Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Captain Beefheart and Mortgage Derivatives
I don't know exactly what made me think of Captain Beefheart. Maybe his eccentric life force offers a salutary perspective on things as they are now drifting. Drifting.
In this youtube video from 1982 Captain Beefheart talks to Letterman. It is a fascinating segment in the interplay of expectation, of group reaction to the unfamiliar; in the discomfort of difference in a crowd. Beefheart isn't wearing a costume and ironically winking subtextually, he is the real deal.
As the segment evolves, the audience, which at heart is welcoming and wanting something new, starts to accept the eccentric pop genius. He already had his corner of pop fame but not in the realm Letterman inhabits. It is a circus spectacle: a shaman slowly casting his spell over conventional expectation.
Beefheart splattered the drone of the quotidian and mind numbing category. He would never be mainstream, but he will always influence other artists. Even now Beefheart's work is cutting edge. It is hard to pinpoint it — he extends a liberty that is indefinable but has shaken things up. You think immediately of Tom Waits, but there are excitements in his work that are suggestive to anyone creative. Beefheart wasn't a formbreaker out of ironic self conscious sophistication like Zappa; he was better, a natural — he couldn't help but be himself and it would never occur to him not to be. Sort of like Andy Kaufman.
When asked in a 1980 interview what the most important thing to him was he said, “My wife. Definitely. Sorry girls.” He meant it. Always surprising.