archive

Captain Beefheart’s music was my favourite all the time I was growing up. I was lucky enough to see Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band perform live several times during the 70s and early 80s; at the Bickershaw Festival, Sheffield City Hall, Bristol Colston Hall and the Venue in London.

The night of the Beefheart show at Bristol Colston Hall (1975), while the support act was playing, I went for a pee. A scruffy middle-aged man shuffled into the urinal beside me and said in an American accent- "real keen place this, man". To my surprise it turned out that it was Don Van Vliet himself. Later outside on the steps we talked for a while and he drew me a little picture on a scrap of paper and offered me a Woodbine cigarette. Woodbine was a cheap and high-tar brand of plain tipped cigarette. I didn’t smoke at the time, but seeing as it was Beefheart, I made an exception, took his offer and smoked the thing.

Years later, I was making records myself.

Although Beefheart was a great influence on my music, I took a very different route in my compositions. Whereas he’s spoken out against repetition and hypnotic effects in music, I’ve tended to use a lot of loops and subliminal effects. I’ve also tended to use tapes, music concrete and computer–sequenced sounds; rather than live musicians. But I think my music shares the same kind of primal concerns to do with a relationship with nature and a playful freedom of expression. I’ll juxtapose instruments in an "outsider" way - there’s often the kind of mood you’ll find on Trout Mask Replica , as mutant jazz and blues themes seem to bubble beneath the surface of something absurd.

Well in 1996, on Friction and Dirt I thought I’d like to dedicate something to the Captain. In the track The Woodbine I Smoked Because Captain Beefheart Gave It Me, rather than to make a pastiche of the Beefheart sound, I attempted to record a musical impression of the sound that cigarette smoke had made all those years ago. It was about the effect it had on my consciousness - as its toxins tore through my young and delicate lungs.

The CD Friction and Dirt came out on the Staalplaat label in Amsterdam. It’s now deleted, but you can download it here.

From The Captain Beefheart Radio Station