Nov. 1, 1977 review: Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band at Buff State

 


Another in a series of mind-blowing shows at Buff State. 

Nov. 1, 1977

Captain Beefheart

Fuses Rock, Halloween

Into ‘Demonic’ Smash 

          Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band on Halloween is a mystic combination that can’t be beat. The spirit of the evening lends a certain authority to the Captain’s celebrated musical and poetic abandon. So does the audience.

          Buffalo State College’s Moot Hall cafeteria resembles a rock-concert version of the bar scene in “Star Wars.” Sitting at the next table for the early show is a “25th Century Quaker,” a space-age choirboy whose hair looks like a Brillo pad caught in an electric grid. Elsewhere prowls a junior version of The Hulk.

          It’s not the best of environments for Sunnyland Slim, the 70-year-old blues pianist. Slim, who’s played with such modern bluesologists as Canned Heat and the Rolling Stones’ Mick Taylor, spends most of his elegant set trying to politely make his presence known. He’s got a drummer to help.

          He takes the leisurely route. First, an exhibit of pumping left hand. Then the ornamental right flourishes in his first vocal, “Every Time I Get to Drinkin’.”

          The crowd gets loud. He quiets them, wondrously, with his memorial, “Decoration Day,” which he did with King Curtis in 1940. “Dust My Broom” rouses them the way it should and his own blues classic, “She Got a Thing Goin’ On,” leaves them cheering.

          Lending further credibility to Captain Beefheart’s aura is the introduction of Langdon Winner, professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Captain’s official biographer.

          “I’d like to introduce you to one of the few American originals,” Winner testifies.

          The Captain wears a hat, scarf and moustache. He’s tuned in. His first words: “Well, this is voodoo night.”

          Incantations begin with “Bat Chain Puller,” a blues more fractured than a motorcycle daredevil. Drummer John “Drumbo” French bashes determined rhythm under the calculated dissonances of guitarists Denny Walley and Jeff Moris Teaper.

          They smile when they hit a really good one. Eric “Kittaboo” Feldman’s synthesizer gives rude futuristic encouragement. The Captain declaims on top of all this with a shout. Despite all this clangor and tension, it fits together perfectly.

          The set includes “Crazy Little Thing” from the “Clear Spot” album, “The Floppy Boot Stomp” and a remarkable guitar and synthesizer duet on “Dali’s Car” from the 5-year-old masterwork, “Trout Mask Replica.”

          The Captain next amazes all with an unaccompanied solo on the subject of black snakes, snorting, bleating and bellowing to such a limit that the assembled goblins shrank back and watched, spellbound.

          He declines a request to do “Debra Kadabra” from “Bongo Fury” because Frank Zappa isn’t here. Instead he works up a demonic and unpredictable power that explodes finally in the madness of “Moonlight on Vermont.” Two encores follow. Could a second show possibly be any better?

* * * * *

IN THE PHOTO: Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band in a record company promotional photo from the mid-1970s. 

* * * * *

FOOTNOTE: Captain Beefheart, a/k/a Don Van Vliet, was reinvigorated after recording the “Bongo Fury” album with Zappa in 1976. He had a new Magic Band and had put together “Bat Chain Puller,” generally considered his best album after “Trout Mask Replica.” Contractual problems kept it from being released right away. Wikipedia notes that the song “Bat Chain Puller” was based on the rhythm of the windshield wipers on Van Vliet’s car.

          He retired from music in 1982 and devoted himself to art, which was much more lucrative. His paintings and drawings have been exhibited around the world and currently command prices up to $20,000. Long afflicted by multiple sclerosis, he died in 2010.

          Setlist.fm offers an average setlist from the 29 dates on the “Bat Chain Puller” tour that goes like this:

          Hair Pie Bake III

          Suction Prints

          Low Yo Yo Stuff

          Bat Chain Puller

          I Wanna Find a Woman That’ll Hold My Big Toe Till I Have to Go

          Nowadays a Woman’s Gotta Hit a Man

          Electricity

          A Carrot Is as Close as a Rabbit Gets to a Diamond

          China Pig

          Floppy Boot Stomp

          Click Clack

          My Human Gets Me Blues

          Big Eyed Beans from Venus 

          An incomplete list from this Buff State date includes two other songs – “More” (Nino Oliviero & Riz Ortolani cover) and “The Dust Blows Forward ‘n the Dust Blows Back.”

          Meanwhile, Sunnyland Slim kept right on playing until his death in 1995 at the age of 88.

          As for Langdon Winner, he did a cover story on Captain Beefheart for Rolling Stone magazine in 1970, but not a book. These days he has an endowed chair in humanities and social sciences at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

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