Man, I’ve been waiting for the longest to play you this Sun-Ra produced record by The Qualities, and today is the day:

1-10 Happy New Year To You

The passing of Don Van Vliet a/k/a Captain Beefheart this morning is news most people will react to with an unknowing shrug of the shoulders or a chuckle at his odd stage name. For the rest of us, this cuts deep.

Beefheart (along with his high school chum Frank Zappa) virtually invented avant-garde or underground rock music. At its heart, his music was based on the blues (the influence of Howlin’ Wolf on the Captain’s vocals is undeniable), but the blues was never a staid museum piece to Van Vliet – it was a living, breathing thing that he could mold, bend, even mangle to his liking. His early albums Safe as Milk and the double lp Trout Mask Replica (produced by Zappa) didn’t sell much, but found a home with adventurous and discerning listeners, including the famous or soon-to-be-famous, like John Lennon, Joe Strummer, Mark Mothersbaugh and Tom Waits.  Waits once said of Beefheart: “Once you’ve heard Beefheart, it’s hard to wash him out of your clothes. It stains, like coffee or blood.”  Beefheart continued through the 70s and early 80s with great albums, among them Lick My Decals Off, Baby, The Spotlight Kid, Bongo Fury (live, with Zappa & the Mothers), Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller) and what may be his best and most accessible album, Clear Spot.

Personally, I first heard Trout Mask Replica when I was 18 or 19, and I was never the same.  It was so weird and off-kilter to my ears, and yet oddly welcoming: as if he was opening a door to somewhere exotic, but slightly forbidding, seeing if you were game for the journey.  I’ve never regretted accepting the invitation. Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons spoke of hearing Trout Mask at 15 and thinking:

“…that it was the worst thing I’d ever heard. I said to myself, they’re not even trying! It was just a sloppy cacophony. Then I listened to it a couple more times, because I couldn’t believe Frank Zappa could do this to me – and because a double album cost a lot of money. About the third time, I realised they were doing it on purpose; they meant it to sound exactly this way. About the sixth or seventh time, it clicked in, and I thought it was the greatest album I’d ever heard.”

Even though the Captain hadn’t made an album since 1982 (he’d retired to his other creative outlet, painting), the mark he left on modern music is as indelible as his album titles were indecipherable.  Thanks, Don…the dust blows forward and the dust blows back.

Childhood memories…

Sunny day in New York, so…

Comfort Food (aka, fromage) from the Eighties:

Smile, it won’t mess up your hair.

I like AJ rockin’ the black eye look:

Makes him look cool.

Cause there ain’t no such thing as too much Sammy.

Jay Jaffe presents a reason to be cheerful, forget what happened down in Texas…

Low n slow, y’all:

Originals…

True School:

Another boxing beat:

…For the Brown Bomber:

Nerd Alert

Taking a holiday interlude from all things baseball for a minute, I was noodling around with the idea of top Five lists and came up with a bunch to share with you, just cause, well, I like to stimulate conversation, what can I say?

Five Great Stones Songs to Crank:

1. “Monkey Man” Scorsese was so cool to use it in “Good Fellas”
2. “Midnight Rambler”
3. “Stray Cat Blues”
4. “Doo, doo (Heatbreaker)” Organ riff is stupendous.
5. “Rocks Off” “The sunshine bores the daylights outta me…” Great moment.

“Can’t You Hear Me Knocking?” is pretty damn slammin’ too. I especially like the first three minutes.

Five Fun End Title Movie Sequences:

1. “Diner” Could listen to those dicks yenta-it-up all day…
2. “Liar, Liar” Carey is hilarious but Swoozie Kurtz gets the biggest laugh. To his credit, Carey is a good sport about it too.
3. “Cannonball Run” Classic, Burt and Dom schtick.
4. “Grumpy Old Men” Burgess Meredith steals the show with his “blue” material.
5. “Married to the Mob” At the very tail of the credits is a small scene, an epilogue of sorts, between Mathew Modine and Michelle Pfieffer. They dance together along the steps of a courthouse or a museum to a latin tune. She slowly moves backwards and he inches closer. Just as he gets to her, she backs into the handrailing, and quickly tumbles backwards. He lurches forward to grab her and just as he grabs her, she’s far back enough to smack her head and…freeze. They freeze the frame. And you’re just like, damn, no way that fall wasn’t going to hurt. But Pfieffer totally gave herself to the scene. Got to give her credit. Onions!

Five Great New York Movies (’70s, ’80s Edition)

1. “Dog Day Afternoon” Is Brooklyn in the house?
2. “Taking of Pelham 1, 2, 3” Every pastrami-on-rye-character actor in New York is in this movie. With Mathau in the lead, how can you go wrong?
3. “Tootsie” Not really thought of a New Yorkk movie but was in every way. Murray is a monster in the supporting role. It’s my favorite Dustin Hoffman performance.
4. “Annie Hall” Classic Woody, filmed all over the city.
5. “Moscow on the Hudson” One of Robin Williams’ best, from uptown to the lower east side, this is an over-looked New York flick.

Five Great Baseball References in non-Baseball Movies

1. “The Odd Couple” Oscar misses a triple play because Felix gets him on the phone asking some old wifey questions.
2. “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” Nicholson narrating Koufax pitching against the Yanks in the 1963 World Serious.
3. “Woman of the Year” Tracy takes Hepburn to a baseball game. Her interactiion with the fan sitting behind her is the highlight of the sequence.
4. “The Cameraman” Buster Keaton’s first movie for MGM. Keaton plays a cameraman who goes to Yankee Stadium one afternoon only to find that the team is out of town. So Keaton plays and imaginary game of baseball–pitcher to the hitter–and ends up swinging and circling the bases. It must have been filmed in 1927, and the footage looks great.
5. “In the Bedroom” I haven’t seen the whole movie, but I did see a sequence toward the end of the film where the father of the dead boy captures the boy’s killer, and is driving him in a car to a place where he plans to kill him. And as they drive there is a Red Sox game playign on the radio. They let the radio call go on and it adds a good deal of subtle–even comic–distraction to tension at hand.

Honorable Mention:

“Ferris Bueller” The classic chant. I was never really down with that chant, but it caught most everybody’s imagination for a minute there.

“Mystic River” Opening scene, dudes talking about Tiant and the Sox.

“The Bad Lieutenant” New York city sports radio talk show legend Chris Mad Dog Russo is the voice over during the opening credits and sports gambling–during a fictitious Mets season—plays a part throughout the movie. The Russo rant at the begining is a classic.

Five Great Jeff Bridges Movies

1. “The Last American Hero” The Junior Johnson story.
2. “Thunderbolt and Lightfoot” Clint Eastwood buddy picture.
3. “Tucker” Failed Coppola epic.
4. “Cutter’s Way” Cult California art house movie, early 80s.
5. “American Heart” Gritty, disturbing drama with Edward Furlong.

Five Best Movies I Last Saw in the Theater

1. “The Squid and the Whale”
2. “Syriana”
3. “Good night, and Good Luck.”
4. “A History of Violence”
5. “Batman Begins”

I don’t know that any of them were great necessarily, but it just so happens that the last five movies that I’ve seen in the theater have all been worth the price of admission to me. They all had something going for them, enough for me to say they were worth the dough. And what more can you say?