VOTD 12/18/2025

 Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band: Unconditionally Guaranteed (Mercury)

Purchased for $2 at an antiques mall in Morgantown

In the past two days, I've listened to Lick My Decals Off, Baby twice, and then The Spotlight Kid. Now this. This is largely the same musicians as the previous two records: Zoot Horn Rollo, Rockette Morton, Art Tripp (Ed Marimba), Alex Saint Clare (a Beefheart alumnus), plus a keyboardist, occasional acoustic guitarist and saxophonist. 

Does it suck because I'm expecting a Beefheart record, or does it just suck? Probably a little of both. But it wouldn't be the low point. 

The Magic Band sounds defanged. There's no bite to them. Not as bland as the record that would follow this, Moonbeams and Blue Jeans, but almost. And Don just isn't able to write a good straightforward song. He's far better flowing on Beat-style sound poetry. Sun zoom spark!

Well what can I say, this was worth all of $2 to satisfy my curiosity about this period of Don's creative life. And the worst was yet to come, after the band collectively quit after this. I spent another $2 for Moonbeams and Blue Jeans, and that record is worse than this. This is just average mid-70s bluesy-rock. Unmemorable. Maybe some people were meant to be weird.

VOTD 12/17/2025

 Captain Beefheart And His Magic Band: Lick My Decals Off, Baby (Straight)

Purchased used at a yard sale many years ago

The circumstances in which I bought this: a yard sale in the Schenley Heights neighborhood. I paid $5 for clean (and in one case, unopened) copies of this, The Spotlight Kid, and a copy of Trout Mask Replica with two copies of of the first disc instead of both records. Had I paid more, I might have also scored a copy of John Coltrane's Ascension too. I guess someone else got lucky on that one. I insist on not engaging in vinyl envy. This was one of the best finds I've made in the wild; we all get lucky now and then.

Trout Mask Replica is considered Captain Beefheart's masterpiece, or at least his grand statement. I can't argue against the latter. Generally I prefer this record. Unlike a lot of TMR, Don sounds like he's part of the band here.

Similar to TMR, it's...I don't know, strange music? The band never grooves long, if ever. The Spotlight Kid was the next studio album after this and a step towards...what's the word? Normalcy? 

Gone from TMR is The Mascara Snake, who was in the band because he was Don's cousin. I read in Bill Harkleroad's (Zoot Horn Rollo) book that this caused some hard feelings with the rest of the band, who were practicing from morning until night upon The Mascara Snake's arrival in the band. Also gone is Antenna Jimmy Semens, leaving the core of Zoot, Drumbo, and Rockette Morton. A fortunate addition was Ed Marimba AKA (Pittsburgh's own!) Art Tripp III. The addition of occasional marimba helped distinguish and define this band's sound. When Tom Waits started using marimba on his recordings, it immediately recalled this band. I think Tom himself has admitted as much. Art had bounced from the Mothers of Invention to join the Magic Band. He wouldn't be the last to do so. Frank fired everyone when he had several albums in the can c. 1968-9 and didn't want to keep guys on his payroll, so I assume that's why Art was available.

When I've seen people make their lists of best guitarists of all time, Zoot Horn Rollo's name has never been mentioned. I can't recall a time when he was given an improvised solo, so he wouldn't count as a great soloist. But his playing is jaw dropping at times. I'm not sure exactly how accurate this transcription of "Hair Pie" is (I think it might be even more complicated) and you can see how  difficult it would be to play accurately: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Lg_scy_0bo&list=RD3Lg_scy_0bo&start_radio=1

Zoot deserves more cred.

The way this band twists on a dime, changing tempos, playing parts in different meters simultaneously, speaks to how well practiced they were. What can sound initially like chaos reveals itself to be highly practiced and intentional. 

One minor quibble: the vocals are really up front in the mix. Like, pop vocals up front. It's sometimes difficult to hear what the rest of the band is doing when Don is singing. I would have pulled him back, 10, 15%. Still on top but a little more blended.

What this world needs is a two dollar room and a good two dollar broom!

CDOTD 12/12/2025

 Morton Feldman: String Quartet [1] (Koch)

I think I bought this new in NYC, some place

Sigh, back to Feldman. 

No regrets though. Did I buy this at a Tower Records in NY many years ago? Possibly, probably? It seemed like a find at the time, and maybe it was.

Some time between listening to this for the first time and now, I couldn't play this on a disc player I had. It came up with errors. 

I've more recently bought a boombox-style player just so I've have a convenient disc player in general: discs in my mancave, outside for cookouts. 

So, it's playing. I don't have the quietest stereo system, just wow it's a noisy disc. And where is this piece leading? There are beautiful moments, true invention. But I think my opinion is colored by knowing where Feldman was heading later. There are times when the String Quartet II is this but slowed down 4X. Or sometimes sped up? It's not simple. 

In retrospect, this does feel anticipatory of things to come rather than the thing itself. But there's no way Morty himself could have known that. Or did he?

I should just enjoy the moments.

Which leads me to...

Feldman had a high degree of skepticism regarding Stockhausen. But he expressed admiration for Karlheinz' Momente. Moment-forming, is that something that Morton did without the formulas of Stockhausen? Or was it more intuitive?

