Product Description

In the spring of 1969, the inauspicious release of Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band's Trout Mask Replica, a double-album featuring 28 stream-of-consciousness songs filled with abstract rhythms and guttural bellows, dramatically altered the pop landscape.

Yet even if the album did cast its radical vision over the future of music, much of the record's artistic strength is actually drawn from the past. This book examines how Beefheart's incomparable opus, an album that divided (rather than) united a pop audience, is informed by a variety of diverse sources. Trout Mask Replica is a hybrid of poetic declarations inspired by both Walt Whitman and the beat poets, the field hollers of the Delta Blues, the urban blues of Howlin' Wolf, the gospel blues of Blind Willie Johnson, and the free jazz of Ornette Coleman. This book illustrates how Trout Mask Replica was not so much an arcane specimen of the avant-garde, but rather a defiantly original declaration of the American imagination.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #171821 in Books
• Published on: 2007-05-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 152 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780826427816
• Condition: USED - VERY GOOD
• Notes:
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About the Author
Kevin Courrier is the author of several books, including Dangerous Kitchen: The Subversive World of Zappa and Randy Newman's American Dreams. He has been a writer/broadcaster and film critic for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) since 1990.

Customer Reviews

Good companion-piece to the album
Having read a few titles in the 33+1/3 series, some veering way off into overly-personal memoir-land, and others delving way too closely into recording minutia, I'd say that Courrier's take on Trout Mask Replica is a perfect middle-ground -- giving plenty of background information on Don Van Vliet, the Magic Band, and Frank Zappa, while still paying proper amount of attention to one of the densest albums of its era -- or ANY era.

I'd especially recommend this title to newcomers trying to plow their way through TMR -- Courrier does an excellent job in deciphering the myriad layers, both for musicians and non-musicians alike.

Good overview
Good commentary on TMR. With the lack of material about CB out there, anything is refreshing. Lots of interviews with MB members, some good funny insights and comments, not too much overintellectualising, a quick read. A good choice for Beefheart fans

EXCELLENT COMPANION PIECE TO THE ALBUM!
This is a great exploration of TMR. Although I have a few quibbles with Mr. Courrier on various points, his book is a mini-epic that can stand proudly alongside Beefheart and the Magic Band's tour de force.

Courrier creates a nice balance between the geek minutiae of the record and the larger picture (pop music history, Zappa's influence, etc). The writer knew he had a challenge ahead of him and he tackles it with honesty and modesty. No hipster posturing at all....very refreshing.

This is easily the best 33 1/3 book I've read so far. My second fave in the series is the one on Neutral Milk Hotel's "In the Aeroplane...", another cult record worth checking out.