Captain Beefheart - Best Batch Yet

[Honeysucklebommie]

This live work and Dirty Blue Gene live proves to me that this Magic band were the best batch yet.

[tommotd]

Better than the album version. Too bad about the audio glitches and poor video. Love the drummer's style. These guys are the best batch yet!

[svecter]

An overwhelmingly fascinating and entrancing blend- brand of ultra weird hem of may m m m maddness

[banana12345678900]

_ _ _ __ _ (:)) < I Typed In That O_O

[spruceshark]

man these guys musta inspired alot of of musicians.

[pieterjanoddens]

What an amazing song and performance! The bass is really driving it!

[Cranefly]

It may not be immediately clear, but if you've heard the studio version of this song, you'll notice the band is incredibly tight. You might think this is only cardboard balls seamed in glue, but it is the finest pearl. Overwhelming technique indeed.

[hounddig]

reminds me of free form jazz -ornette, late coltrane - brilliant.

[stonesfcr]

3:14 to 3:24 is imprinted on my brain..

this song should been on the voyager, this is the eternal language!!

Beefheart for All!!!

[reelden]

Seen him in San Francisco at small club most intense concert ever! brilliant Beef

[bluzide1]

Thank you Don for being  the best yet of the best batch yet

[Lithiummaxi]

I love how those guitars talk with each other in this song

[dannyodoul]

funny you don't look hewish

[fecalfoetus]

Simply, the Elbert Einstein of Rock and popular music..nuff said..RIP Don.

[RonOrGina]

@fecalfoetus Elbert Einstien? Hmmmm...at least some one is out there. ;) heheheh

The man is great! To bad he died so young. All the good folks are dying off. :(

[eyefulpower]

I'm buy this in a heartbeat if it was released on DVD. Hopefully there's a master tape out there. It should be digitized. This is art.

[addylewis]

I think he hears a wrong note - look at his face from 0:32 - 0:37...thats a familiar look to anyone who's playing their mate an early Captain Beefheart track for the first time (you know you've all seen it before...!)

R.I.P. Captain!!!

[sbyrne1]

@addylewis Haha - big lols. I thought personally Mr. Beefheart is telling the audience to listen hard.. ohhh yeah thats a beautiful octave in my cooking pot of music :P

[PleaseGoAway1000]

these days are well gone, now all we get is manufactured bands with lip synching - a far cry from this!

[eliasien]

RIP. Favorite song ever...

[Phreekoid]

Pure genius from the Captain...

RIP Don, thank you for the uniqueness of your art and music.....

[The13thFoenix]

R.I.P. Captain....

[Photonzos]

bought the album and saw that tour... note for note. completely orchestrated. Brilliant execution ha ha...

like your art mister.

[PigeonFwaBorgon]

he looks like hes 55, not 39.. odd

[KatieJoyV]

Just... wow!!! The time signatures and overlaps are so awesome...

It's all happening from the inside, you say :-)

[lagginswag]

i absolutely love how u dont see peolpe saying negative things about beefheart really. just alot of comparisons, regardless, zappa and him were great friends, they rubbed off on eachother, but they both ahve different styles. it jsut works, deal with it<333

[jackhillty]

classical music. somebody please do this with a string quartet.

[RoyOrbiton]

All this came from the big bang, and everything consists of electrons and protons and this is what you get after time...........Unbelievable.

[lagunaflyguy]

We don't have to suffer! We're the best batch yet!

[dadamoid]

I saw him on this tour. At the Venue in London.

Fabulous. Amazing band. Especially on mushrooms.

[strawwoodclaw]

I think this is the best batch yet - gotta pull out doc at the radar station & listen to it again & maybe do a bit of drawing haven't done either for years - just wot the doctor ordered ******************************­************

[doktospro]

pure grunge,pre-grunge...the master

[mbera11]

@doktospro this has nothing to do with grunge... what are you even talking about...?

[Daionzrip]

Beefheart and Zappa both made great contributions that were different enough from each other to make contest like comparisons useless. Both had moments of genius; breaking molds and creating new ones. Poorly informed judgmental people are often slow learners.

[Honeysucklebommie]

@Daionzrip What?

Im kidding, ,life wouldnt be the same without either of them.

Beefheart leaps out of left field in back beat bent intonations that squirm and get you pulled in by the heart strings.

Zappa blows your fuses out and leaves you in awe of the mastery hidden behind the smut aimed at the heart of the false christian Roman religion.

