Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller)
Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band
Joe Fernbacher, Creem, 2/79
The Captain has been doing battle with the Grunt people for so long that it’s a strange and wondrous contradiction to have them take him back into the fold, granting him his one simple wish--the freedom to paint his words and rhythms the way he wants to. So to all you Grunt People out there, may all your Gruntettes ’n’ Grunties be graced with the fantastic eternity that comes with Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band. To all of us who’ve been waiting for him to return and somehow make the world a little bit easier to look at, he’s back with a really magical Magic Band, and an enthusiasm he’s never really shown before. The Captain is excited and so should we all be, because the language is once again grinning.
Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller) could almost fit chronologically right behind Lick My Decals Off, yet it also projects a golden future for the word and its master. Backed impeccably by a new Magic Band composed of true disciples, the Captain runs a near hysterical gamut of emotions. From the hauntingly majestic love rite, “Candle Mambo” down to the instrumental saga of “Suction Prints” and right back up to the weeping recitation of “Apes-Ma,” there is a vitality, a determination, and an absolute commitment that somehow just didn’t present itself on his last two releases for Mercury.
“Candle Mambo” is as pure a love song as any produced by those so-called pop romantics. It displays love at an angle very few have been privileged to see. “Suction Prints” is a stranger instrumental than “Alice in Blunderland,” and gives the new Magic Band a chance to show that they really understand the beauty and heroics of the Captain and his experiments in the landscapes of language. This is jazz music in an era of white noise and blood aesthetics.
“Apes-Ma,” coupled with “Golden Birdies,” would make a single release that’d cut all the so-called modern rock poets right to the quick. The one thing that any Beefheartian messenger will tell you is that they’re waiting for the Captain to put out an entire album of recitations from his book of wonders. An album of his readings is essential; it’s also something that’d open up new vistas for his novitiates as well as enhance the joy of his already devoted fans. In but a few stanzas he’s able to break down the anti-feeling defenses of even the most callused listeners. He’s got power in his rhythms.
The title song is a stroke by stroke compilation of Magic Band musical mania and Beefheart’s bamboozle beauty of color ’n’ rhyme. Could this album be the masterpiece that’s been on the docks of time since the demise of 1969, with a real, honest awareness of life and happiness? Yup, this record is a masterpiece, and it ain’t even theatre...
I could sit here and write for the next six weeks--non-stop--about the multi-leveled ramifications of this album, but I won’t. What I will say is that the Magic Band is more mystical than ever, and Don Van Vliet is once again roaming the land preaching the word of the word. Watch him work.
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