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PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT – Trout Mask Replica…

by 83 Comments

… is now on Spotify.

On some days I think it is the worst album ever made. Other days it’s the greatest. At least once a year I literally have to listen to it.

This is my favorite song from it…

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Comments

        • I like a cacophony as much as the next hombre but having approached it from just about angle & in various states of mind, I ultimately concluded it was bollocks. Not rubbish, just bollocks.
          I’d put it on a par with your take on Joyce – it’s one in the canon that one is obliged to acknowledge with reverence as the meisterwork – & I just don’t think it is.
          I think Don was given his head & frankly went more than a little nuts ( leaving out all the coercion stuff & the way he treated the band) & I think it ran away from him.
          Happy to be in the ‘you just don’t get it, maaan’ category but I rate Clear Spot as his greatest work precisely because it is more disciplined & less indulgent.

          • It’s not cacophony – which is random noise – far from it. It’s organised and composed at a forensic level. If you like it or not is something else. It’s unlike Finngans Wake in that millions of people listen to it and enjoy it without an academic body of opinion pressuring them to. If anything, the pressure is on the listener to not like it (the consumer consensus that it is “difficult” and “just noise” or whatever). I never had any problem with it, and I’m far from unique. Neither is it a pose – I like what I like, like anybody else. Nobody ever though I was cool for liking it. And it fits very logically into his canon – I was already “into” (man) Strictly Personal, which set up TMR nicely, and Decals was the perfect transition between TMR and Clear Spot, which you think is “more disciplined” (?!) than TMR. TMR is all about discipline.

            There was a lot of love here for Olivia Newton John, so I wouldn’t expect a lot of love here for Trout Mask Replica. But I don’t call her music “bollocks”, even if it sets my teeth on edge. Calling any artist’s work “bollocks” just shows a lack of understanding.

            • Something else, while I’m here – when I bought TMR (expensive mail-order import) there was no “Beefheart mythology”. There wasn’t an established critical or consumer context to influence me. I’d heard a couple of tracks on John Peel, knew I liked Strictly Personal, and took the plunge. Reviews back then weren’t numerous or particularly analytical or enlightening – I must have seen it mentioned, but can’t remember any opinions other than Peel’s, and one friend of mine who’d bought Safe As Milk on release (something I only caught up with later).

              My point is that it came to me (in a plain brown wrapper) completely fresh, without any expectations or attached opinions or whatever, and it blew me away. I played it again and again, from beginning to end, decrypting the cover (and the lyric insert) and letting it rewire my musical perception. It didn’t have to live up to anything or be judged in an established context of other peoples’ reactions. That kind of experience is probably impossible today, but the directness of it – and the instinctive feeling that this was my music made for me – has stayed with me, and is impossible to share.

              • I have Trout Mask Replica but find it difficult. I do though concur that it is disciplined and also complex. I personally prefer Safe as Milk which is no less complex but a little less dense.

                • I must admit part of me does suspect that this whole “every note was planned and rehearsed to perfection” is maybe a little bit of a myth. Parts of it do a VERY good job of sounding like a lot of musicians just hitting random notes in unison.

                  • Don Vliet could not read or write music and couldn’t play any instrument proficiently, but he knew in exact detail how he wanted everything to sound. It was John “Drumbo” French’s job to turn Don’s ideas into actually playable pieces of music that satisfied him. An onerous (and pretty thankless) task, but one he was very proud of having done.

                    • Cowslip, there’s been a whole lot written about the making of the album that you might find interesting, and all of it is evidence against the early “random making stuff up” theory which is now only held by people who know next to nothing about the music. Also, the Grow Fins box shows the band rehearsing and learning the material, and there’s a lot of musical analysis and dissection on YouTube. Does this in itself make it worth listening to? I’d say yes, because it shows the artistic process. I know that’s goin to get a lot of sneers from the Usual Suspects, but who cares what they say?

              • Saucepan…

                …fantastic bit of sniffy po-faced cord loonacy there.

                Wanna buy a bridge?

                It comes wrapped in plain brown paper.

                All the cool kids have got one.

