Author: The Captain

Categories
Books New Music

Me, Cheeta

If you have a hankering for a rollicking tell-all tale of movie star excess, sex, violence, kidnap and bananas.. knuckle down to your local library (makes so much sense in these cash-strapped times) and badger them to get you a copy of ‘Me, Cheeta’, the autobiography of the world’s most famous chimpanzee, still going at the age of 76. Cheeta has a lot to say about Tarzan co-stars Johnny Weissmuller and Maureen O’Sullivan, the Hollywood movie machine, and much much more. Don’t be tempted to have a glass of something while reading it though.. you’ll be snorting it down your nose at the sheer preposterousness of the cheeky chimp’s litigious revelations.. if Marlene Dietrich was “one of the good Germans”, says Cheeta, “then the bad ones must be absolutely f*****g terrifying”. Maureen O’Hara inimitable? Not according to our simian raconteur: “Maureen was in reality highly imitable. I myself can do a reasonable Maureen O’Hara by simply screeching as loudly as I can and flinging my excrement around.”. Ouch!

Salacious, foul-mouthed and entertaining. Yep. Go on, check it out, you know it makes sense.

And now that we’ve established a theme, I’m looking forward to checking out more of Leader Cheetah.. I recently pricked up my ears at their Arizona-by-way-of-Adelaide take on alt-country.. Australiana, maybe? Damn fine stuff, whatever:

Categories
Books

Bit Of A Blur – Alex James

I’m back. Another 24000 miles under the Captain’s belt, visiting the old country. Grabbed a couple of books for the cabin: this one which suits my grizzled old man countenance, plus Alex James’ biography.

Blur music: I put on several of their albums since I returned and.. truly great sounds. Gave the music scene a kick up the pants. I could have done without the Oasis battle, mind, but listening once again to Graham Coxon’s snaky guitar lines is reason enough to celebrate: Damon Albarn’s lyrics, the enthusiasm, even the Britishness.. all good. But the BritPop excess… dear oh dear.

I nearly finished the book. Nearly. I’d have thrown it across the room, but you don’t do that to books, do you? But if I’d had to read one more tale of matey high jinks with Damian and Tracey and Keith, I would have shredded it, no problem. The more famous he gets, the more uninteresting the tale. I genuinely liked the early history of the band and the insights into his childhood, but the story all goes to custard in a blizzard of cocaine, booze and boorish behavior. I know he admits he was living the rock and roll lifestyle the way he imagined it should be lived.. and that should be entertaining and the basis for a great memoir (Paul Trynka on Iggy, anyone?), but here, it’s just a repetitive barrage of pointless anecdotes.

He may be a reformed character now, who knows? The closing chapters probably would have told me he’s settled down, living in a house, a very big house, in the country, new baby and wife bringing perspective and clarity to his thoughts. But is Alex James now the kind of bloke that Alex James would want to live next door to?

Categories
Old Music

A Squid Eating Dough – Captain Beefheart

The Beefheart odyssey continues.. I’ve given all the post-Tragic Band albums a good going over and there’s some monumental stuff. The Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller) period, and the live album that documents it has much to recommend, not least the squalling ‘Owed T’Alex’ and the ‘Bat Chain Puller’ mantra itself (rumoured to be the cause of more than one relationship breakup.. just play it a couple of hundred times in a row).

And it’s got me thinking, and worried. I’m not one of those retrologists, I don’t think modern music is automatically inferior to classic recordings from the golden age of rock and roll.. I DO listen to lots of it. But..

Which modern bands or artists with an established catalogue display the breadth and scope of work of Beefheart or, say.. The Beatles? No groaning out there, there’s a serious point here, at least as serious as I ever get on TRC..  they made their transition from bar band to rock giants to spent disillusioned musicians in just seven (count em) years, releasing thirteen albums. From ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ to ‘Get Back’.. yer modern rocker would be lucky to put out two records in that time, and chances are those two would sound identical. So I’m having a crisis, and that, in part, is why I’m listening to the Captain so much. It’s challenging me. I’ll be challenged by Trout Mask Replica next week: stay tuned.

Here’s some more Beefheart, the John Lee Hooker-styled choogling title track of his final album. On its release, this video was ‘too weird’ for MTV. Go figure.

Categories
Old Music

Five Hamburgers – Captain Beefheart

It’s Don Van Vliet week here at Riverboat Towers – another Captain: Captain Beefheart, of course. A serious listening session, no doubt, so I’m easing myself in gently with the Booglarizer’s most accessible album, and a classic to boot. Perversely (for an artist where perversity is a regular occurrence) it didn’t chart in the UK, whereas more experimental ‘difficult’ albums did. I’ll get round to those later in the week, topping it all off with ‘Trout Mask Replica’, but if there’s a Beefheart album I’d recommend, ‘Clear Spot‘ is the one. Buy it right now, you’ll get ‘The Spotlight Kid’ on the same CD.

And to get right down to it, there’s something about ‘Trout Mask Replica’ that eludes me. I understand that he taught the band how to play that way, and that, as free-form as it sounds, it’s all been mapped out, a strange and arcane map for sure, but a map just the same. But I haven’t, up to now, ever ‘got it’. There’s also the nagging feeling that advocates of the record are just so far up their own arse and using it as a tool to berate the intelligence of those baffled by TMR and assert their own evident superiority. We’ll see how I get along listening to it this time around.

