“Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica (33 1/3)” (Kevin Courrier)
I started reading the 33.3 book about Trout Mask Replica yesterday. There are certain records that are tied into one's personal history, and Trout Mask Replica is one of those hard-to-tune-out albums. I don't listen to it all that much, but when I do, I have to really listen.
I even remember the first time I heard Captain Beefheart, on a slightly-used vinyl album checked out of the Austin Public Library, circa 1988. I kept the discs checked out for a long time, eventually making a cassette copy (theft! theft!). Probably why I also associate the willful and literate eccentricity of Trout Mask Replica with the taste of LSD (even now as I write this, I have that peculiar metallic saliva Pavlovian response even though it has been 10-15 years since I've ingested any acid).
Trout Mask Replica is definitely not to everyone's taste, let's be clear.
Matt Groening writes:
The first time I heard Trout Mask, when I was 15 years old, I thought it was the worst thing I'd ever heard. I said to myself, they're not even trying! It was just a sloppy cacophony.Then I listened to it a couple more times, because I couldn't believe Frank Zappa could do this to me - and because a double album cost a lot of money. About the third time, I realized they were doing it on purpose: they meant it to sound exactly this way. About the sixth or seventh time, it clicked in, and I thought it was the greatest album I'd ever heard.
I played Trout Mask for my blues-loving friends, who all went through the same reaction I had, and we'd sit around saying, Wow, if this is how great pop music is in 1969, just think what it’ll be like in 1984! Of course, we didn’t realize this was the best album of 1984... and it remains the best rock album I've ever heard.
I saw him perform in 1970, when he came to the Paramount Theater in Portland, Oregon, and all seventy-five weirdos in the city showed up. These were the people the hippies had rejected. I remember the lights dimmed, and then Ed Marimba came out with a plastic toy raygun, pulled the trigger a few times to make sparks, and intoned the words 'Raygun, raygun' over and over again . . . finally concluding with 'Ronnie Raygun', who was already Governor of California. Then Drumbo came out and they played a duet for a while, and finally the whole band walked on. It was the best concert I've ever seen, easily.
“Trout Mask Replica” (Captain Beefheart)
Speaking of 33.3 books, here is their publishing history all in one place. Perfect for building playlists.
Past, Present & Future In case anyone's interested in some tentative dates for future books, I've put together this season-by-season overview of the whole series. (Here, Spring runs from March to August, and Autumn runs from September to February. It's a crazy publishing thing.)