As I'm listening, I'm thinking: I wish I could be in the room as this was being performed. I want to feel the vibrations. I'm grateful for the documentation on CD, but I wish I could feel it.

VOTD 12/11/2025

 Charles Gross: Blue Sunshine OST (Mondo)

Purchased used at Vinegar Syndrome

Am I writing some spoilers for a movie that is nearly fifty years old? Maybe, should that concern you. It's probably nothing you wouldn't read in a two sentence IMDB description.

Blue Sunshine is a low budget shocker/horror film from 1977. The plot involves several people suddenly becoming bald and going on psychotic, murderous rampages. What is discovered is that five years prior, all of them had ingested a particular batch of Blue Sunshine LSD. The dealer, played by Mark Goddard, was now running for Congress. 

Mark most famously played Major Don West on the original TV series Lost in Space. I know he did other TV work but I can't recall ever seeing him in another film role. As a young child I fanatically watched LIS (in syndication by that time). I guess I wanted to be Will Robinson, played by Billy Mumy. He seemed smart, his home was a flying saucer and his best friend was a robot. Sounded like the life to me! I spent hours doing drawings of, Will, the robot, and of their ship the Jupiter II. 

I haven't seen Blue Sunshine since the days of VHS rentals, so it's been a few decades. I remember liking it. At the time, I don't think I understood that it's probably inspired by the Manson Family murders. If not directly, it's certainly Manson-adjacent. I'm sure there's a list somewhere of post-Manson, hippie-response movies from the 1970s. I Drink Your Blood comes to mind first, Messiah of Evil another, in addition to movies more directly based on Manson. 

I've recalled Blue Sunshine quite a few times in the past five years. Why now? I've been thinking about all the people in the news who are COVID vaccine skeptics and deniers. People who would rather put their faith in medical quacks who recommend ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine than trust peer-reviewed science. (For the record, those are real and useful medications, ivermectin if you have scabies. And I am throughly skeptical of the medical industry but put my faith in medical science itself.) They fretted about what will happen to those who took the COVID vaccine. "What will happen long term?" 

And hence, I would think of this movie. Maybe in about another year, hundreds of thousands of us will all lose our hair and become rampaging murderers. 

Me and my twisted little brain. 

The soundtrack! The music! Some good creepy orchestra, percussion, and synth cues. A few moments of lounge pop music. Though I'm calling out the composer on one cue: it's masked, but one of the selections clearly picks up on John McLaughlin's "Sanctuary" from the second Mahavishnu Orchestra LP. I hear you! 

I wonder if McLaughlin ever saw this? Oh, probably not. 

VOTD 12/01/2025

Lou Reed: Metal Machine Music (RCA)

Purchased used at Sound Cat Records

I never liked the Velvet Underground or Lou Reed's solo albums that much. Which is not to say I disliked them. I admire Lou's dedication to his art. He wrote a few okay songs. But he couldn't sing worth shit, in situations where singing was necessary. On Hal Wilner's Kurt Weill album (Lost In The Stars) Lou sang the title song. Except, he just can't hold a melody on a song that requires it. 

I was barely a teen when I started reading Creem magazine. I recall a back issue I bought at the QMart in Quakertown, that covered this Lou Reed album. There were three columns down one page, the middle of which read "no no no no no no no no no no...[etc]" with Lou's image superimposed on the text. I guess I remember it decades later.

So what to make this record? Its primary purpose is pretty much on the surface: Lou owed two LPs to RCA and devised this monstrosity.

Is this album prescient? I'm thinking both yes and no. Yes in that, there'd be cassette releases by Italian noise artists (specifically MB) that aren't too far astray from this wall of sound, just a few years later. Surely some of them must have known this album.

No insofar as, I don't think Lou was trying to influence anyone. He put this thing out into the world, and accept it or not. 

So what of the contents? It's a wall of sound, more trebly and bass-end. I can't particularly distinguish one side from another, though they're clearly not the same either.

But what of the effort? Maybe Lou didn't take this especially seriously, but he didn't not take it seriously. There's a push here, he wanted to make something. There's an atmosphere, an air to this. That said, while it's clearly not all the same, I can't distinguish one side from another. 

Four sides, and hour + spent with this. What would Lou think? Probably that I was a sucker. 

CDOTD 12/01/2025

Various artists: Hey Folks! It's Intermission Time! Snack Bar Concession Stand Classics & Jazzy Singles From the Good Old Days! (Modern Harmonic)

Purchased at Vinegar Syndrome Pittsburgh

I have an affection for aural ephemera such as this. Sell sell sell! And how do you sell? Optimism! We're upbeat! Make a line for the snack bar now!

At least, outside of politics. MAGA sells a line of pessimism looking back on optimism. Weren't things so great way back then? America was great then. Make America great again!

When exactly was that? Pre-civil rights era? The jazz age? The gilded era?

As you know, there's no answer to that question. It's an elusive sense that things were better back then. But for whom? 

You know, white people. And I don't say that out of misplaced white guilt. For all my enjoyment of listening to these cheerful jingles, it's super-caucasian. How would I feel as an African American, in my car at the drive in? Perhaps I wouldn't think about it at all, accustomed to the majority white presence in culture. Or maybe I'd think....crackers. I'll put up with these crackers. That's assuming Black people attended drive-ins in general, a suburban phenomenon.