Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band- Trout Mask Replica (1969)

This album presents me with an interesting challenge. It’s an album which does all sorts of clever stuff and is anything but easy to listen for the first few times, seemingly out of tune and discordant. Only a few listens later do you realise it’s supposed to be like this, and it’s growing on you. I first heard this album after the much-missed John Peel did that television documentary in the early 2000’s, and I’ve played it constantly since.

But the challenge for me, as someone with very little understanding of how music works, is how to talk about this? There are certainly stretches that sound like Mississippi blues, and Don Van Vliet certainly had a blues background, but this is essentially an album that well goes over my head, will forever continue doing so, and so cannot possibly ever become boring.

I won’t pretend to understand, even for a moment, that I understand why Don Van Vliet was a genius.  But he was, and although he produced several other albums which fascinate me, this is his masterwork.