V02-T16 The Dust Blows Forward...

.....If you were one of the lucky few to be given one of these compilations, and assuming you didn't recognize this final song on Volume 2, you may have wondered just how old this recording was or how bad the condition of the record from which it was taken. The recording is younger than I am and it was recorded from a CD.

Volume 2: "WE'RE ALL GOING TO JAIL FOR THIS, AREN'T WE?", track 16

• 01:53 "THE DUST BLOWS FORWARD (AND THE DUST BLOWS BACK) (Don Van Vliet)
• performed by Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band
• original source: 2LP TROUT MASK REPLICA Straight STS-1013 (US) 10/69
• and my source: CD TROUT MASK REPLICA Reprise 2027-2 (US) 11/89

.....Many of the liner notes that I wrote for this series of mix tapes became hopelessly out of date and I've been rewriting them on this blog. This particular track was not as obvious a choice for a 'closer' as the two tracks that began each side/volume were 'openers'. In fact, it's only the second track on the first side of the double LP from which it was taken. My choice to use it for this purpose was ultimately instinctive and I put some thought in after the fact to work out (for my own peace of mind, mostly) what was driving those instincts. I'm going to quote those thoughts below, unedited, and then fact-check myself immediately after that (and remember this is 1993):

.....This man could fill a book. You still might not understand him after reading it, but you'll hate putting it down.

.....Captain Beefheart is an infuriating artist, the sort who, along with Syd Barrett, Nico, Lord Buckley and others will often be the first names on your tongue when someone asks you why you don't like Air Supply (no, that's pretty dated; say 'Vanilla Ice' instead). "If you don't like what they play on the radio, then WHAT DO YOU LIKE?" they always ask.

.....And sometimes, if I'm feeling charitable, this is what I'd say:

....."I like Captain Beefheart."

.....Now, I'm not stupid. I know that if I say this to one hundred people that less than half a dozen of them will buy one of his albums and most of them will make the mistake of trying to dance to it. But if even one person 'gets' it, it will be worth it. Of course, their first reaction will be to wrinkle their nose and check the sleeve/jewel box to make sure they didn't pick up the wrong item. Then they'll check their sound system, headphones, etc. It was only because I found some of these songs mildly amusing that I gave them repeated listenings and found, to my amazement, that taken collectively they can be revelatory. In the case of Beefheart in particular, more so than the others I mentioned above, you should find that he doesn't simply have a perspective on things that's slightly different from the rest of us, but that his perspective is nearly independent of ours. With some effort you can catch a glimpse of it; it's a mad world where objects are interchangeable with circumstances (and vice versa) and words are more powerful than what they are chosen to describe.

.....About this recording specifically: it was produced by Frank Zappa, probably in someone's living room. (The Captain had already been lied to and cheated by a number of producers and labels and was fitfully uncomfortable around studios.)

.....This track was taped from CD; the scratchy sound in the background, periodically interrupted by a crackling >thwippp< , is the sound of a needle in the trail-off groove of an old record. Both Beefheart and Zappa frequently listened to blues 45's and 78's. It acts as a metronome on an otherwise a capella track. Maybe the intention was to lay the vocal part over an instrumental background afterwards and that proved too difficult due to the record's "background noise". I'd like to think that it was more the result of two genuine record lovers who wanted to convey to listeners the sound that most recalls their true passion-- and mine.

.....and it's 2010 again. O.K., in order:

1. "This man could fill a book." Several, in fact, since I wrote those words. Only a handful are really good, the best being Zoot Horn Rollo (Bill Harkleroad)'s "Lunar Notes"(1998); Mike Barnes' "The Biography"(2002); Kevin Courrier's contribution to the 33 1/3 series, a volume about this very album, TROUT MASK REPLICA (2007); and there's been a lot of anticipation for John (Drumbo) French's "Beefheart: Through The Eyes of Magic", released earlier this year. He also wrote the excellent liner notes for the GROW FINS boxed set of CD's.
2. Air Supply was dated then, and Vanilla Ice is dated now.
3. The phrase, "where objects are interchangeable with circumstances" should probably read, "...with events". The idea was that if solid tangible things and experienced activities were both nouns (linguistically, at least), that they could be equivalent in some other sense as well. That is, you could sprinkle a bus ride on your corn flakes. Or you could reach a higher shelf by standing on ceremony. In the Captain's world, those sentences would make perfect sense.
4. I don't know where I might have read about TROUT MASK REPLICA being recorded in someone's living room, but the album was famously demoed in a suburban house that was converted into a giant studio by Zappa and the Magic Band. By the late 1960's the experimentation in using multi-track recording on pop music had made it the rule and not the exception to record each instrument independently and then incorporate the mixing stage of production into the creative process. They bought a house in Woodland Hills, CA and wired the individual rooms. The musicians moved in and the lines between living, working and creating began to blur resulting in an extreme form of cabin fever. Some people never left the house for months.

.....Well, I'm starting to feel a bit of that cabin fever myself. Tomorrow is a day off. I'll be doing another recommendation. Then beginning next week I'll be posting Monday through Friday in order to work in more research to update the notes as well as doing a little home maintenance.