One. . .

. . . of a kind. . .

From  Captain Beefheart's (Don Van Vliet) "10 On Guitar". . .

1. Listen to the birds.
That's where all the music comes from. Birds know everything about how it should sound and where that sound should come from. And watch hummingbirds. They fly really fast, but a lot of times they aren't going anywhere.

2. Your guitar is not really a guitar Your guitar is a divining rod.
Use it to find spirits in the other world and bring them over. A guitar is also a fishing rod. If you're good, you'll land a big one.

3. Practice in front of a bush
Wait until the moon is out, then go outside, eat a multi-grained bread and play your guitar to a bush. If the bush doesn't shake, eat another piece of bread.

4. Walk with the devil
Old Delta blues players referred to guitar amplifiers as the "devil box." And they were right. You have to be an equal opportunity employer in terms of who you're bringing over from the other side. Electricity attracts devils and demons. Other instruments attract other spirits. An acoustic guitar attracts Casper. A mandolin attracts Wendy. But an electric guitar attracts Beelzebub.

5. If you're guilty of thinking, you're out
If your brain is part of the process, you're missing it. You should play like a drowning man, struggling to reach shore. If you can trap that feeling, then you have something that is fur bearing.

6. Never point your guitar at anyone
Your instrument has more clout than lightning. Just hit a big chord then run outside to hear it. But make sure you are not standing in an open field.

7. Always carry a church key
That's your key-man clause. Like One String Sam. He's one. He was a Detroit street musician who played in the fifties on a homemade instrument. His song "I Need a Hundred Dollars" is warm pie. Another key to the church is Hubert Sumlin, Howlin' Wolf's guitar player. He just stands there like the Statue of Liberty-making you want to look up her dress the whole time to see how he's doing it.

8. Don't wipe the sweat off your instrument
You need that stink on there. Then you have to get that stink onto your music.

9. Keep your guitar in a dark place
When you're not playing your guitar, cover it and keep it in a dark place. If you don't play your guitar for more than a day, be sure you put a saucer of water in with it.

10. You gotta have a hood for your engine
Keep that hat on. A hat is a pressure cooker. If you have a roof on your house, the hot air can't escape. Even a lima bean has to have a piece of wet paper around it to make it grow.

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Frivolous. . .

. . . use of the terminology?. . .

The captain (Beefheart, that is), was indeed a talented individual.  He was creative, eccentric and daring.  But genius is a very strong word. . .

ge·nius
noun \ˈjēn-yəs, ˈjē-nē-əs\
1 [count] a : a very smart or talented person : a person who has a level of talent or intelligence that is very rare or remarkable
▪ Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton were great scientific geniuses. ▪ a musical/artistic/creative genius ▪ You don't have to be a genius to see that this plan will never work.
b : a person who is very good at doing something
▪ He was a genius at handling the press.


(by By Rob Chalfen from http://blogs.laweekly.com/westcoastsound/2010/12/captain_beefheart_facts.php)[excerpted and inverted by me]
". . . 1. his 1970 & 1982 music videos, both rejected by tv as too far out, are both in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art.

2. In 1976 I interviewed Stiv Bators of the Dead Boys, who very enthusiastically claimed Don as a key influence. "A case of the punks!"

3. Zappa helped jumpstart his career, incorporating him into his touring ensemble, though complained Beefheart couldn't cut the arrangements. Several of Zappa's sidemen later defected to the Magic Band.

4. in the mid 70s he wandered in an aesthetic wilderness - his label dropped him, he fell in with some sharp operators connected with the band Bread (!) and tried to record 'safe' pop. His Magic band left him, and he toured with a pick up group. One older cat Ellis Horn had played clarinet with Lu Waters Jazz Band in the 40s and had a feature playing 'Sweet Georgia Brown" on an old albert-style clarinet, upturned at the bell. "He sucked up a cosmic particle into his horn," opined Don.

5. opening acts, in Boston at any rate, included Mississippi Fred McDowell, the NY Dolls, Larry Coryell, Bonnie Raitt/Dave Maxwell, Dr. John & a trained monkey vaudeville act. "Did you like the Dolls? Oh, balls!"

6. Zappa produced the Magic Band's masterpiece, Trout Mask Replica, in 1969, initially as a sort of Folkways-type anthropological field recording at the band's commune. Later Don insisted that it all be re-recorded in the studio, convinced that Zappa had been trying to do it on the cheap. (some of the home tapes made it onto the record anyway) . In the studio, he refused to wear phones, syncing his vocals with the band only via the faint leakage through the thick plate glass.

7. he composed implausibly complex solo guitar pieces like modern acid madrigals.

8. ran his band as a sort of hothouse commune/cult of domineering personality, one veteran later describing the experience as "my Vietnam". He communicated musical ideas via cassettes of his piano playing, singing and late night whistlings over the phone. The musicians were then expected to transcribe these fragments verbatim, and assemble them perfectly into intricate 4-dimensional musical constructions.

9. claimed shamanistic & supernatural abilities; on one occasion the drummer in my band, following around Don & Dr John, witnessed the glass panes of a hotel lobby mysteriously turn opaque as they passed. He was a life-long defender of the rights of animals & wildlife.

10. in the late 60s fused delta blues, beat poetics, Dada/Surrealist techniques, avant jazz, R&B & the kitchen sink into a metaphysics of the imagination that tore a giant hole in the ozone of pop-artistic possibility. Like an American Van Gogh he seemed to open up new landscapes of consciousness as much as of music. . . "


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