Both sometimes churning music over like a fork going through histories evil soil at other times ripping into the future and carrying us away ;-)

[asins]

Frank Zappa and beefheart are both great in diffrent ways. I personally have listend to alot of Zappa. A great ochestral album of zappas is "The Yellow Shark". I have heard that his ochestral work is very highly accomplished. However lately i'm starting to listen to alot more of beefheart and wow its good and getting better as i find more and more stuff. Downloading trout as i type!!!

[sbyrne1]

Awesome performance thanks. Could anyone tell me what album this hails from? Cheers!

[Hewish]

It's on Doc at the Radar Station - released in 1980.

[Israfvel]

Well who cares whoever's more enamoured with this world and its cares? In the end, they dared to push the boundaries of the acceptable, and that's what really counts.

[ericidle999]

Beefheart was a true master,Zappa however was far too wacky and largely unlistenable.

[MikeAdupont]

absolutely one of the best performances I've ever seen

[bretangel79]

I feel like a freak for listening to this stuff. I feel like even more of a freak for liking it.

[legendofschmoe]

this is some of the most amazing stuff I have EVER seen...and I've seen alot of stuff...mind boggling.

[ApolloColumbo]

Soul-bogglin' even.

[ApolloColumbo]

True genius is ultra rare.

F*K cat head jewboy crap Cowell's Xfactor liteweight candyfloss imitation p*ss take.

[fadethetrade]

beefheart is a little too subversive for me.Zappa is the better blend because he can play with a more mainstream style in addition to the subversiveness.

[MikeAdupont]

Concerning the Zappa vs. Beefheart war, I like the Beef better because I get the impression he is trying to make a work of art and Zappa is going for laughs. This may not be Zappa's intention but he reminds to much of the Weird Al sort.

Mike

[fadethetrade]

well.I think you need to seriously go back and review zappas catalougue again.His classical(or 20thcentury orchestral) works are extremely serious and parrallell stravinsky,bernstein,etc.

zappa vs beef,zappa wins hands down.He was our madern day mozart.The commercial comedy music made him millions ,worldwide appeal and much more popular.beefheart can be extremely funny also! ("a squid eating dough in a polyetheline bag"!!!!!!!) C'MON!!

[fadethetrade]

Oh,and BTWmIt was weird AL that copeid Frank,not the other way around!!! zappa was blowing peoples minds before Al was BORN!!!!!!!

[fadethetrade]

Listen to bongo fury by zapp.This was their only tour beefheart did with the mothers and it made beefheart popular because after 1975,we all took a second look and listen to the captain.He should thank zappa for bringing him in to the mainstream. But again,you need to listen to franks orchestral works.

[dadamoid]

@fadethetrade Yes YEs . It is probably my favorite album. Along with One Size fits all which takes the biscuit for Zappa. And What about Hots Rats - Amazing.

[LogansRunning]

@MikeAdupont Zappa was a composer. Look at his albums like: The Yellow Shark, LSO Vols. I & II, Lumpy Gravy, Jazz From Hell, The Perfect Stranger, Civilization Phase III, etc. Hell all of his music was one big note... equally complex in structure... :)

[mbera11]

@MikeAdupont i dunno, man... zappa took his art very seriously. he didn't take HIMSELF very seriously, but he took his art very seriously. I think... maybe... zappa was almost an architect, his music is technical, he's building something for you, he has ideas prior to the writing of the track, he conceptualizes them, there might be a lot of stages, i really have no idea.

With beefheart, I totally get the impression that he just feels this shit. His music is speech. He's just telling us things

[mbera11]

@mbera11 um... it's almost as if, in zappa's case, his music definitively springs from one source, the man, creating, as a tree grows, blooming and developing exponentially; beefheart's music is a conversation, multiple sources arguing with each other, developing as it progresses, primitive and instinctual, like a fire and meat and teeth.

[TheKeswickGallagher]

@mbera11 I agree with every thing you just said completely and it's backed up with look how they taught there backing bands.

Frank Zappa & the mothers of invention: All the music was scored out and the musicians learnt it from reading music

Captian Beefheart & the magic band: the Captian Supposedly "wrote" the music but most likely just though it up in his head. and he taught it to his musicians though a combination of words and gestures not notes on paper

[Elnonopololo]

@TheKeswickGallagher Don also plays some piano & harmonica. He would "write" every song on piano -very loosely- and then he showed each musician what they had to play. Of course, it was rather chaotic. The players were supposed to work out the "details" themselves. Van Vliet told them things like "Play this as if it were a bat struggling out of an oil barrell, but dying of ausphyxiation".

