CAPTAIN BEEFHEART: GROW FINS: JUST GOT BACK FROM THE CITY /
ELECTRICITY (1965-1968; 1999)
CD I: 1) Obeah Man (1966 demo);
2) Just Got Back From The City (1966 demo); 3) I'm Glad (1966 demo); 4) Triple
Combination (1966 demo); 5) Here I Am I Always Am (early 1966 demo); 6) Here I
Am I Always Am (later 1966 demo); 7) Somebody In My Home (1966 live); 8) Tupelo
(1966 live); 9) Evil Is Going On (1966 live); 10) Old Folks Boogie (1967 live);
11) Call On Me (1965 demo); 12) Sure Nuff N Yes I Do (1967 demo); 13) Yellow
Brick Road (1967 demo); 14) Plastic Factory (1967 demo);
CD II: 1) Electricity (1968 live);
2) Sure Nuff N Yes I Do (1968 live); 3) Rollin' 'N' Tumblin' (1968 live); 4) Electricity
(1968 live); 5) Yer Gonna Need Somebody On Yer Bond (1968 live); 6) Kandy Korn
(1968 live); 7) Korn Ring Finger (1967 demo).
Since the idea of «self-discipline» was about
as alien to the Captain as it was so totally integral for Zappa (may have been
the one chief distinction between the two of them after all), his vaults were
predictably left in a much less user-friendly state than Zappa's, and the
stream of archival releases after his retirement from music has been notably
thinner than Frank's, even if, judging by the sheer number of various bootlegs
produced over the years, there's a huge amount of goodies there for poor
starving fans.
On the official circuit, the single largest dig
into the vaults consists of the 5-CD set Grow
Fins, lovingly prepared by fans with the assistance of John French (who
also wrote a lengthy history of The Magic Band for the liner notes) and
released on the Revenant label that normally focuses on retrospectives of
various old blues and folk artists — and thus, accepts Beefheart into the same
pantheon with Charley Patton, Doc Boggs, and John Fahey; then again, who's to
say the Captain was not an American
primitivist when it comes to understanding American pritimitivism? He certainly
preserves and carries on the spirit of Charley Patton far more loyally than oh
so many «polite» blues-rockers who think they cover Charley Patton when in fact
they do not.
Anyway, even though, technically, the entire
boxset should count as one single album, its 5 CDs logically fall into three
(maybe even four) distinct subdivisions, and it would make sense to comment on
them separately. The first CD, subtitled Just
Got Back From The City, covers outtakes, demos, and occasional live
performances from the Captain's formative years (1965-66) and all the way to
the sessions for Safe As Milk;
thematically, it is barely separable from the second CD, subtitled Electricity and containing primarily
live performances of Safe As Milk
and Magic Man material from 1968, so
we will talk of them together, and leave CDs 3-4 (TMR-era outtakes) and CD 5 (a messy mix of later era live
performances) for later.
The first disc here is clearly the most
surprise-laden and instructive for all those who have not had that much
experience with Beefheart in his pre-Safe
As Milk days, barring maybe a brief acquaintance with ʽDiddy Wah Diddyʼ
from the Nuggets boxset. You might
have guessed that in those early days
he may have started out as a blues singer — but the first ten tracks here
actually confirm that guess with solid musical evidence, such as, for
instance, the Captain not just being inspired by Howlin' Wolf, but actually covering Howlin' Wolf, live from the
Avalon Ballroom in 1966, where you could really confuse him with the real
Howlin' Wolf for a moment, except that, once you put two and two together,
Beefheart's voice is still too high and thin to perfectly match the thickness and
depth of the Wolf's delivery. He also does a great John Lee Hooker on ʽTupeloʼ,
four minutes of dark, sludgy blueswailing that's probably as good as the best
white boy blues effort in America circa 1966 — well, not exactly blowing away
the Paul Butterfield Blues Band (Beefheart was never as obsessed with his
harmonica-blowing skills as Paul, and none of his early guitarists were Mike
Bloomfield), but still doing a good job of conveying the creepy menace of
hardcore electric blues.
In fact, the opening number, an unreleased
self-penned demo called ʽObeah Manʼ, introduces us to the beginnings of
Beefheart as a swaggery blues-rocker just dying to make a flashy introduction
— much like Paul Butterfield on ʽBorn In Chicagoʼ, which introduced the world
to the Butterfield Blues Band one year before; leave it to the young aspiring
Captain, however, to make things a little more complex by introducing us to the
Igbo word "obeah" that was probably unknown even to the likes of
Muddy Waters. There's also ʽJust Got Back From The Cityʼ, a wannabe ʽI Wish
You Wouldʼ imitation with lots of squeaky harmonica, and some strange attempts
at Stonesy pop-rock songs (ʽHere I Am I Always Amʼ) that at least show you how
Beefheart was no sworn enemy of accessible pop stuff, and how, in a way, what
he did in the unfortunate year of 1974 could be seen as a sort of «return to
childhood». (For some hardcore childhood, you can go all the way back to the
1965 demo ʽCall On Meʼ, a folk-pop ballad that is so sweet, you'd swear it was
commissioned from Sonny Bono — unfortunately, the sound quality on that one is
about as bad as on your average Charley Patton track from 1929, so you'll have
to press your ear real hard to be able to laugh all the way to the bank).
As we advance towards the «official» Beefheart
years of 1967-68, things become less interesting: the Safe As Milk demos, besides also being featured in bootleg sound
quality, disclose no new secrets, and the live performances from 1968 never
reach the intensity of the Mirror Man
jam sessions, more like the wobbly muddiness of the re-recordings on Strictly Personal. In particular,
there's an 11-minute jam version of ʽRollin' 'N' Tumblin'ʼ which Beefheart uses
as an excuse to practice his atonal soprano sax — I don't know, it just does
not seem to me a good idea to mix Muddy Waters with Albert Ayler, as brave as
it might seem on paper, because if I want psychotic sonic mess, I pick Ayler,
and if I want a rollickin' piece of blues, I pick Muddy, and do I want to have
both at the same time? Not sure. Much
the same happens with ʽYer Gonna Need Somebody On Yer Bondʼ, except there he
does the same stuff with harmonica, and it's even messier. Then again, it might
just be the sound quality — all these tapes sound flat and bootleggish. So I'd say
that the only track on the second disc that should be of considerable interest
is the studio demo ʽKorn Ring Fingerʼ from 1967, a psychedelic waltz with
nicely seductive slide guitar work, although taken at a very slow tempo for the Captain — but at least you get to hear it
in superb sound quality, with a clear stereo separation of the instruments.
This is a bit disappointing, because while
inferior sound quality is always to be expected of the earliest recordings, you'd
think that by 1967, once the Magic Band really went professional, those
problems could have been overcome. But then again, I guess nobody ever took any
serious care of the tapes anyway — safeguarding Beefheart's dirty underwear was
on no record label's top shelf of priorities, so don't expect Beatles Anthology sound level for any
of these demos; as for the live performances, I guess people were too terrified
to record the Captain much in 1968 — one of the few exceptions being Frank
Freeman's Dance Studio in Kidderminster, UK (according to one source, The Magic
Band was "pleased the venue did not sell alcohol, as this meant there were
no beer bottles that could be thrown at them" — more than that, somebody was
kind enough as to bring a tape recorder along). So, basically, you just get
what you can get, and ain't no use
complaining.
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