Frankly Speaking
And of course we are celebrating another Night of the Living Van Vliet Festival.
Could Don Van Vliet ever be given the chance he was given in the 60's by a major record label today?
Frank brings up some very interesting points about how things got to where they are and how we seem to be mired in a musical mafia of mediocrity and a miasma very predictable product again.
Here is Frank and Don performing together on a radio broadcast in the mid 70's.
Don performs Orange Claw Hammer and Frank plays solo guitar.
And of course we are celebrating another Night of the Living Van Vliet Festival.
Could Don Van Vliet ever be given the chance he was given in the 60's by a major record label today?
Frank brings up some very interesting points about how things got to where they are and how we seem to be mired in a musical mafia of mediocrity and a miasma very predictable product again.
Here is Frank and Don performing together on a radio broadcast in the mid 70's.
Don performs Orange Claw Hammer and Frank plays solo guitar.
3 comments:
I posted this same clip of Zappa's interview over on my site today, and found it about as enlightening as you did. We really should pay more attention to Frank these days...
The major labels are being devoured by on-line content these days, so that even a self-made video can become viral. Might be the answer to those hippsters in suits who call the shots today.
I love his description of the cigar-chomping record exec.
Some of Captain Beefheart's stuff takes a while to work for me, several listens at least. This song is a good example as is much of Trout Mask.
Listening to that music, it must go in through my ears and violently create new neural connections in my brain. Once they're established after enough exposures, the sounds become actually sweet.
I've always tried to have "outsider" ears...I did develop a taste for avant garde music as a teen and was very interested in dada and surrealist art. Beefheart was the aural version of Dada, but the intelligence of the composition process is fascinating to me. I have had a lot of comments talking about what a strange person he was, the control he weilded over his band, but the people who played with him really must have wanted to pplay his music and if he had been any kind of normal individual, well, we would never have had this art. Some pieces by Beefheart took me years to be able to appreciate, some stuff though...love at first listen. I bought trout mask when it first came out....
He had a seismic effect on the development of music in our lives. So much of his influence still is part of what we think is new....this has been an interesting experience.
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