Friday Night Record Party : Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band: Ice Cream For Crow

Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band: Ice Cream For Crow

1982

EMI Records

Format I Own it on: Compact Disc

Track Listing: 1. Ice Cream for Crow 2. The Host the Ghost the Most Holy-O 3. Semi-Multicoloured Caucasian 4. Hey Garland, I Dig Your Tweed Coat 5. Evening Bell 6. Evening Bell 7.Cardboard Cutout Sundown 8. The Past Sure Is Tense 9. The Witch Doctor Life 10. 81 Poop Hatch 11. The Thousandth and Tenth Day of the Human Totem Pole 12. Skeleton Makes Good 13. Light Reflected Off the Oceands of the Moon

This and "Unconditionally Guaranteed" are the only Captain Beefheart albums I don't own on vinyl...I've looked and looked for a vinyl copy of "Ice Cream for Crow" and just can't get my hands on one (On the other hand, I see "Unconditionally Guaranteed" on vinyl all the time and simply wonder if I'm ready to subject myself to more soft rock-era Beefheart)... I finally relented about a year ago and just ordered a CD copy of "Ice Cream for Crow" from Amazon, which to me is admitting defeat...A lot of the fun of record collecting is in the hunt, But I couldn't help it this time. I needed more Beefheart...

This is the band's final album before Vliet abandoned music for the fine arts and I can't overstate what a loss that was to the music world this was...He was irreplaceable in every sense of the word. There will never ever be another Captain Beefheart. I guess we can take some solace in the band going out at the top of their game...This album is a dang hoot! There's such a sense of wooly fun on display here...It almost feels like he was on the cusp of breaking through in some way...I could picture him as some (very) cranky elder-statesmen to a whole new generation of 80's college rock kids eager to take his abuse...I'm having a hard time thinking of other 60's rockers who were still this far ahead of the curve in the 80's...It's hard to believe this was released the same year that Zappa put out "Valley Girl." Holy fuck. It just shows how timeless you can sound when you pay zero attention to the outside world (let alone current musical trends).

Originally, this was supposed to be a side of new material and a side of "Bat Chain Puller" tracks, but Zappa was unwilling to give back the tapes...So Zappa's stinginess turned out to be a generous gift, since we get a full album of new music instead of an EP's worth of old stuff that was already available on bootleg...There is a re-recording of " The Thousandth and Tenth Day of the Human Totem Pole" and he straight up just uses the exact recording of "Poop Hatch" from "Bat Chain Puller" (re-titled "81 Poop Hatch") but outside of that it's all shiny new stuff...

By this point Beefheart was taking on a more "spoken word over fractured accompaniment" approach...The blues and soul vocals are mostly gone but as someone who has a very low tolerance for spoken word albums, I can assure you that this is nothing but wall-to-wall entertainment (minus "Poop Hatch" which still kinda sucks). The delivery and lyrics are so damn inventive and hilarious that I really didn't realize that he's barely singing them until I was putting my thoughts together for this post...It also helps that the band is so talented at making impossible rhythms sound natural and effortless...Again, it wasn't until I listened to the album analytically that I started wondering, "How in the hell did they play this stuff?" There's a handful of really nice instrumentals here that showcase the band and they're more fleshed out than the usual spindly guitar-based instrumentals that were always a fixture on Beefheart albums...

The CD has one bonus track entitled "Light Reflected Off the Oceands of the Moon" which is also an instrumental. It's vital only if you're a huge fan of squonkalidoink...The Captain's approach to the saxophone, while on the surface resembles free jazz, is really just a bunch of random noise...If there's even a shred of rhyme or reason to it, I can't find it...But don't discount the sheer joy in hearing some guy go crazy on some instrument with utter disregard for notes, scales and rules just because he enjoys doing it.

Really, all you need to know about this album is this: There is no song that sounds better when you're drunk on a Friday night than the title track..Bluesy, slippery, fun, I wish the song (and Friday night) could go on forever...I'm serious, next time your about 6 or 7 beers in and it's about 1 am, put this song on...You'll be so busy tappin' yer big fat toe that you'll forget the work week even existed...When that glorious slide guitar twinkles during the, I dunno, let's call it a chorus, all is right with the world...It's literally impossible not to smile when this song is playing...

So here's the plan...Let's polish off this six-pack really quick...