gradep's Full Review: Trout Mask Replica by Captain Beefheart & the Magi...
Captain Beefheart, icon of the seventies, guru for stoned-hippies, is famous for his abstract and experimental drug-influenced blues-rock.
This exhausting album (28 tracks of bad trip on LSD) is only made for stoners and purists, elitists of rock music. An innocent person born after 1969 (year of release) will surely not understand Captain Beefheart's trip. Would I have liked this album if I had lived during this crazy 1969 period ? I doubt.
First problem with that album : it is not the intemporal, timeless album rock-critics wants you to adore, one of those albums you still listen 50 years after its release. This album was made for its times and has not been able to overcome the years. Most people don't even know it exists. Will they believe rock-critics who pretend that "Trout Mask Replica" is the cornerstone of rock music ?
How do you explain that some older albums ("St Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band", "Beggar's Banquet", and other classics #1) can still be listened and not that one ? Would you then tell your friend that "Trout Mask Replica" is the best album ever ?
The second album's problem is that it requires a solid rock culture to appreciate it. Only for that reason a lot of people won't be able to listen to it entirely. They will not persevere. These persons won't hear a masterpiece but only a crazy ol'man shouting and an approximative, incoherent music. Even if we know that Don Vliet was a very methodic guy who thought a lot about every sounds and chords of his songs #2, "Trout Mask Replica" is damn hard to listen and sounds incoherent for most of us. I'm very sad not to understand this album ; some people do really think that it is the best rock album ever (I won't argue about with this subjective topic). But you may understand it if you belong to one of these two categories :
1) "Trout Mask Replica" seems to be an album for all the nostalgics of the 69'. A period synonym of LSD, easy sex, dope inhaling. Psychedelic music is always tastable with various substances.
2) It is also an album for all the people who like to show their friends that they listen to it, because it has become an elitist thing. "Trout Mask Replica" makes them original.
If you're quite indulgent, you'll perhaps like 3 or 4 songs (I like the bluesy idiot "China Pig", the lyrics of "Dachau Blues") and "Ella Guru" when I feel particularly crazy but that's all). But like a lot of curious people who tried to know more about this album, you'll be disappointed... so don't expect the true dadaist or surrealist masterpiece they told you (you'd better read Tzara's poetry or listen to Satie's music).
I won't tell you not to listen "Trout Mask Replica". These kind of albums can't be classified. You should listen to it one time, in order to understand that the late sixties were insane. Some will like, others won't.
This one time you should make your own opinion.
#1But does art always need to be beautiful ? That's a good philosophical question. Obviously, a lot of backward people like me don't like this album because it is a good overview of ugliness, abstraction and disorder. On this album, Beefheart's sings like a cow - he did much better on some other shots - and the rythm is often voluntarily chaotic and oppressive.
#2Like modern-art painting : it always seems easy to paint those things and no one understand their meaning except elitists who find them genius for obsure reasons. It is almost the same thing for "Trout Mask Replica".
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