick My Decals Off, Baby, and such and boils it down into a heavier beast.

2. Ashtray Heart
This track carries on in the heavy style of the Hot Head while edging closer to the experimental territory both musically and lyrically. Lot of punniness going on here, it’s also incredibly sexual. Beefheart is no stranger to dirty lyrics, but this album really takes it off the charts. It makes me wonder if he was getting it on quite a bit with his wife at the time or if they were having problems and he was extraordinarily sexually frustrated. The world may never know.

3. A Carrot is as Close as a Rabbit Gets to a Diamond
Total change of pace here with what I believe is 3 guitars and a bass doing an instrumental. It’s pretty similar to Dali’s Car off of TMR with its orchestrated chords that quite clearly sound like it’s been transcribed from a piano piece, but a lot tighter. Dali’s Car is by no means sloppy since they were intending to play it like that, but this track is less cluttery.

4. Run Paint Run Run
A little more conventional again but very Beefy with the rolling brass and slide guitar interplay. This track could easily be from (Shiny Beast) Bat Chain Puller, mostly because the backup vocals are similar to those that are on The Floppy Boot Stomp. Sick track, but compared to the rest of the record it’s a little lackluster.

5. Sue Egypt
Now with this track we have something unheard of in Beefheart’s discography: a non-a capella or instrumental track without drums. We have guitar, bass, and mmmmellotron I think? joining in as the Captain recites a poem depicting more sexual imagery, this time focusing quite a bit on the enticing subject of semen. The vocals on this one are closer to the somewhat spoken word style of singing that Beefheart really embraced with Ice Cream for Crow.

6. Brickbats
The drums are back and they brought a brought a bass clarinet with them. In the middle of the song we have a pulsing series of orchestral blasts underneath a wailing clarinet and Beefheart’s amazing and again, incredibly sexual, vocals, and it’s honestly one of my favourite Beefheart moments. Even though I think it would be somewhat out of place, this was originally intended for (Shiny Beast) Bat Chain Puller along with A Carrot is as Close as a Rabbit Gets to a Diamond and Flavor Bud Living.

7. Dirty Blue Gene
We start off with a faster rhythm guitar than we’re used to with Beefheart standing alone before the bass and other instruments join in in a seemingly unfocused manner even though they’re still harmonized to a degree. I’ve always kind of seen this as a less commercial (well, in Beefheartian terms) sister song to Sun Zoom Spark off of Clear Spot with both the vocal melodies and Vliet’s rhyme scheme. It takes it’s title from an earlier track that Beefheart did off on the b-side album I May Be Hungry But I Sure Ain’t Weird that showed up on reissues of Safe As Milk, but as far as I’m aware, the song’s don’t really have any relation. Interestingly enough, the original Dirty Blue Gene was an early version of the track Ice Rose from (Shiny Beast) Bat Chain Puller. The song was also redone on Ice Cream for Crow in the song Witch Doctor Life, which is closer to the original version of the track but with vocals added. I like to think that I understand more about Beefheart’s music than most people, but this is something I haven’t been able to figure out the reasoning behind.

8. Best Batch Yet
This track carries on with the theme of the rest of the album, with a weird approach to the music but also with an oddly catchy sense about it in the instrumentation. I mean, you all know how much I love this shit so maybe it might not be catchy in the general way people use that term. Still, I think that this is one of the prime examples of how I view Doc at the Radar Station: a (Shiny Beast) Bat Chain Puller sequel since it has that commercial blend mixed with that ole weirdness we’ve all (well, all of us who matter) come to know and love, but with a heavier and harder hitting vibe to it and maybe inching a little closer to the weirder side of the room.

9. Telephone
We have a guitar intro with effects (somewhat rare for Beefheart if you ignore distortion) until the band jumps into this badass melodic tradeoff that has a strange type of disorienting vibe even for the experienced Beefheart aficionado. On this track, the vocals are blown. Out. As. Hell. And it fits the song perfectly. While Brickbats has one of my favourite Beefheart moments, this most definitely earns a spot in my top ten Beefheart tracks. Lyrically it stands out from the album and a lot of Beefheart’s other works by exploring paranoia centering around a telephone and the protagonist’s attempts to make sure that it’s safe or else “they’re going to get [him] too.” One of the best outros in Beefheart’s discography, with him still carrying on with the lines “It’s like a grey otter at the end of the hall/it’s like a plastic horned devil,” as the instruments fade out just before he utters “devil”. Beefheart really knows how to amplify his lyrical content by using stops, and I always love the hell out of it.

10. Flavor Bud Living
An instrumental track with just guitar, presumably manned by the brilliant Gary Lucas. As Dirty Blue Gene was a sister track to Sun Zoom Spark, I think that this one has a lot of parallels to a track that I had mentioned earlier, Evening Bell. Lucas (I assume, I haven’t really looked up track by track band members on this album) shows off his talents while wowing the audience with his complex stylings. As a guitarist, I can attest to how hard it is to learn how to play as if there are two or three instruments playing at the same time (not like I’ve actually been able to do this, but I’ve tried so I know it’s a hard style to learn), and this track pulls it off so cleanly and smoothly it’s mind-blowing. I get the feeling that Beefheart composed this one by whistling instead of piano (his go-to for communicating to his band members/transcribers what crazy idea he had next) since it sounds like it’s more closely related to whistling than piano or Beefheart’s vocals. Just a guess, though, I could easily be wrong. There are two or three melodies going on at times, which you can’t really whistle in a case like this (multiphonic whistling exists, btw), but it sounds dissimilar to the way he plays piano to me.

11. Sheriff of Hong Kong
Popping things off with a thumping and consistent (I know, holy shit!) bass drum, this track jumps off into another Beefy piece (sorry for repeatedly describing the music like this, as it’s very difficult to specifically describe Beefheart’s sound) with the inclusion of a cool sounding Chinese gong played by the notorious CB. Jumping back to the woman related lyricism I don’t really have the time to delve into, this track really hits the spot for those who have made it this far into the record and loved the new approach that the Captain tried out.

12. Making Love to a Vampire with a Monkey on My Knee

This is it. The most phenomenal track on the album and one of the best (talking top five here) tracks in his discography. Starts off with another intro that we’ve grown used to on the other tracks of the record but with a mellotron or keyboard, who knows, before the whole band joins in. Beefheart describes, you guessed it, that one time he banged a pale chick on menopause while he gave her ugly kid a horsey ride on his knee to distract it. This is also the most melotron centred tracks on the record, and it plays a huge role in the track. After Beefheart utters “Death be damned, life.”, the band closes with a great closer that reintroduces the scuttling intro. This piece has a painting of the same name that was placed on the back cover of the record and is honestly one of my favourite Beefheart paintings.





Everything in this song makes me want to masturbate because of the rock hard erection that I’ve gotten from it: brilliant instrumentation, initially confusing but brilliant lyrics, just that overall strange manner about it, and great vocal delivery. The best part of the vocals? Beefheart says fuck a bunch of times, and he never really swears in his music. I’ll post those lines as a closer to this wondrous album. Before I close, I’d like to add that if you haven’t heard it yet and I haven’t convinced you to start listening to it with this review, 1) what the fuck is wrong with you? and 2) why are you still reading this? Go put this album on now.

“Gnats fucked my ears ‘n nostrils”
“God, please fuck my mind for good”
“Oh fuck that thing.. .fuck that poem…eyes crawl out with maggots”

He also says cocks a lot in that song, too.

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Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth.

Trollheart

Good review. You should do this more.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018