General Beefheart discussion thread

Trout Mask and Clear Spot are both great and have amazing moments. I'm a huge fan of his and Zappa's music.

youtu.be/LhBDbZ1zBoM
>We had been to see Gabor Szabo at Shelly’s Mannehole, a local jazz club in Hollywood, and Van Vliet strongly encouraged the use of acoustic feedback produced by hollow-body electric guitars to enhance the sound. The early version of Dirty Blue Gene is one of the best examples of this kind of feedback, employed skillfully by Mr. Jeff Cotton.
(-Drumbo)
Jeff also does alot of that on the outro of Trust Us and it sounds pretty fucking cool. Would want to try it out actually, but I'm afraid hollow bodies guitars are too expensive for me, especially goddamned Gibsons which Jeff played.

Attached: jeff_rome68.jpg (400x320, 26.48K)

youtu.be/NZFG1yAxjdQ&t=155
(On 2:35, left channel, rhythm guitar.)
The feedback stuff is actually even on Trout Mask. Logically enough, on a track that's heavily derivative of that whole Mirror Man/Strictly Personal 1968 era, when Jeff bought the hollow-body and Alex Snouffer was still around.

Also that is definitely a Gibson ES-175 on that photo.

Attached: 1965-69-gibson-es-175-cherry-sunburst_1_b3e9f9cb11615b6579377b3495058dab.jpg (320x480, 18.09K)

bump

>Don’s Muse
During one of Herb Bermann’s visits, Herb and Don began talking about a spiritual entity of inspiration called a muse. I had never heard this expression before. I gathered that it was apparently some spirit that followed a creative person around and gave them inspiration. Don was extremely excited by this. During one period, he was incessantly looking around the house and grounds to see if he could spot this creature lurking in some shadowy place. I wasn’t too thrilled with this whole concept and remembered thinking that it sounded creepy
As the days went on, Don seemed to grow more and more interested in talking about his muse until it almost became an obsession. He was prone to obsessive behavior and this was definitely no exception. His hope seemed to be that if he found his muse he wouldn’t have to rehearse at all and the muse would just play through him - like channeling. It now started making more sense why he was so motivated

Attached: 1644252323314.jpg (300x194, 7.8K)

>Party In An Empty House
I recall one time, I believe it could have been Thanksgiving 1968, when everyone was gone to be with family. The only ones in the house were Don, Laurie and I, and then Laurie left also to spend time with her family. It was the only time I recall being alone in the house with Don for any extended period of time. It was daytime, and I went down the hill, either to borrow something from a neighbor or to check the mail and when I came back, Don was in an extremely distressed mental state. He seemed absolutely frightened to death, the blood drained from his face.
I asked him what the matter was and he answered me saying that while I was gone, several people had appeared in the house having a party. He said they were walking around talking and having drinks and he could hear them and see them. I didn’t get a lot of details because he was visibly upset. I didn’t understand this much at the time, but I assumed the same role as during the Safe As Milk sessions when he had been having the anxiety attacks. I just kept him company. I looked around the house and told him all the people were apparently gone because I could find no one.

Attached: 1644252499067.jpg (1024x768, 67.23K)

MEAT ROSE AND HAIRS MEATY DREAM WET MEAT

>Punched On Chin
At this point, Don shouted “When are you gonna wake up, man?” He then walked up and punched me square in the chin, hard enough that my head hit the wall quite hard. I felt the skin on my chin split and blood oozed down my beard.
Everybody in these talks had to have an obligatory shot at the target and when it was Bill’s turn, he walked up and said something which we later made jokes about. The expression on his face told me he had no idea what in the world I had done wrong but he had to come up with something. He said, among other things, “I thought YOU had the guts!” and shoved me into the wall a couple of times. What this meant, nobody will probably ever know, including Bill, but it was at least something we could laugh about later. Like - “Did you bring the guts?” “No, I thought you had the guts.”

Attached: bill_john.jpg (434x482, 65.28K)

More stories from Drumbo's book. He has surprisingly good memory.. maybe not so surprising considering the fact that he had to learn and remember every track on Trout Mask and then teach it..

>MIRROR MAN (TTG Version, Mirror Man Album)
This is the session in which I was told afterwards I had been given LSD in my tea by someone. Actually, it must have been a rather small amount, because I didn’t find myself too far from reality, it was just as if I had a bit of extra energy and confidence this particular cut. It wasn’t until I got home and started really hallucinating that I began to realize that Laurie may have put some acid in my tea. She told me that it had been Don’s suggestion, although he denied having anything to do with it. I couldn’t sleep at all that night. The hallucinations were there. I remember being very aware of my brain and spinal cord, as though they actually comprised a parasitic creature which had somehow attached itself to my body against my will (probably as the result of watching too many bad science fiction movies in the fifties). In my mind, Don, Laurie, and Jeff were also infected with these. They made little buzzing sounds. We had to get rid of these things. Don kept talking to me. He convinced me I would be just fine. It was reassuring. I think he was actually concerned about me.
I walked in the bathroom and looked in the mirror. Convinced of what I was, I came out to announce it to Don. “I am a Studebaker”, I said, quite seriously. “That’s a great car to be,” Don replied, equally as serious. Yeah, I was certainly in control.

Attached: sp-quaker-photo.jpg (626x225, 12.31K)

>My roommate, Elliot Ingber, had some amazingly strange habits, having been a bachelor and a “hippy freak” most of his life. He was fairly quiet most of the time actually, and for the most part, I tried to ignore his eccentricities, figuring he probably thought me just as strange. He could be hilariously funny at moments. For instance, one evening, he was particularly enthralled with some really cheap B movie about a married woman having sex with various men. Of course, it never actually showed the sex; they would kiss, the woman would then assume a look of ravenous desire and they would dissolve to black as the music increased in intensity. Elliot was explaining to me that this “chick” had a real problem because she was addicted to (and in his best cowboy voice, a total change of character for Elliot) “haaard loooove.” He went into vivid detail as to all the various social implications, never cracking a smile, but keeping me in total stitches for 20 minutes or so as he explained this woman’s behavior in pseudo-psychiatric language, interspersed with plenty of cowboy colloquialisms.

Attached: Elliott_WingedFingerling_Ingber.jpg (583x420, 65.41K)