Sunday, December 19, 2010

Captain Beefheart RIP

Captain Beefheart (neé Don Van Vliet) died Friday from complications of Multiple Sclerosis. He was sixty-nine.



Captain Beefheart was one of those "love him or hate him" artists. There was nothing really commercial about his music: it was fragmented, dissonant, artful and artless. But once you warmed up to the guy, it was hard to stop listening. PJ Harvey in a 2009 Spin interview:
I'd heard Beefheart when I was really young through my mother and father who had a fantastic vinyl collection," she said. "When I was a child, it used to make me feel ill, but once I met John [Parrish, Harvey's musical collaborator], he introduced me to many things and re-introduced me to [Beefheart's] Many Shiny Things.
One band that's really carrying the torch is Erase Errata. Same kind of experimental weirdness,  but with a modern twist:

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