Fast and bulbous! What’s that? It’s 20 Big Ones Eating Dough in a Polyethylene Bag: a collection of songs by Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band meant to comprise a full picture of the eccentric, notoriously surprising avant gardist and psychedelic blues music manglers for the acquainted and the not-so-acquainted among you.
I am a huge fan of Captain Beefheart. When Daphny kicked off the latest 20 Big Ones craze here on the forum, it didn’t take much consideration before I chose this group as the subject of my own. Discovering the work of Beefheart (whose name is Don Van Villet) and the incredible musicians in The Magic Band in my late 20s reshaped my understanding of the whole impetus an artist feels that compels them to work like they do, to create the kinds of works that they do, an impact no other artist but David Lynch has really had on me. Studying the band’s discography focused my thoughts over time so that I could now articulate my love for surrealist art practices, rock and roll and rhythm and blues, jazz instrumentation, puns and stupid jokes, groove, collage, and so much more. My soon-to-be wife introduced me to the group in the weeks leading up to our first date. And on that date we definitely talked about various and minute specifics in a video of the group’s 1968 performance of Electricity on the beach at Cannes, appreciable only to the overly-invested or the very enthused. I have since, by her admission, overcome her level of familiarity and love for the band
So let me share some of the passion and familiarity here. This 20 Big Ones playlist was made with the goal of putting a bunch of good songs together, organizing them in a way that invited deep listening, while painting a fairly encompassing picture of the avant garde which the group managed to define across their 11 albums and nearly 20 year career. So expect some skits, some heavy tunes, poems, songs that really freak you out, great grooves, instrumentals, instrumentation, joyful passages, vocals plausibly performed by a muppet, and a shit ton of compelling imagery and a bounty of new vocal stims for you to get stuck on.
20 Big Ones Eating Dough in a Polyethylene Bag tracklist
That bonus disc for Safe As Milk is FULL of great songs!! I love Trust Us Take 9 too.
Beefheart is one of those groups that really rewards archivist listening practices. You can find so many different versions of different songs, put out as a bonus track, or scrapped and then later repurposed recording project, and they are all great or at least interesting.
Oh man, I agonised over whether or not to make my big ones thread about beefheart but worried I wouldn’t be able to narrow it down to just 20… Great choices!
During the first covid lockdown, I spent some time working on this slightly less jarring mix of Flash Gordon’s Ape:
I know Trout Mask Replica usually gets most of the spotlight, and for good reason, but I have a particular soft spot for those last three albums:
no idea what’s going on with this particular upload…
Hell, I even like the captain’s softer side:
I was really delighted when the original version of Bat Chain Puller got an official release in 2012. Odd Jobs is a real favourite of mine! You can sorta hear how the outro riff eventually morphed into Tropical Hot Dog Night too:
Speaking of, this Coati Mundi cover of Tropical Hot Dog Night is really great!
And on the topic of covers (I swear this is the last thing), I still find it kinda incredible that Max Tundra was not only able to convince 90s turn of the millennium UK chart topping one-hit-wonders Daphne & Celeste to collaborate on a comeback album but also record a cover of Kandy Korn of all things…
I looove the late 70s and 80s albums too. Though I am less familiar with Ice Cream For Crow than I would like to be. The blindspots in my awareness of Captain Beefheart’s discography were really highlighted while putting all this together. I deliberately listened to more Trout Mask Replica, Spotlight Kid, and Strictly Personal trying to fill out some of that, but left Bluejeans and Moonbeams, Unconditionally Guaranteed, and the 2012 Batchain Puller for another time when I felt I finally wrangled enough songs together to accomplish what I wanted with this playlist. I think my preference for Doc at the Radar Station and the “It Comes To You in Plain Brown Wrapper” recordings is shown through the playlist, but I am excited to explore those lesser known areas I identified in the coming weeks.
But I easily could have included so many more songs from almost every single album, it was so hard to resist, and just had to end somewhere. This took me two full weeks to put together!!
This Kandy Korn cover is kind of incredible to hear. Thanks so much for linking this lol.
Ohhh yeah, that Safe as Milk CD got a lot of playtime in my parents’ old car to their confusion/annoyance.
I would have killed to see any of these Beefheart groups live (I guess the closest to it was the Magic Band which doesn’t seem to be active now) but I go back to these clips a lot.
Even when the band was tragic it was still magic
This bass solo, which got worked into Suction Prints later on is one of my favs and my favorite rendition plays in pretty grimy audience bootleg form at the beginning of this show
Probably the best batch of Best Batch Yet. I think the Captain even directs the lyrics at the band at one point.
this mascara snake performance is so funny. rockette morton’s fit is so cool, too. I love the way he crouches around the stage in another song from the same set, Click Clack.
Effective! This song always shocks to hear it. I deliberately placed it as a final boss in the playlist, followed by the electric Hot Dog Tropical Night as like a parade celebration for having gone through all this and made it out in one piece.
also this is part of the playlist, so you’ll see it eventually, but I want to highlight the video for Flash Gordon’s Ape uploaded in december 2008 by the account “alargedog” and really give it the space it deserves
holy shit, I genuinely almost died choking from laughter at the 2:40 mark… an absolute work of art. Shocked I hadn’t seen it before, thank you for this gift!
Edit: something just popped into my head that I completely forgot about, these weirdly inspired famicom renditions:
I always crack up with his delivery of “just keep comin’ — JESUS — you’re the best dressed!!”
Think about these lyrics often too and the way he stresses certain words making it sound like even he’s surprised by what’s coming out of his mouth…
you were afraid you’d be the devil’s red wife
but it’s alright, god dug your dance…
and would have you young and in his… harem…
dress you the way he wants cuz he never had a dog…
cuz everybody made him a boy…
And god didn’t think to ask his… preference
Yeah it’s these exact kinds of things that lodge in my head and I end up just repeating for days, every couple of weeks. I only just realized that these are commonly called vocal stims? Well, space-age couple, I got a few of those, and I know where you can find some more…
