Captain Beefheart's 10 Commandments of Guitar Playing (1996) | Hacker News Reader

Captain Beefheart's 10 Commandments of Guitar Playing (1996)

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76 pointsohjeez68 comments

You know, I have tried on numerous occasions to get into Beefheart and it never lands. Fans of his stuff describe it as some higher level of musicianship and sophistication but it just sounds to me like a band that can't play and is just kind of owning that.

I watched a Beefheart documentary once where a fan said something to the effect of "It sounds like noise but if you listen closely, each band member is playing a totally different time signature and key". I mean yeah. That's pretty much what it sounds like lol.

I dare you to try once more with the album Shiny Beast. IMO this is the best starting point in to Beefheart. Fun fact: I never liked rock music, close to hating it. I'm into soul, disco, jazz, hiphop and house. But Shiny Beast is one of my all time favourites.

This is excellent advice. I started off with Trout Mask Replica and thought "hm, maybe this isn't for me", but then I listened to the song "Love Lies" on a whim, then the rest of the album, and was hooked.

Listening now. Will report back!

Ok. Gave a listen to the whole thing. While this is certainly a lot more musical than the other stuff I’ve heard like Trout Mask Replica, it’s still not really for me. The absurdist lyrics are a real barrier as are some of the guitar sounds. That said I like this voice a lot. Has really interesting timbre. I had heard it before but this album does a good job of putting it front and center.

The one — and only time — I heard TMR was probably in the late 90s (98 or 99). Just the name of the album is seared into my brain as some of the most unlistenable garbage that I've ever been assaulted with. To make this clear: I once listened to KUT broadcast analog feedback, one morning, for an hour, which was significantly better than TMR.

In college I held a contest with my friends "The worst band in the world". It was always a conversation starter at gatherings where we could debate the merits of our picks.

We had a few people who really hardcore defended Captain Beefheart. There was never any consensus on the worst (the goal was of course fun conversation not consensus). But if I may provide my own contemporary pick: Blood on the Dancefloor is the worst band in the world. And not just because of the music.

Thanks for the report, I appreciate you gave it a try. Thinking about it I doubt if I would like the album very much if I'd hear it for the first time now myself. But way back when it became an instant classic for me. TMR not so much...

I have heard people describe the experience of "It just sounds like noise, but eventually it just clicks and it is the most amazing thing you have ever heard".

Side note, unrelated: Trout Mask Replica's album artwork features the head of a European Carp and that has always really bugged me. Not even the same order of fishes (cypriniforms vs. salmoniforms).

There's a story my uncle told me about meeting Beefheart after some gig in Phoenix in the early 70's, where he literally bumped into him outside the stage door after the show. My uncle, basically awestruck, offered Beefheart a smoke, which the great man heartily accepted and promptly ate.

One of nature's great prototypes...

Thank you for posting this. My son is a prodigy guitarist and I’m sending it to him.

CBAHMB is overlooked in the history of rock unfortunately - like most great artists - but Safe as Milk is breathtaking

Trout Mask Replica was a top-100 album on Rolling Stone's list until 2020 when it got tossed out in the Great Purge of Boomer Trivia That Sucks Actually, and to be quite honest I don't disagree.

Trout Mask Replica is the ultimate "it grows on you" record. A masterpiece.

I am mostly questioning the assertion that it is obscure and overlooked. Major Boomer critics fawned over this record non-stop for fifty years.

It is not obscure or overlooked.

I would say that it is so hyped that it is been evaluated by almost everyone, but that most people give less-than-a-full-listen and conclude "I'm out."

I respect their decision.

Sometimes I tell people to watch the Vox Earworm about it. I find it expensive to engage with, so usually I do not--but I never feel like a listen is wasted time.

Ehhh, I think it mostly sucks. Some pearls ("Dachau Blues", "Ella Guru", "Sugar & Spikes"), but way too uneven and basically a big forced meme.

With some extensive fat trimming, it could have been as legendary as its reputation, really.

I don't really get trout mask and I rarely listen to it, but I feel like it needs to be crazy and uneven to be that legendary. If it was just good, it would be like any other record.

no, it really isn't... it's complete trash.

To feel like you're hip, you "learned to like it"

I just had a long look at the list.

Sure they have got rid of some chaff but there sure is a lot that sucks in there. Disaffected Millenial here.

Undoubtedly. Pretty sure that Neutral Milk Hotel is now holding the place that Captain Beefheart previously occupied, and future generation will be puzzled.

