Track Listing
Side One
1. Frownland
2. The Dust Blows Forward 'n the Dust Blows Back
3. Dachau Blues
4. Ella Guru
5. Hair Pie: Bake 1
6. Moonlight on Vermont
Side Two
1. Pachuco Cadaver
2. Bills Corpse
3. Sweet Sweet Bulbs
4. Neon Meate Dream of a Octafish
5. China Pig
6. My Human Gets Me Blues
7. Dali's Car
Side Three
1. Hair Pie: Bake 2
2. Pena
3. Well
4. When Big Joan Sets Up
5. Fallin' Ditch
6. Sugar 'n Spikes
7. Ant Man Bee
Side Four
1. Orange Claw Hammer
2. Wild Life
3. She's Too Much for My Mirror
4. Hobo Chang Ba
5. The Blimp (Mousetrapreplica)
6. Steal Softly Thru Snow
7. Old Fart at Play
8. Veteran's Day Poppy
"People like music to be in tune because they've heard it in tune all the time. I really tried to break that down."
--Don Van Vliet, a.k.a. Captain Beefheart
Legend has it that
Trout Mask Replica was
written,
composed, and
recorded by
Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band within a single eight and one half
hour spurt. The
truth, however, is that every
note was
ground out of the
magic band over a
period of eight
months. During this time
cash was
scarce.
Van Vliet remembers sneaking down to the
kitchen in their
bungalow in the Woodland Hills one
night to steal a
piece of
bread, and on at least one occasion, drinking
pancake syrup.
The
band rehearsed for
months under these
conditions, until
Frank Zappa agreed to give them six
hours in a real
studio to record the
album.
Trout Mask's
instrumental portions were recorded within five
hours.
Trout Mask Replica was released in the
fall of 1969, to the
praise of the
late,
legendary rock critic Lester Bangs. Everyone else called it
complete dog shit. The original
band broke up soon afterward.
Captain Beefheart formed various other Magic Bands and recorded other
albums that were a bit more
accessible.
To this
day Trout Mask Replica remains the
benchmark for sonic
weirdness, and has influenced a few
contemporary somebodies:
Beck, whose earlier
works on
Stereopathetic Soul Manure much resemble the
twisted and
broken melodies on
Trout Mask Replica; and
Matt Groening, the
creator of "
The Simpsons", who had this to say about
Trout Mask Replica:
"I took it home and put it on. It was the worst dreck I'd ever heard in my life. Then I thought, 'Well, Frank Zappa produced it; maybe I better give it another play.' So I played it again, and I thought, 'It sounds horrible, but they mean it to sound this way.' About the third or fourth time it started to grow on me. The fifth or sixth time I loved it. The seventh or eighth time I thought it was the greatest album ever made. I still do."