But for now, here’s the Captain with the late period Magic Band (Richard Snyder and Moris Tepper on guitars) on a French TV show in 1980. Listen to it rumble. Love those glass and steel fingers. ‘Big Eyed Beans From Venus’.

Categories
Live

Ballads Of A Thin Man – Bob Dylan Live

I’d never seen Bob Dylan in concert, but that changed last weekend. He had been here a few weeks previously to play our enormo-dome, but since every report I’d read about the place includes some mention of the execrable sound quality (yes, Vector Arena management, I’m talking about your hall), we didn’t want to lose our Bob virginity, so to speak, at a terrible venue.

Joy was unconfined when the hardest working man in show business (now that James has gone) booked two additional dates at our fine 2000-seat Civic Theatre.. on Sunday, twenty rows back, nestled in to one side of the mixing desk, we settled in to enjoy the show.

I’d read about how there’s not much communication going on on stage and how Bob plays the songs the way he wants to, not the way you want him to. Let me take a pot shot those two particular points of view right here..

One: Bob’s current band knows what it is doing, and so does Bob. He might throw an extra bar into a blues now and again but, hey, it’s the blues. I’m reminded at this juncture of a story of Texas bluesman Lightnin’ Hopkins, delivering a withering stare at the bunch of white boys backing him who dared to suggest a twelve bar blues should be exactly that, and reminding them, fearsomely, that “Lightnin’ change when Lightnin’ want to”. Bob does that too. And the band changed with him.

Two: They’re Bob’s songs. He’s 66. He knows them inside out and he can play them however he likes. If you want some kind of Greatest Hits show, go watch the Chili Peppers or the Stones or someone. Or better still, stay at home out of our way and put a CD on for that perfect ‘pipe and slippers’ evening you so obviously crave.. half the fun of seeing a great artist like Bob is the surprise of a reworked song.

A couple of jaw-dropping moments on Sunday had me grinning like an village idiot: ‘I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)’ played with a ‘Cindy Incidentally’ styled swagger, and the sheer surprise value of “Is this.. no.. he can’t possibly play it like this?” moments on favourites like ‘You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere’ and ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’.

Of course, ‘Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat’ is the blues and always will be.. and that’s the territory Bob marks out in concert and on CD these days. A generous helping of songs from his two most recent waxings slotted right in alongside the classics, but the bar band feel persisted throughout. And a great band it is, especially the rhythm section.. fantastic drumming from George Recile, I have to say. I could be picky and wish for one of Bob’s old cohorts to be filling the lead guitar spot, but that would be doing Denny Freeman a disservice. Bob spends most of his time behind the keys and wheezes some harp every now and again, which adds to the overall sound just fine.

So what else did they play? Well, the Bob-heads out there had the set list up almost before the show finished. Here it is. ‘Summer Days’ swung like a madman.. Tony Garnier on the bull fiddle really getting into it. An honest and affecting ‘Workingman’s Blues #2’, a dramatic ‘Thin Man’ was definitely a highlight .. great great music.

Thanks, Bob.

Categories
Film

Komakino – Joy Division

Very fortunate indeed last night to pay a visit to The Civic in Auckland for a screening of the new Ian Curtis bio-pic ‘Control‘.

Carefully crafted in black and white by Dutch photographer turned director Anton Corbijn (he filmed the Joy Division video for ‘Atmosphere’, and his photos of U2, Beefheart and others were an important part of my NME-obsessed youth) to “reflect the mood of the era” it’s an unsettling but strangely familiar experience for those of us who grew up in the North of England.

Based on Deborah Curtis’ book ‘Touching From A Distance‘ and co-produced by Factory Records supremo Tony Wilson, it’s constructed by those perhaps best placed to give us an insight into Curtis’ world.. but it’s their view, Curtis not being here to defend himself.

Not that he would or could.. Sam Riley plays it perfectly, the troubled young man simply not having either the life experience or the support he needed to work his way out of danger. Too much taken on too soon in his personal life, too many demands in his professional one, something had to give. Add to that fear of dying.. medical advice for his epilepsy being ‘here are some drugs, try them all until we find one that works’, compounded by the death of an epileptic of Curtis’ acquaintance.. that sword hung over his head too. You watch, and beg for someone to sit down and talk to him, work things out, and it doesn’t happen.

Someone told me he wasn’t a very likeable person. The compassion shown as he went about his day job, the childlike innocence and tenderness with which he approached his early relationship with Deborah would bely that. He just didn’t have the vocabulary, the nous, to look at his own life from the outside, he internalised it all.. until it was too late. Seeking solace in a doomed relationship with Annik Honore (played by Alexandra Maria Lara) and comforted by her presence, he nevertheless couldn’t explain his feelings even to her.

Samantha Morton‘s Deborah is an extraordinary portrayal: extraordinary in showing us the ordinary.. unsophisticated, simple, loving even when things are collapsing all around her, but again so young to have to cope with all the trials of both their lives.

It’s moving and bleak, Corbijn tampering with the focus and contrast to wash over the screen when the plot requires it.. it’s genuinely thrilling in the performance sequences, and it has those infrequent but golden moments of Manchester humour: the ebullient Toby Kebbell as manager Rob Gretton almost steals the film. But it’s Riley’s show.

Go see it. Here’s the director (YouTube).