I love this sort of stuff. Here's some advice that the famous jazz pianist and composer Thelonius Monk gave his musicians as written down by the Saxophonist Steve Lacy in 1960. It's not quite as off the wall as Captain Beefhart. Still great stuff and also idiosyncratic. "They tried to get me to hate white people, but someone would always come along & spoil it." might be the best line for non-musicians: https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/thelonious-monk-25-handwritten-...

And some lists of advice for songwriters from a couple of songwriters: https://indiemusicfeedback.com/words-of-advice-for-musicians...

Thelonius Monk is a source of amazing quotes. Apparently he came offstage one night and someone said to him "That was fantastic!" and he said "No. I made all the wrong mistakes."

I am confused, Captain Beefheart didn't even play guitar, did he?

Not that I am aware of, but he sure did like tormenting folks that did play them.

Beefheart(guitarist(guitar))

Shiny Beast is a great album

Did not expect to see wfmu.org's Beware of the Blog on the front-page of Hacker News but here we are.

Some are great: When you're not playing your guitar, cover it and keep it in a dark place. If you don't play your guitar for more than a day, be sure you put a saucer of water in with it.

Some are weird: Don't wipe the sweat off your instrument

That water tip might be a good idea if you live in a desert climate, but in a lot of places it's only going to make your guitar go warped or moldy. Ideal humidity for acoustic guitars is usually stated as 50% relative humidity. It's not so important for electric but you still want to avoid extremes.

Lancaster CA is high desert.

Well now that site is a crock of gold from the Old Web, isn’t it? Just the kind of thing I enjoy exploring in my idle minutes, and far better for my state of mind than doomscrolling Reddit, Facebook, instagram, TikTok, and the rest.

Thank you for sharing!

Captain Beefheart music is the type of music you’re _supposed_ to like , but really doesn’t live up to its reputation.

Zappa music, otoh, reveals the genius behind it once you pay attention. Then again, half of his catalog is just self-indulgent wankery he himself admitted he funded through the juvenile songs.

Listen to “Inca Roads” or the whole “Zappa in NY” album and you’ll see Zappa’s greatness.

Disagree with you 100%. This is why music is subjective.

I never understood Beefheart either, but wasn't without talent. Then again, I never understood the Mothers.

Zappa is great. I prefer his more progressive albums.

I never understood Zappa until I listened to his orchestral and chamber music. I thought he was a rock guy and doing the usual trite “with Symphony Orchestra” music that rock guys did. I was wrong. He knows what’s he’s doing, and he’s outstanding.

I find his later compositions for rock ensemble are way out there but brilliant. Earlier stuff like in Burnt Weeny Sandwich (Igor’s Boogies, Prelude to Holiday in Berlin) I find brilliant and hilarious. I don’t understand the attraction to some of his pure rock music, but I can understand his interest in the vernacular.

Beefheart bore obvious similarities and parallels with Zappa in some respects, but I don’t think one way or the other about his music. He’s clearly one heck of an all round artist though.

I would say they are both similar in that they both tried to push the boundaries of their art, even if it would come off as silly at times.

Beefheart's music is fantastic and certainly does live up to his reputation.

But having said that he did have a very variable and sometimes terrible middle period (Bluejeans & Moonbeams and similar).

Here is his acclaimed album “Trout Mask Replica” if anyone wants to hear for themselves https://youtu.be/aF0g-2SeoMM

It's a great album, but I probably wouldn't start there. Safe As Milk (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_as_Milk) is a more straightforward blue album, or the more "experimental-yet-commercial" Clear Spot (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clear_Spot).

Edit: I wanted to add that the first few times I listened to Trout Mask Replica I really didn't like it and didn't get why anyone would think it was good.

Normally, I avoid YouTube comments like the plague, but gotta give it up for the top comment there:

@bigman1688 4 years ago

oh ok, when captain beefheart does advanced polyrhythms and experimental time signatures he's a "visionary" and "avant-garde musician" but when i do it i'm "annoying" and "need to leave guitar center"

I would defend Bluejeans & Moonbeams by itself, it is pleasant enough and I like the laid back vibe of the whole thing. But in comparison to everything else he had done, it was a low point.

I prefer Beefheart to Zappa. Beefheart was a genius with a vision from another planet. Zappa was talented but his smugness and middle-school humor ruin it for me. His freakiness feels showy, like he's trying to prove how different and smart he is. Beefheart on the other hand was a being who absorbed different chemicals from Earth's atmosphere.