You can hear a couple of Don's piano pieces in the documentary "Some Yo Yo Stuff". They're great.

[TheKeswickGallagher]

@Elnonopololo yes you are right. but my point about the differences in Frank Zappa's and Don Van Vliets Composing and Teaching techniques being very different is still valid,

and i've herd the piano bits in Some Yo Yo stuff :)

[fujivoo]

i have the Liverpool, Merseytrout, live 1980 disc...no "Ella Guru" on the set list...

[fujivoo]

he performed "Ella Guru"? must've been a one time performance...i have numerous live recordings, even the DVD with loads of concert footage from early days up until his most recent performances and never seen him or heard him do "Ella.." in concert, you're a very lucky person!!

[contwirion]

Saw this in Liverpool October 1980..... Stunning band, stunning music...

[chrisburchardt]

Saw his paintings in Bluecoat Chambers. Love him.

[fujivoo]

Did the Captain ever perform "Ella Guru" live...i have loads of his live recordings, also some bootlegs...never see "Ella Guru" on the playlist, maybe it was too complex to perform, or he just didn't want to perform it...it's one of his signature songs...strange...

[contwirion]

Yes

[HaraldAxelHeymans]

I came hre through the RHCPs Safe As Milk. First time i hear this tune. Unbelievable, what great musicians and van Vliet....absolute dedication to the music. I love it.

[HaraldAxelHeymans]

I came hre through the RHCPs Safe As Milk. First time i hear this tune. Unbelievable, what great musicians and van Vliet....absolute dedication to the music. I love it.

[HamburgerMartyr]

God, I love the Captain.

[notdeadjustlazy]

Coolest song ever, real slick & menacing in a sexy, abstract, subtle way.

[rhetrozenberg]

on the coolest album ever

[madpop17]

I had to look up the lyrics and I'm still confused... creationism?

[Brock2097]

Might also be a self-referential song about that Magic Band lineup; the newest and last.

[LanguishingHams]

Read the Lester Bangs interview. He explains it.

[LanguishingHams]

"Yeah what I was doing there was having these cardboard ball sculptures, fake pearls, floating through that music. ..I was afraid to sing on that track. I liked the music so much, it was perfect without me on it. So I put these words on there.. they're just cheap cardboard constructions of balls of simulated pearls floating through, and it's an overwhelming technique that makes them look like pearls. 'We don't have to suffer we're the best batch yet' we're these pearls talking to themselves."

[LanguishingHams]

Lester- "I was also thinking of when you walk around looking at people who have turned themselves into commodities"

Don- "Yeah, we're the best batch yet! We're the newest batch that has been put out. We'll it has to do with that, too. ... I mean 'em all. I can't say I don't know what my lyrics mean, but I can say that, uh, yeah I know what they mean, but if you call it you stop the flow."

[Ella7194]

u betcha---says ellaguru from JP:MA

[wheresthebeefheart]

Overwhelming technique

Done through diligence.

[reelden]

Great find !! appreciate it

[denverexec2000]

I love Beefheart - and this one sounds like a shred! Love it. Why are ashtray heart and Hothead off youtube? Hate that.

[Brock2097]

Because Vivendi Universal :(

[lagunaflyguy]

We don't have to suffer were the best batch yet!

[northstar1963]

Has anyone heard the unreleased singles "Mud Love Motion Potion" or "Green Lizard Slime Snake" ?...If you haven't then just play one of this bands insturmentals and in your best Wolfman Jack voice repeat the title of the song a couple of times and in between that spew out some nonsense you just made up ie: "theres one over here....theres one over there...OH SHIT theres one in my underwear" and PRESTO you've not only heard this song but you have just heard it live.

[Brock2097]

Man, you're probably right, but that doesn't make this music sound any worse to me though :(

[ADURG1]

spellbinding! thx fer sharin'!!!!!!!!!!!

[kordenn07]

This is awesome.

[lluvialuna]

this is cool

[prdrummeronline]

I saw this band @ The Bottom Line in NY in 1980. Stayed for the 2nd show too, one of the most enjoyable gigs I have still ever seen, a great band.

