Born Don Vliet. A painter, once a child prodigy, who lives out in the wilds of NoCal. In a previous life, he was Captain Beefheart, the leader of the Magic Band, originally a great bluesy garage band (he was easily the best blues singer of his generation - I kid thee not - but his odd lyrics and quirky styles often hid his vocal genius) that became a complex, abstract, blues-like assemblage vaguely inspired by his friend/rival Frank Zappa. It was post-punk long before "punk rock" entered our vocabularies.