            • I wouldn’t suggest for a moment that liking TMR is a pose, & beauty is definitely in the ear of the beholder.
              This is despite the fact I can’t cite a more definitive album that the chinstroking 6th Form cognoscenti in their cord loons at my school revered as the litmus test of ‘difficult’ & therefore deeply ‘cool’ akin to a rite of passage like taking acid or losing one’s virginity. I definitely think TMR is still considered in this light by musos all over the place.
              Hopefully to clarify, I do think it’s bollocks, but I definitely don’t think it’s rubbish & I think there’s a difference. It obviously could not have been created by people without obvious talent, but people with huge talent also are quite capable of producing duff stuff however much effort they expended in the process.
              I very much appreciate take on board what you say about there being no point ‘trying’ to get into TMR – it will either speak to you or it won’t. Obviously, it doesn’t speak to me although I love virtually all of Don’s other work. This in itself is curious to me, but perhaps is connected to not experiencing his albums in any kind of chronological order – I think Ice Cream For Crow was the only one I bought on release. The first I heard was Decals ( older sister’s copy) when I was about 13 & loved on 1st contact.
              I love plenty of stuff that some others consider a racket -Albert Ayler, Ornette Colman, Art Ensemble of Chicago, live Coltrane & Pharaoh Sanders as well lots of screechy feedback noise, so I obviously appreciate there is order & purpose within the ‘noise’, despite my flip ‘cacophony’ remark – it’s just that TMR has never elicited that response in me.
              I don’t think Don is taking the piss or anything like that, but I still think it might be his ‘Dune’ rather than his ‘Erazerhead’ to drag David Lynch into the conversation.
              I concede it is my loss , but can’t conjure another artist I love whose magnum opus I can’t stand & am unlikely ever to.
              Funny old game innit, Saint?

  2. Oof. I got into this album (or tried to) about fifteen or so years ago. But in the end, it and I parted ways. I think we are just not compatible.

    I was abhorred by it at first, then started to find it attractive when I got into it as abstract poetry. But then something changed and we grew apart. I don’t think we were meant to be together.

      • Yes. Exactly that. 🙂

        I think it was the fact it was such an ugly album, deliberately and provocatively atonal, like a challenge to the listener. And the bits of sniggering humour throughout it didn’t really help. I felt like I was being laughed at for not being hip enough.

        In particular though, to be serious for a minute, I thought the stuff about gassing Jews was in poor taste.

        After that I read a bio of Beefheart, and got into the whole crazy story of how the album was created, which compelled me to listen to it again and allow it some kind of limited appreciation. I think the myths surrounding the album are more interesting than the album itself – always thought it would make a good film.

      • I think he’s right. TMR either hates you or it loves you. What you think doesn’t matter. It loved me from the first spin on my crappy fibre-board auto-change portable, and has been faithful for over half a century – *snurfle*

  4. It has also hit the hi-res download stores. You can now hear the sound of drums falling down the stairs in better-than-cd quality.

    TMR is like Astral Weeks for me – I listen about once a decade. The only time AW clicked with me, I had a monumental hangover. Since I’ve been teetotal for over a decade, I don’t know when I’ll listen again.

  5. I love me some Beefheart but have always struggled with this. Thirty years after trying to enjoy my brother’s copy, I bought my own a year or two back to try it again but, nope, I lasted about 3 songs and my wife came racing down the stairs insisting I take it off. I do like the albums either side of it.

    I did, however, buy a couple of metal Trout Mask pins at the same time, and they are splendid.

    • If you have to try, it ain’t gonna happen. The chances of it clicking for you fifty plays in (whatever) are there, but only just. Life’s too short to try to like TMR.

      (Send me one of your pins, and I’ll wear it in my hat.)

  6. It’s one you have to work your way into and requires active listening – you can’t really have it on while you’re doing something else. But I think we need more music that demands engagement. Having said that, with TMR, once you’re fully immersed, it’s incredible. Still the benchmark for avant garde rock after all these years.

  7. TMR is the cubism of rock music. It is uncompromising, superior, somewhere between primitivist and abstractly intellectual, loved by superior smirking types impressed by themselves for their non pedestrian taste, and delighted with the fact it still upsets civilians. After 40 years I got it, but I really dislike the mystique around it, and Beefheart. Ironic, given I’m a big Zappa fan, and a lot of those criticisms could be directed Frank’s way.

    • I think that’s unfair. I was for many years a superior smirking type, but never affected to like TMR. Back then, it didn’t have the masterpiece mystique it now has, and your mates just thought you were daft for having it. No prestige attached, intellectual or otherwise.

      I’ve read enough about it to appreciate its construction, and the discipline required to record it, but none of that academic stuff mattered. It sounded – and still sounds – like nothing else. Not noise, not random, there’s purpose and direction all through it. And vision. Music will never again be twisted inside out like that.

