Read Online Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica by Kevin Courrier - Free Book Online
Authors: Kevin Courrier
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Starr, Barbara Streisand, Harry Nilsson, and Burton Cummings, at the helm. Since Perry felt more comfortable working in a four-track setup, they moved to RCA Studios. Unfortunately, the change affected the overall sound of the album, which Jerry Handling especially thought made it less forceful than their single, “Diddy Wah Diddy.” What it lacked in force, however, it made up in pure texture.
Out of the quiet, Ry Cooder’s slide calls out to Beefheart, who answers in the opening blues tune, “Sure ’Nuff ’N Yes I Do.” Based on Muddy Waters’ “Rollin’ & Tumblin’,” Beefheart’s lyrics for “Sure ’Nuff” point toward a more obscure American landscape than the Waters original. “I was born in the desert,” Beefheart moans over the whine of Cooder’s slide, “came up from New Orleans.” After fusing his own birthplace with that of jazz and blues, Beefheart quickly reaches for the ethereal. “Came upon a tornado, saw light in the sky,” he sings. “I went around all day with the moon stickin’ in my eye.” From there, the song gallops into an aggressive prowl filled with sexual adventure. “Got the time to teach ya now,” Beefheart snears. “Bet you’ll learn some too.” From there, the record broadens its scope from the psychedelia of “Zig Zag Wanderer,” the R&B doo-wop of “Call on Me,” to the light pop of “Yellow Brick Road.” In a sense, the record is a map of Beefheart’s intent to transform varied blues and R&B forms, just as Frank Zappa’s debut,
Freak Out!
did a year earlier.
While “Sure ’Nuff ’N Yes I Do” has the snake moansound of Beefheart’s early material, there was nothing quite like the theremin-driven psychedelic blues of “Electricity.” The theremin was the world’s first electronic instrument, a precursor to the moog synthesizer, created by the Russian emigré Leon Theremin shortly after the turn of the twentieth century. It is the only electronic instrument that is played without ever being physically touched. The pitches are played electronically by slowly moving your hand over the base of the instrument. In the 20s and 30s, Theremin had launched an orchestra of theremin players performing a wide repertoire of nineteenth-century romantic music. But after he was mysteriously kidnapped by Russian government officials and disappeared, the theremin fell into the hands of avant-garde musicians and film composers who heard a more sinister world lurking in its unearthly wailing. Composer Miklos Rozsa, for instance, would use the theremin to indicate Gregory Peck’s repressed fears in Alfred Hitchcock’s
Spellbound
(1945). Rozsa would repeat the exercise using the theremin to depict Ray Milland’s alcoholic delusions in
The Lost Weekend
(1945). In the 1951 science-fiction classic,
The Day the Earth Stood Still
, Bernard Herrmann would impart an otherworldly atmosphere by using it to provide ominous color to Klaatu’s robot, Gort. Brian Wilson, in the Beach Boys’ 1966 single “Good Vibrations,” briefly returned the theremin to its more romantic origins, until Beefheart brought it back to the realm of spooky foreboding.
The theremin became part of “Electricity” actually by chance. Beefheart originally wanted Gary Marker to use the sound of a circular saw to create the buzz under his phrasing of EEE-LECC-TRI-CITTYYY, but it didn’t mixtoo well. “His instincts were right but the technology wasn’t there at the time,” Marker explained. The theremin was used to duplicate the buzzing sound. There was nothing to duplicate the power of Beefheart’s voice, though, when he blew out a $1,200 Telefunken microphone during the recording of his vocals. As for the syncopated drum part in “Electricity,” Beefheart sang the rhythm guitar parts for John French to translate into the percussion section. This was a move that anticipated the style of arranging both men used on
Trout Mask
. If the white soul balladry of “Call on Me” was Beefheart at
Out of the quiet, Ry Cooder’s slide calls out to Beefheart, who answers in the opening blues tune, “Sure ’Nuff ’N Yes I Do.” Based on Muddy Waters’ “Rollin’ & Tumblin’,” Beefheart’s lyrics for “Sure ’Nuff” point toward a more obscure American landscape than the Waters original. “I was born in the desert,” Beefheart moans over the whine of Cooder’s slide, “came up from New Orleans.” After fusing his own birthplace with that of jazz and blues, Beefheart quickly reaches for the ethereal. “Came upon a tornado, saw light in the sky,” he sings. “I went around all day with the moon stickin’ in my eye.” From there, the song gallops into an aggressive prowl filled with sexual adventure. “Got the time to teach ya now,” Beefheart snears. “Bet you’ll learn some too.” From there, the record broadens its scope from the psychedelia of “Zig Zag Wanderer,” the R&B doo-wop of “Call on Me,” to the light pop of “Yellow Brick Road.” In a sense, the record is a map of Beefheart’s intent to transform varied blues and R&B forms, just as Frank Zappa’s debut,
Freak Out!
did a year earlier.
While “Sure ’Nuff ’N Yes I Do” has the snake moansound of Beefheart’s early material, there was nothing quite like the theremin-driven psychedelic blues of “Electricity.” The theremin was the world’s first electronic instrument, a precursor to the moog synthesizer, created by the Russian emigré Leon Theremin shortly after the turn of the twentieth century. It is the only electronic instrument that is played without ever being physically touched. The pitches are played electronically by slowly moving your hand over the base of the instrument. In the 20s and 30s, Theremin had launched an orchestra of theremin players performing a wide repertoire of nineteenth-century romantic music. But after he was mysteriously kidnapped by Russian government officials and disappeared, the theremin fell into the hands of avant-garde musicians and film composers who heard a more sinister world lurking in its unearthly wailing. Composer Miklos Rozsa, for instance, would use the theremin to indicate Gregory Peck’s repressed fears in Alfred Hitchcock’s
Spellbound
(1945). Rozsa would repeat the exercise using the theremin to depict Ray Milland’s alcoholic delusions in
The Lost Weekend
(1945). In the 1951 science-fiction classic,
The Day the Earth Stood Still
, Bernard Herrmann would impart an otherworldly atmosphere by using it to provide ominous color to Klaatu’s robot, Gort. Brian Wilson, in the Beach Boys’ 1966 single “Good Vibrations,” briefly returned the theremin to its more romantic origins, until Beefheart brought it back to the realm of spooky foreboding.
The theremin became part of “Electricity” actually by chance. Beefheart originally wanted Gary Marker to use the sound of a circular saw to create the buzz under his phrasing of EEE-LECC-TRI-CITTYYY, but it didn’t mixtoo well. “His instincts were right but the technology wasn’t there at the time,” Marker explained. The theremin was used to duplicate the buzzing sound. There was nothing to duplicate the power of Beefheart’s voice, though, when he blew out a $1,200 Telefunken microphone during the recording of his vocals. As for the syncopated drum part in “Electricity,” Beefheart sang the rhythm guitar parts for John French to translate into the percussion section. This was a move that anticipated the style of arranging both men used on
Trout Mask
. If the white soul balladry of “Call on Me” was Beefheart at
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