#137
Artist: Captain Beefheart
Album: Trout Mask Replica
Year: 1969
Length: 78:51
Genre: Avant-Garde / Art Rock / Blues / Experimental Rock
“A squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is fast and bulbous. Got me?“
Well there you have it. I’ve officially found an album that I found incredibly difficult to listen to. Actually, I wouldn’t be surprised if everyone who has listened to this would say the same thing. My tolerance in general is actually really high when it comes to difficult music, with the exception of music made purposefully just to be pure noise, but anything that has a (debatable) sense of melody and tune I can sit through. Sure, I hate sitting through country music and there’s a ton of artists that I can’t stand to listen to (U2, Coldplay and Radiohead) but when push comes to shove I can sit through it if I had to. Heck, I’m the kind of person who loves The Shagg’s Philosophy of the World, which is considered the worst album of all time, an album that everyone I show it to turns it off almost immediately because they just can’t listen to it. I can sit through that and yet I found this album difficult to sit through because of what it offered sonically.
This album has really left me at odds with how I feel. On the one hand I absolutely love it, I always love absurd and screwed up music and this falls neatly into that category. I found myself enjoying the songs and loving the pure insanity of what was happening. But on the other hand I couldn’t grasp what exactly was being made here. At least with something like The Shagg’s I know it’s terrible and was an earnest attempt at music by people who had no idea how music worked, but here… here it’s an abomination of sorts created by a group of people who knew exactly what they were doing. Captain Beefheart isn’t new to music, he played in the Mothers of Invention, heck Frank Zappa is even the producer on this album. This album is also full of incredibly talented musicians, I mean what Beefheart was asking of them required a shit ton of talent to recreate. Based on a story I heard, apparently he’d show the other musicians what he wanted off a piano (an instrument he apparently couldn’t play, apparently) and what he wanted was apparently not even possible to recreate on a guitar but the guitarist had to anyway. It’s pure madness when yous top to think about it and I think that’s kind of the point.
Is this an avant-garde masterpiece or the complete gibberish nonsense of a delusional madman whose lost his marbles? I don’t think we’ll ever have the answer but what we have here is the perfect example of an album where the artist had full control over every aspect. Usually it’s arguable that that isn’t always a good thing as most art blossoms from constructive criticism instead of being surrounded by Yes men but int his case… it’s hard to tell if that’s a good or bad thing. I mean, we wouldn’t have this insane piece of music if it weren’t for that and who knows what it might have been instead with people putting in their two cents, maybe polished and easier to listen to… but then… it wouldn’t be Trout Mask Replica.
It’s hard to call it a masterpiece when Beefheart very deliberately seemed to create a complete deconstruction of what we understand music to be. Is that what makes it a masterpiece? Is it a masterpiece int he same way that Freddy Got Fingered was a masterpiece of surrealist absurd Dada art filmmaking? But then again can we really call it terrible? Is it terrible if the terribleness was deliberate? Is it really terrible if the creator did it on purpose to make it sound that way? All this album does is raise so many questions, none of which I have any answers to. The public seems completely split by it with enthusiasts who love it on one side and people who think it’s garbage on the other. What’s the truth? What’s the reality? WHO IS RIGHT??? WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?????
The truth is I can’t even begin to dissect this album, I don’t have the knowledge or ability to do so. Thankfully, there are countless videos on YouTube that do just that and if you’re interested I’d suggest doing that because there’s no way I can even begin to understand what’s happening here. I mean, on one song, the instruments don’t even play int he same tune or time signature as each other, and even throughout one song those keep changing as the drums do their damn best to keep it altogether like a piece of scotch tape trying to hold together a dam to prevent it from bursting and flooding the entire town. All the while Captain Beefheart himself growls his way through all the absurd lyrics, is it poetic? I don’t know, maybe it is but then again maybe it’s not meant to be. At this point I’ll believe either one.
This album somehow manages to simultaneously be the worst album ever and the best album ever. The dumbest and yet the smartest. It seems to embrace two extremes while never really being one or the other. it has transcended reality, gone beyond space and time and has entered a universe of its own. It is above the heavens and beneath the hells. It sinks deep into the subconscious while being at the forefront of your thoughts. It transcends the heights of philosophy and thinking. It both is and is not at the same time. How do you question that which is a nothing and yet a something? How can something be nothing and yet be something while being nothing? What is…. WHAT IS….???
It is Trout Mask Replica.
Song of Choice: Can I even really pick a song of choice off this album? Is that even possible?? I pick…. Frownland just because it’s starts your journey into pure insanity. it’s the gateway drug to Beefheart’s mind.
-Bosco
Bosco's Modern Life 