Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band: Ice Cream for Crow

This is the first Beefheart album I bought. I was just seventeen, it was October or November 1982, and I don't think I'd heard any of his stuff before. I got this purely on the strength of a five-star review in Sounds.

It's a long story, but I was lodging with a family in Tonbridge at the time. I got this back to the house, put it on the stereo, and took it off within a few minutes. The family had young children, and I didn't think they would tolerate having someone in their home who listened to such cacophony; this noise could only mark everyone associated with it as deranged. It was headphones-only from that point forward.

Older generations talk about Elvis Presley or Lonnie Donnegan sounding shocking and threatening. For me this Beefheart album — my first, his last — was that watershed. After this, nothing could faze me quite as much again: not The Residents, not even Ornette Coleman, and certainly not Napalm Death.

Even though I couldn't see what there could be to like in this music, I just didn't have that many records, so I listened to it quite a few times. It wasn't quick, the process of getting used to it. I think it took several years (helped by John Peel playing Clear Spot a lot on the radio), and it was 1986 before I bought another Beefheart album.

I still think this album, along with maybe Doc at the Radar Station, has some of the most sublimely beautiful moments of Beefheart's career, like the guitar melody that comes in under the lines "Ice cream for crow/Sun cream by day" or the instrumental Evening Bell.

I remember the Sounds review referred to The Thousandth and Tenth Day of the Human Totem Pole and wondered if we could look forward to a full album of spoken-word material from Beefheart in the future. There was nothing but paintings after this, but that's fine too.

MusicBrainz entry for this album

Comments

[Ferdi]

The first one I heard was Lick My Decals Off, Baby. I wonder if I would have persisted if I'd heard Trout Mask Replica first.

I bought Decals on eBay a few years ago -- apparently a bootleg, although I didn't realize it at the time.

I guess I'm not the collector you are. Although Miles Davis and Beefheart are favourites of mine, I don't have Kind of Blue, and I don't have anything by Beefheart before Trout Mask Replica. I do have a limited edition live Beefheart, I'm Going to Do What I Wanna Do, now worth plenty.