Captain Beefheart - The Spotlight Kid/Clear Spot

In 1972 it probably seemed like the year belonged to a blues-tinged wall-of-sound rock band--maybe Deep Purple, who recorded Made in Japan that year--but from an aesthetic vantage, the blues-rock mantle has to go Captain Beefheart. In 1972 producer Ted Templeman took the controls for a pair of stunning Beefheart diamonds (in the rough of course), The Spotlight Kid and Clear Spot, both collected here in full on one CD. Beefheart's voice sounds rightly inimitable, growly and gruff and lyrically cryptic. For its part, the Magic Band is in top form as well, integrating marimba and an assortment of percussion into the slide guitar forestry. There's a distinct and good reason that the celebrated Beefheart box set of rarities is called Grow Fins: the tune, as it appears on this collection, is a classic terrain-defying testament of love as only Don Van Vliet (Beefheart) could provide, a surreal and funny little tune caught in a skein of rough-hewn music that's stood the test of time splendidly. --Andrew Bartlett Amazon.com essential recording

Blowing the Blues Away!

Original, innovative, the only genuine genius to emerge from the psychedelic meltdown of the 1960's, Beefheart's Spoltight Kid remains my personal favourite so this review will concentrate on that album out of the two. However Clear Spot is also extraordinary making this release the best coupling ever!

The Spotlight Kid may not be as complex as Trout Mask Replica or Lick My Decals Off Baby, but in the vast field of the blues, it's head and shoulders above anything else. `Grow Finns' has to be one of the defining moments in the expression of man's condition.

Vocally Beefheart is reminiscent of Howlin' Wolf, but his own personality is so much larger than life it's impossible to compare him with anyone else. We now know much more about the darker side to that personality; the frustrated energy, the violence and mind games inflicted on members of the Magic Band, and the depressive mood swings that were first alluded to in Lester Bangs famous feature articles published by the New Musical Express magazine over two consecutive issues during the 1970's. It all contributes to a greater understanding of this multi-faceted genius who had much more to come to terms with than us mere mortals.

The music is impossible to describe, Lester Bangs came closest in the above mentioned article. To call it a unique fusion could mean anything but in its simplest terms that's what it is. The breadth of that fusion however is unlike anything else in existence!

With The Spotlight Kid, Beefheart lays aside his extraordinary ability to blow any kind of reed instrument that culminates in a catharsis of sound resembling Ornette Coleman, Albert Ayler and Michael Brecker and instead doubles up on the harmonica to back his own vocals. The Magic Band, as always, give us the most visual of audible accompaniments to Beefheart's poetry; bass, drums, marimba, and two electric guitars that raunch away on the counterpoint with both pairs of feet in the swamp make this an unforgettable journey. For example there have been endless simulations in sound of trains but on `Click Clack', pining guitars blend with Beefheart's weeping harp above a driving off beat rhythm, set in motion by a Monkish piano that gives this representation the deepest and most lamentable groove of them all.

The Spotlight Kid is Beefheart's most intimate and personal statement to emerge from a very personal string of creations; after the simultaneous earthbound and cosmic explosions of Trout Mask Replica and Lick My Decals Off Baby, Beefheart falls back on the blues, balm for the fever, but in the final track `Glider', he takes wing again, shaking the blues free in a life affirming and shattering finale.
September 23, 2008

Two views from Venus

While it's economical to pick up these kind of twofers, it's important to make the effort to judge each album individually on it's own merit. I'm going to buck the trend and say 'Clear Spot' is the better album here. 'Spotlight Kid' is great, but some of the songs suffer from Ted Templeton's heavy hand and sound like they would be more appropriate on a Janis Joplin record. Nothing dates a record faster than that 60's psychedlic sound. Still, the Captain is in fine form here with his wailing, incandescent blues. 'Clear Spot' is much tighter and, in it's own way, more eccentric, as it seems to be focused on spinning out a batch of off-kilter pop gems the likes of which I have never really heard from the Captain before. If this was the pre-cursor to the dreaded commercial period that everyone seems to love/hate so much, then maybe I need to give those records a spin also, because the Captain definitely had a way with a pop ditty (wah diddy). August 14, 2008

My favorite Beefheart

Just buy it for "Click Clack" or "Blue Million Miles". My biggest problem with this CD is that my son keeps stealing my copy. Don Van Vliet takes a familar genre and turns it on its ear with virtuosity. July 11, 2008

Captain Beefheart-My head is my only house unless it rains

If you have never heard "My head is my only house unless it rains", I highly recommend the experience. I have yet to figure out how to duplicate the chording, and no one can sing this song like Don Van Vliet. A real love song when one least expects it.
Clear Spot is a hoot as well. January 21, 2008

Does it matter?

Some albums/songs create a moment's transcendence in a life harried by the day to day. Some artists create a moment's identification between me and the music. And then there are the artists who have changed the way I think about the world. Don Van Vliet is of the second type in my ears. He opened my eyes to the golf ball around me and for that I am in his debt. And to the point, Clear Spot is the album that I think of when I think of the captain (not that I don't respect The Spotlight Kid). I haven't owned a copy since I was 17 and I can still hear the songs echoing through the canyons of my mind. I repurchased this combo a few months back and after all these years my memory only matches the music. How often can we say that?
In the 21st Century I listen to RadioHead or Mark Sandman (see ya on the flip side) or Tom Waits and I can hear Van Vliet in all of them. He is the musician's musician because, to me, he dared to walk out into the void and embrace what he found there. I am happy to blabber and smoke in his company.
If you like Captain Beefheart's peculiar distillation of life you will love this album. January 11, 2007

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