captain beefheart

at their best, the minutemen and their sst labelmates saccharine trust remind me of these guys: captain beefheart & his magic band, shown here in performances from belgium 1969, detroit 1971, and paris 1972. when we were college roommates, bruce wade (with whom i became friends solely on the basis of our shared ability to sing all of the parts from live at leeds, including the mistakes) introduced me to this music _one song at a time_. even after i had all the records and had heard countless shitty audience cassettes of different lineups of the band playing this music, it took seeing the '77 version twice to make me realize that this wasn't the total fucking chaos it sounded like at first flush -- it was _orderly, rehearsed_ cacophony. which opened the door for me to hear free jazz and multitudes of other things.