While clearing out for the house move last month, I came across a 2005 issue of Mojo featuring "The 50 Most… Out There Albums of All Time". I'm pleased to say I have six of the top ten, and all of the top three. Sun Ra's Space is the Place was No.2. Trout Mask Replica was No.1.
I got this in Exeter in 1986, the same day I got Frankenchrist. Lucy told me she'd got a copy, too (what a girl, eh, buying Trout Mask?). She'd was persuaded by its inclusion in another of those 'Best of' lists, but naturally enough took an instant dislike to it. The creator of The Simpsons and official 'Famous Beefheart Fan' Matt Groening says at first he thought he was the worst thing he'd ever heard, but stuck with it for the familiar but increasingly rare reason that he'd paid a lot for it and so couldn't afford to dismiss it completely. That's how it came to be the greatest album he'd ever heard.
No point in repeating all the stories about the Captain holding the Magic Band captive in a house in the country, deprived of sleep and food. They're many and various (and probably contradictory), and must be somewhere out there on the web, though I can't find them now to refresh my memory! (I was interested to read that the Captain "recorded much of the vocals whilst isolated from the rest of the band in a different room, only being in partial synch with the music by hearing the slight sound leakage through the studio window" — I heard that disconnect particularly strongly on this listening.) Instead I found the fan site archive for the album, which acknowledges that "a common response to this album… is initial hatred… but…, it sort of creeps up on you… It does take some determined listening, though".
I'm neither a hater nor a lover. It seems to me that this album put down a marker for how far out you could go if you wanted to go Out There. It stakes out the edge of the cliff. If you didn't know where the edge was, then you might find it hard to listen to other records like Clear Spot and Ice Cream for Crow. But the value of Trout Mask for me is making the other records more enjoyable. I can relax knowing that I'm at a safe distance from falling over the edge.
If you get to know the album really well, it's like a secret handshake among fellow fans. When I was in the civil service, David Oliver, whom I'd known for some years, suddenly threw in the "fast'n'bulbous" quote at systems review meeting. This was met, as you'd expect, with widespread blankness, but David saw the look on my face and pointed to me, "He knows what I'm talking about." You'd be surprised how many civil servants have hidden depths.
Last week I went into the Chener Books, the independent bookshop just round the corner from our new home, and asked if I could order a copy of Kevin Courrier's new book on Trout Mask Replica
Thanks to Gideon Coe, tracks from Trout Mask Replica can be heard on daytime radio. He featured it as his Great Lost Album. And a final bit of trivia: in Moonlight on Vermont, the lyric "come out to show them" quotes Steve Reich's early piece Come Out.
 MusicBrainz entry for this album
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