[jjleonard1]

Can you imagine, only 8000 views!? A national treasure.

[MikeAdupont]

No kidding rite? One of my favorite beefheart songs. I'm only 17 and I discovered this man all by myself. Shiny Beast is one of my favorite albums. Even though im not a huge fan of stereotypes, I hope someday listening to old proggresive groups such as these becomes a fad.

[Shreeves16]

Same over here. I'm 17 and I just found out about the Captain through Tom Waits a week or so ago, but I love the music already.

[melvyd2]

No shit, the mindless masses are viewing Charlie bit me...

[propolispills]

Fantastic jam! I love it!!

[russo10]

cleverly he dialed from within his CARDBOARD BALLS...i love this! i can't stop listening to it

[MikeAdupont]

me too, i listen to this catchy song about once every couple days.

[MikeAdupont]

music to my ears!

[dannyodoul]

Hey funny, you don't look Hewish!

Great unreal video.

Thanks.

Sincerely,

The Legendary Danny O'Doul

*Legendary Singer, Masterchef, Friend of the American Indian, Inventor of the O'Doul Timing Chip tm and celebrity metallurgist.

[surelars]

My god. I saw them on that tour. It just blew me away. I mean, we were all going to punk gigs and thought it was pretty wild, and then this!

Watching this again is just awesome.

[Blazingrythm]

Hewish, if you have anymore clips from that show please post them. The VHS tape I have of it has very poor quality.

It was taped in Paris 1980 for Chorus TV.

Anyone know how to contact someone from that that company to get a proper verion of it?

[Hewish]

All the clips are up on youtube. DVD version may still be available on Dimeadozen.

[Blazingrythm]

do you have an address for dimeadozen?

[Ramentastic]

This is one insane arrangement

[alargedog]

captain fantastico and his magical band #####

[Blazingrythm]

I can't believe I played drums on this.

Those were the days!

[freefrench]

It's an amazing bit of drumming, Robert. Thank you.

[Brock2097]

You tore it up, Robert!! Have you been in contact with Don or the rest of the magic band lately?

[JohnFordDanceTroupe]

I wish I could see that guy, but as he's retired.

Only if VH1 made him do a one-off concert. I would see them in amazement.

[bobgure]

Robt.Wms?

Wow.Amazing drummer. Met ya at Irving Plaza,NY you played the night after Lennon was killed. I Dj'd the place. The Capt. initiated the show with "To John, from Don".

Definitely the best band I ever saw live after Zeppelin at Carnegie('69).

[Blazingrythm]

Thanks for the kind words

RW

[Honeysucklebommie]

So you were an intregal part of the best Magic batch yet! Smoking work.love best wishes from all your fans in Australia.

[quadcoreraver]

yes the batch is good.x

[JohnFordDanceTroupe]

And so is the overwhelming technique...and the vampire...and the ashtray heart.

Navy forks also work good with this song.

[hughtarpaulin]

white flesh waves to black

[redtorso]

3/4 centuries ahaid of their time !!!!! awesome . richie

[Brock2097]

Well, they were the "25th Century Quakers"...

[LuizaXXI]

I love you

[tumultus101]

what a fuckin tune!!! Amazingness wrapped in a song.and the message of this song is fuckin awesome.

It's all happening on the inside, where it barely shows on the outside!!!! Don't ever die captain my captain!!!

[schizophrenia65000]

remarkable!

[Brock2097]

Arrrgh, so fast and bulbous! Seamed with glue!

[pariahpete]

The Best Batch Yet from the best band yet! Overwhelming technique! Thanks Hewish!

[amebix23]

god,please fuck my mind for good

[thecleef]

Seems like he gets mixed up at the end..."you may think these are cardboard balls"...?

It's remarkable.

[corryton]

CARDBOARD BAWWLLS! Hell yeah!

[slloyd1452]

Sensational. Definitely one of the best batches of drumming yet. Don musta been real happy when this guy came along. Don's stuff is so drum-based. How's when he's standin' at the drums.

[ZigZagWanderer]

I agree, an excellent drummer !

[magicone6]

only 216 views if his music were a drug it would be banned it is just so good it;s barely legal

[ZigZagWanderer]

Lol. Nice one Magicone6, spot on.

[magicone6]

thanks ,,,,,absolutely the best

[iluveno]

fuck yeah, hewish is da man!!

[chiafarrow]

Thanks for posting!!! You rock, Hewish!!!