      • Apologies. I lived in Brighton in the 70s and the music snobs I moved amongst already had it as “theirs”, and if you wondered where the tunes were, you were rather infra-dig. Smug types traded Beefheart lines (“fast n bulbous”, etc). I think they put me off it as much as anything else. As I said self-depreciatively, to say “Only 13, and she knows how to nasty” was TOTALLY DIFFERENT. (Not at all – precisely the same.) I now listen to it with interest, and it is definitely a bit of challenging art, which is why I used the cubism analogy; i spent an afternoon looking at a lot of Picasso’s and Braque’s recently, and found it fascinating and mind-stretching, as well as challenging, despite having seen them all decades ago.

      • This is going to sound like a “What did you do during the war, dad?” question, but I’m interested in what you say about Troutmask’s early reception.

        As has been confirmed on other threads, I am a sprightly youngster and I wasn’t born when it came out. Certainly in my lifetime I have always known it as a cool artifact with a cryptic name and a great cover, so for my generation it’s always had a similar mystique to something like the first Velvet Underground album or Hot Rats. In other words, far more likely to be owned/displayed than to be actually played.

          • Fankew. And a very nice and erudite comment it was too. I think you’re right, that it’s harder to approach music in a vacuum, a personal bubble, these days. It’s still possible though, if you lay off the streaming services, as I try to do when I’m feeling disciplined.

            I had considered digging out the Trout again after this thread, but I’ve decided I’ve had enough of it. I like the stuff leading up to it, Mirror Man and Korn Ring Finger and all that, and he sounds terrific singing (almost) straight R’n’B stuff like Diddy Wah Diddy in the very early days, plus of course I love Yellow Brick Road, but all that’s quite enough for me.

            I have also dabbled in the post-Trout stuff and it doesn’t really grab me. Shamefully, I must admit I quite like the song Blue Jeans and Moonbeams, which probably doesn’t endear me to Beefheart aficionados.

          • Oh yes I agree, personally. But, and maybe I’m wrong, I just think those are two examples of LPs which people in general (not cultured gentlemen like you and I) are far more likely to have prominently displayed but don’t actually play. The kinds of albums that HMV has in big displays to show how cool vinyl is, and which whippersnapper hipsters will buy for £40 but never remove from their plastic wrapping. Grr.

            (Okay, you can stop there Arthur, chill and have a coffee and put on your favourite David Gates LP).

            • Hot Rats is one of the most playable and listenable albums ever made. Never met anyone who didn’t enjoy it (cue contrary opinion). And I don’t think the first VU album is on the vinyl showboater’s hitlist. They’re much more likely to buy Kind Of Blue, to show they dig jazz, and Abbey Road, to show their appreciation of the classics.

              • Hmm, mebbe, but mebbe not.
                VU’s cover is probably the deciding factor , as loads of people know the banana image without any context ( a bit like the Ramones logo) & it looks good propped up near the fixed wheel bike.
                By comparison, KOB despite being rightfully revered, has a downright underwhelming sleeve which can’t compete for style with any number of Blue Note albums. Coltrane’s ‘Blue Train’ is probably a better prospect for the whippersnappers, thanks to its’ beautiful cover photo.

                  • What about those of us who just like it?

                    Mind you, I suspect the stories of it being almost wholly improvised are maybe just a bit exaggerated. If it wasn’t all pre-written, it sure sounds like it. (Callback joke to my observation about Trout above, I’m trying to be funny not start a debate).

                  • KOB is indeed very very strange.
                    Best selling Jazz album ever & very big with ‘people who don’t like Jazz’ & yet Jazz heads also love it & it is of course beyond brilliant.
                    I guess it supports the notion that ‘just because something is popular, doesn’t means it’ s duff’.
                    Ye gods, it’s hot.
                    (Crap cover though).

                  • Iconic doesn’t necessarily need to mean great cover. Often it does but it doesn’t have to. Iconic just needs to be recognised as such like a celebrity. Enough people know KOB is a jazz masterpiece for the displaying of it to have the desired effect. I think you can get away with a wider range of ‘classics’ these days. Back in the day there was more discernment. You had to try harder to make it as a pretend cool rock hipster.

                    • ^This comment is more than three hours old and therefore automatically qualifies as both classic and iconic, as well as possibly being seminal (hurr)

        • Very few people bought it, Arthur. Captain Beefheart had hardly any sales. HP makes interesting points, but there are not millions of people enjoying Trout Mask Replica, nor any other of his albums.

          BONGO FURY!!! BONGO FURY!!!

  9. I think it’s us that are not up to the job, not that it’s lacking. It’s good that such difficult things exist, to push the boundaries. Those that embark on such endeavours should be commended, otherwise who knows where the limits are.

  13. Rather than read through all this, so much simpler to say the groaning Bee Farter has an annoying voice and a perverse idea of musical construction. Two good songs, and I can’t even remember the name of the other one.

    So there!

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