This is Trout Mask Replica. On the album cover is Captain Beefheart, a fish on his
face and a top hat on his head. The image is surreal, it's grotesque, and it's the
perfect visual depiction of the music you're about to hear.
My smile stuck. I cannot go back to your frownland.
the 80 minutes of music on Trout Masks Replica by Captain Beefheart and his
magic band have been compared to rusty barbed wire, and the New York Times once
said that Captain Beefheart's voice makes Tom Waits sound like Julie Andrews.
But, here's the thing, 41 years after its release in 1969 this cacophonous double
album was inducted into the Library of Congress's National Recording registry
right alongside Al Green's classic "Let's Stay Together" and the American standard
"Take Me out to the Ball Game". Not only that, a number of iconic musicians, visual
artists, and creative thinkers have named Trout Mask Replica a shining point of
inspiration for their work. How can an album that sounds like the musical
equivalent of barbed wire be recognized as such a significant piece of American
culture?
Let's start with Don Van Vliet known as Captain Beefheart. He grew up in
California on the edge of the Mojave Desert and by the age of 10 was an
incredible sculptor. Growing up he became captivated by the blues perfected by
musicians like Muddy Waters and Howlin wolf some 2,000 miles away in the
Mississippi Delta just as much he was entranced by the free jazz of Ornette
Coleman and John Coltrane by the late 1960s he had an album and a small-time
hit a cover of Bo Diddley's "Diddy Wah Diddy." For his next project he signed to
his former high school classmate, Frank Zappa's, label with the clear request for
unbridled creative freedom to do whatever the hell he wanted for his next
project. By 1969 Trout Mask Replica was created and those years were a glorious
mess for everyone involved in its making.
This is Samuel Andreyev. He's a composer who studied composition and music
analysis at the Paris Conservatory. A number of things, first of all it's an
album that I'm personally obsessed with. I think it's a phenomenal work of art.
it is mind-bendingly creative and honestly pretty difficult to listen to,
but its uniqueness can be discovered within its songs, especially Frownland.
Well the purpose of Frownland as an album opener is to just plunge you
headfirst into a maelstrom of just absolute strangeness.
Here's something interesting you can do as an experiment: compare it to a piece
like "You really got me" by the Kinks. Okay so the main guitar riff in that song da
da da dum da da da da that's two notes okay and that's what the song is built
out of. The most important thing is at the rhythm guitar, lead guitar, bass, drums,
and vocals are all locked into one rhythm - they are playing in sync. So
contrast that with "Frownland" where in minute 40 seconds you have no fewer than
I think like 23 individual motifs - it's actually 21 but that's still a whole lot -
and these 23 motifs are all individually rather complex. Added to that is the fact
that they're all heard stacked on top of each other all the time. Not only that
the traditional roles of rock instrumentation found in songs like you
really got me we'e just completely thrown out the window. Just listen
closely to the first five seconds of the track.
You'll immediately notice that the rhythm is off-kilter. That's because the
rhythm guitar and the lead guitar are playing a five over seven polyrhythm.
That means one guitar is playing five beats per measure at the same time the
other is playing seven. Okay so try clapping five beats in one hand and the
same time you clap seven. Not only is a piece polyrhythmic, it's also
polytonal. Both guitars are playing in different keys throughout the piece
against each other and often they're changing keys. Typically the bass would
ground the harmony and the rhythm but here it's treated like a third guitar so
it lives in its own world as well. And, it's playing chords which just rarely
happens in rock music. And on top of that you have these insanely virtuosic drums
that have another function altogether. The drummer is trying to take elements
of what the guitar is doing and what the bass is doing and basically glue them
together so that the piece coheres. In the end you have a really condensed song
with multiple instruments constantly changing keys tempos and time signatures
and across the entire album this happens. Trout Mask Replica is a masterpiece
because it does something that is almost impossible hard to do, it comes from a
very rare place of art making. So art scholars talk about the sentimental
versus the naive. On one end of the spectrum you have sentimental art - art
that comes from a place of a lot of formal training. At the other end you
have naive art - art that is almost childlike. It exists purely because the
compulsion to make it was so strong. The great thing about Trout Mask Replica is
that they literally splice together naive impulses into a structure. So it
sounds totally improvised it sounds like they're making it up on the spot but
they rehearsed these pieces, that's really hard. So how do you teach these
musicians to play your music? A kind whip. A kinda quip. A kind well
hell you know tape with the piano. A tape. Captain Beefheart was the singular
creative force behind Trout Mask Replica and he composed every song on the piano
without knowing how to play it. He pretty much didn't play any
instrument, but he had his magic band which consisted of remarkable young
musicians like Zoot Horn Rollo, Drumbo, Antennae Jimmy Semmens, and Rockette Mornton.
Their job? translate Captain Beefheart's avant-garde approach into a
blues and free jazz inspired rock album based on the music he created on an
instrument he really didn't know how to play. Let that sink in for a second. A
piano has 88 keys and with two hands you can easily play the lowest and the
highest keys at the same time if you wanted to.
Don Van Vliet expected those same sounds from his two guitarist and a bassist
who's instrument ranges were just vastly different. Here's Bill Harkleroad, you
might remember him as Zoot Horn Rollo. Oh I think it was just that there were
parts and then well why can't you play those notes what's wrong with you? Why
can't you play that note that's not on the guitar or seven notes at a time?
So there was no choice but to do it. He used to say you think you got a hard job man
I got a sing to that shit. And that is John French, the drummer. He had the
arduous task of helping other members of the band learn everything that came out
Don's piano. Sometimes I wondered I wondered if he knew that it was in a
different time signature you know, but he didn't know what time signature was.
They painstakingly rehearsed over the course of a year until they were able to
record the entire double album all the way through in just a few hours.
When I first came across Trout Mask Replica, I was instantly captivated by
the sound of those three words strung together. Every song title made me laugh
and so I listened to it and it instantly expanded my understanding of what music
could be. For some people it can be offensive it sounds like they're
deliberately flaunting the rules I don't think I don't view it that way I don't
think anyone's deliberately flaunting the rules I think I don't think it's
contrarian for the sake of being contrarian I think rather what it is is
its artistic for the sake of being original. Hey all thanks for watching
first I want to give a huge shout out to Samuel andreyev he was sort of the
inspiration for this video he made a 30-minute video about the
music theory of frownland that's linked below you should really really
check it out if you want to know more about that specific song in addition
he's the one that conducted the two interviews with John French and Bill
Harkleroad they're also on his YouTube channel thanks so much for watching and
I'll see you in a couple of weeks