He was abusive to his TMR bandmates though - to the point of running a cult. They resorted to shoplifting just to eat.

I tried to like Zappa. I like the idea of Zappa. My brother got a tattoo of Frank Zappa's face on on his bicep in the army, and we agree on a lot of music. Imagine my dismay when I admitted I couldn't like any of it. On the other hand Trout Mask Replica is at least an interesting album.

You don't like ANY of it? Not even Apostrophe / Overnite Sensation?!

There's not one Zappa, either. There's the one that gave us Hot Rats, which is quite different from The grand wazoo & Waka/Jawaka, which are different from Yellow Shark and Everything is healing nicely. Then there are all the guitar solo albums...

Zoot Allures was pretty good. besides that the only thing I like by him is his earliest stuff, like Lumpy Gravy. 90% of the his discography is unlistenable to me, and I listen mostly to stuff that people would classify as unlistenable.

Zappa is the Dr Pepper of music. Either you like it or hate it.

I feel the same about the Grateful Dead. I like jam bands, I like all of the bands and musicians that hung out with or played with them, all of my friends like them. Ripple is pretty nice. I should absolutely like them, but whatever magic is there my ears don't pick up on. Their studio version of Good Lovin might be the worst thing a "good" band I have ever heard recorded, like a shitty band at the community 4th of July party that 17 people are dancing to and the other 2000 are trying to ignore.

I just listened to a Zappa song for the first time... bobby brown. Sounds just like Reggie Watts to me! Add in some Weird Al.

Zappa is technically breathtaking; for instance, Steve Vai is listed in a few of his orchestra tracks as "doing impossible guitar stunts", and there are many more examples.

But Zappa was never, like, serious, he always was ironic, sarcastic, or downright clownish, and always, it seems, looked down at the audience. This makes his music sound great at a Saturday night show, and less so elsewhere.

What makes you think he looked down at his audience? It always seemed more like the audience was the people that didn't take it too seriously and thus that is why they were fans.

> In the old days it wasn’t like that. At that time the audiences were hostile to what we did. They gave us a bad time. Now, historically, musicians have felt real hurt if the audience expressed displeasure with their performance. They apologized and tried to make the people love them. We didn’t do that. We told the audience to get fucked.

Interview to The Rolling Stone,1968.

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/the-rolling-st...

There are many more snarky comments which Zappa directed at his audience, and any audience in general, and likely the humankind as a whole. I think this is the reason he created technically brilliant and invariably ironic pieces: he did not think that a worthy audience exists, maybe except his orchestra and a few other musicians.

That might have been 1968. It's not like he worshipped his audience later, but he did get to a point where the fan base was large enough and more "in tune" with his thinking, organically. He made the comment that nobody could get 100% of what he'd do, simply because everybody's life experiences are unique, but maybe someone somewhere has enough context for 50-60% of his output. In later interviews he said that he offered a certain kind of product, which many might not like, but enough people did like, kinda employing him for entertainment. He just wouldn't go out of his way to cater to them. And he did know that the people at his concerts or buying his records were not a monolith. The most he might have done for them was when the band learned Whipping Post a whole seven years after a fan had interrupted the 1974 concert in Helsinki to request it. :-)

(If you think he liked orchestras, you should read about his LSO recordings and how he had to rescue them by editing tapes with razor blades. He wasn't actually happy until he recorded with the Ensemble Modern at the end of his life.)

Always been a Zappa fan since the first Mothers album. I always found is humor in music and words appealing. His band was always tight, great musicians. I many of his albums but I have to say Live at the Fillmore East (1971) is my favorite.

Zappa in New York… it is truly amazing to me how exceptionally skilled his ensemble his. Without exaggeration, that’s one of the most skilled ensembles I’ve ever heard, and I’m not just talking rock music.

The purple lagoon! That amazing lineup had a lot of the usual suspects, PLUS the Brecker brothers, yes, but... by the 80s, his bands had to rehearse even more: eight hours a day, for months, until they had mastered over 120 songs. On stage, he could make just one gesture, twirling his hair or grabbing his crotch, and they'd switch whatever tune to reggae or metal, because why not?

His 70s bands might have a slight edge in terms of pure talent, but they might have not survived the grind of the 80s (which contributed in no small part to the implosion of 1988...).

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