Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band

Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band created music that is hard to characterize because it is completely unique.  It is most commonly tagged “avant garde-blues,” but if you watch any of the videos posted here I think don’t think the label does Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band justice.  They are just too funky.

Throughout their career, the band’s musical direction was tightly controlled by Don van Vliet (1941 – 2010), aka Captain Beefheart.  The man was a true artist, committed to the craft of creation.   But that dedication, combined with super intense rehearsal regimes and poor salary, led in large part to the break-up of the original Magic Band.  

Beefheart reformed a new band of musicians under the name, but left the music industry for good in 1982 to pursue his career as a painter.

Although he and his band achieved little commercial or mainstream critical success, Beefheart sustained a cult following as a “highly significant” and “incalculable” influence on an array of New Wave, punk, post-punk, experimental and alternative rock musicians, most notably Tom Waits and the Residents.  Beefheart passed away in 2010 after a long battle with MS.   Below I have posted the last video of him.  It has nothing to do with his Magic Band, but it is just too great not to post.

If you don’t know much about Captain Beefheart, it’s worth checking out his Wikipedia page.  He is kind of like a little known god of music.  Way interesting story.

The Shaggs

The Shaggs are one of the more bizarre blips in music history.  The band consisted of three sisters, Dorothy “Dot” Wiggin, Betty Wiggin, and Helen Wiggin, who were forced into the industry by their nutcase father, Austin Wiggin.  You see he had his palm read by his mother and she made three predictions, the last of which was that his children would form a pop band. Since the first two predictions came true, their pop decided to take fate into his own hands by taking his three daughters out of school, buying them instruments and having them form the band in 1968.  Genius!

Despite being forced into it, the girls claim to have enjoyed their musical slavery. The next few years consisted of a few hours of schoolwork from a mail-order company, morning music practice, afternoon music practice and gymnastics.  In 1969 they released their only studio album, “Philosophy of The World,” which garnered no attention whatsoever.  In fact, the record’s producer ran away with 900 of the 1000 pressed copies – apparently later claiming: “Shock therapy and all the Prozac in the world would never stop the haunting sounds of these banshees.”

After their father died in 1975 the girls escaped their six stringed shackles and moved on with their lives. But in 1980 their album was discovered at a Boston radio station and they became moderately famous and admired for their “innovation”. Here were three teens playing instruments we’ve heard countless times, but this time with none of the familiar signposts – none of the standard rhythms or chord progressions we’ve come to recognize and expect.  In fact, the band is primarily notable today for their perceived ineptitude at playing conventional rock music having been described by Rolling Stone for “…sounding like lobotomized Trapp Family singers.”   They are considered groundbreakers in the field of outsider music. Kurt Cobain and Frank Zappa have cited “Philosophy of The World” as a major influence, with Zappa claiming the band are “better than The Beatles.”  Hmmm … not so sure about that one, What do you think?!

The Psychadelic World of Bruce Bickford

Bruce Bickford is a true artist, he has a vision, and he has dedicated his entire life to realizing its expression; and while he can appreciate the use of ink, paint, cameras, and clay, Bickford has managed to combine all of these medias to create a world of psychedelic animation.

Bruce Bickford lives in SeaTac, just outside of Seattle, down an isolated forest road. He has lived in the same house all his life, surrounded by objects of his own creation and odd bits of inspiration – a warehouse of grocery bags stuffed with “voodoo masks” cut from dried leaves, miniature “disco castles” and Twin Peaks dioramas, armies of preserved clay figures.  Tales of UFOs, bean-pod aliens and other dreamy snippets fill boxes. He has been constantly at work for more than 40s years, and Bickford is incessantly inspired to keep going.

He achieved cult status in the 1970s and ’80s, providing psychedelic claymation for Frank Zappa films “Baby Snakes,” “The Dub Room Special,” and “The Amazing Mr. Bickford.”  Since then, Bickford has continued to work, day in and day out on projects of his own that are more like a visual stream of consciousness;  bodies melt, spontaneously reproduce, and grow limbs; faces turn into islands into caves into wolves into globes like a phantasmagorical meditation on the conservation of energy.  Bickford has said he believes that you can make a story out of anything, and his utterly unique films are like a meditation on this principle.

If you are interested in learning more, a documentary on Bickford’s life and creations was released in 2004 called Monster Road.  I have posted the trailer below.  And, if you are in LA on December 4th, the Cinefamily at the Silent Movie Theatre will by flying Bickford down from Seattle to celebrate his creations to date, including the premiere of Cas’l, Bickford’s finally-finished, twenty-plus-years-in-the-making magnum opus.  Pretty rad.