Trout mask replica

Creation

In addition to the influence of blues and free jazz , the album also contains elements of folk , avant-garde and other various musical genres. Van Vliet's vocal range ranged from blues howls to wild falsetto and laconic mutterings. The texts contain all kinds of references to such topics as the history of music , American and international politics , the Holocaust , love and sexuality , Stephen Reich , gospel , conformity and the influence of a person on his environment.

According to Van Vliet, all the songs were written in one eight-hour session. The band claimed that the songs “Moonlight on Vermont” and “Sugar 'n Spikes” were written in December 1967, while “Veteran's Day Poppy” was written in late May / early June 1968. Most of the rest of the songs were composed over several months in the summer and fall of 1968 in an unprecedented process of experimentation. One of the influences on the writing process was the film that Gary Marker, a friend of Van Vliet, lost to him. Marker, being a sound engineer , could connect parts of different recordings so that during transition they would sound smoothly and maintain a consistent beat, despite various sources. When Van Vliet heard the tape, he exclaimed: “ This is what I need!” ^[1] .

The main instrument for writing songs to Van Vliet was the piano. Since he had never played it before and had no special musical knowledge, he had the opportunity to experiment without biased ideas of musical form and structure. Van Vliet sat at the piano until he had a rhythmic or melodic pattern that he liked. Mike Barnes likened this approach to John Cage's “dissident disrespect for classical traditions” ^[2] . After that, John French arranged this drawing, which in its structure usually did not exceed one or two measures , into a musical notation. Then French combined all the fragments into a single composition and, independently deciding which part to play on which instrument, showed each musician its part. However, the final decision on the form of each song was made by Van Vliet.

“He made 80% of the album by knocking out brains from the piano, creating a rhythm and having no idea what all these white and black things mean. Then John French, the drummer, usually wrote all this in notes and distributed it to the parties for each musician. In general, all his ideas were built not on keys, but on rhythm, because this was the only thing he could offer as a non-musician. And so, when John converted it into notes and sat, sorted out with each his part, situations arose when we come across some seven notes, and you throw up your head and say: “How will I play these seven notes on six strings?”. Then we had to somehow get hungry and make it as much as possible like what he played. I don’t even understand why we did it, because he had no idea what he was playing, ”- Bill Hacklroud.

“The thing is that I realized that they cannot be used as musicians. I tried to teach them sculpture as much as possible without going into this form, ”Van Vliet.

Hacklroud also noted, "how haphazardly each batch was created individually, and then they were glued together surgically." After, the song created in this way was played the same way every time, avoiding any improvisation - an approach typical of popular music that prefers to adhere to a formal composition. Hacklroud: “We played the same every evening. Surprisingly the same every time. The only thing that could change was the pace - depending on the nervous state that day. It was the usual routine rehearsal, like any band. ”

French claimed that about 3/4 of all the songs were composed at the piano. The rest consisted mainly of parties that Van Vlyth simply whistled. “He liked any melodies that had a repetition in themselves. He immediately said: “Oh, that's cool! Let's play it again. ” And he whistled tunes, in this he was a specialist, he did great. He sits, whistles, releasing smoke rings. It was like a magic show. ”- Hacklroud. Sometimes a part of the song was composed on the piano, while the rest were whistled. The songs Well, The Dust Blows Forward and the Dust Blows Back, and Orange Claw Hammer were solo vocal numbers without any accompaniment, and China Pig was a spontaneous improvisation. In 1991, Van Vliet described the album as "an attempt to expand consciousness in many directions at once, but not to focus on anything at the same time - this is what I tried to do."

Some songs have fragments borrowed from others, including fairly well-known songs. For example, the guitar part in Veteran's Day Poppy was taken from Gene Autry 's song “Rancho Grande”, and the middle part of “Sugar 'n Spikes” was based on a melodic fragment from Miles Davis 's Concierto de Aranjuez . Pachuco Cadaver used a melody from James Riley's Shortnin 'Bread song, while the line “come out to show dem” in “Moonlight on Vermont” was taken from Stephen Reich's “Come Out”. In addition, “Moonlight on Vermont” also includes the chorus of the gospel song “Old-Time Religion”. Of the non-musical influence on the album there is the instrumental composition “Dali's Car”, which was inspired by the viewing of Salvador Dali 's famous installation “Rainy Taxi”.

Record

“Moonlight on Vermont” and “Veteran's Day Poppy” were recorded in August 1968 at Sunset Sound Recorders, about seven months before recording all the other songs. At that time, the group consisted of Van Vliet, Bill Hacklroud and Jeff Cotton on guitars, John French on drums, and Gary Marker, who temporarily took the place of the bass player, who before that was Jerry Handley. About a month later, permanent bass player Mark Boston joined the band. In this line-up, the group recorded the rest of the songs, and Victor Hayden, a cousin of Van Vliet, sometimes played along on the bass clarinet.

Zappa had an idea to record an album during rehearsals right in the house where the group lived a commune. Working with Zappa and sound engineer Dick Kank, the group even recorded some preliminary minuses in a house on Woodland Hills with completely natural sound localization: each instrument was recorded in different rooms. According to Zappa, the recordings turned out pretty good, but Van Vliet decided that Zappa just wants to save this way and began to insist on recordings in a professional studio. Zappa said that “it was impossible to explain anything to him. It seems to me, if something comes to his mind, it is best to be silent in a rag and not interfere, and let him do what he wants, regardless of whether he is right or not ” ^[3] . From the recordings made entirely at home, the instrumental “Hair Pie: Bake 1” hit the album. Two vocal numbers without any musical accompaniment, “The Dust Blows Forward 'n The Dust Blows Back” and “Orange Claw Hammer”, as well as improvised blues “China Pig”, where Van Vlietu is accompanied by a former member of Doug Moon on guitar, were recorded in the house on an ordinary cassette recorder. “The Blimp” was recorded by Zappa in the studio during a telephone conversation with Van Vliet; Jeff Cotton picked up the phone to read Van Vliet’s new poem, inspired by the dramatic footage of the Hindenburg airship catastrophe. Zappa used the recorded text twice: in addition to the Trout Mask Replica version, Zappa put it on the minus of The Mothers of Invention's “Charles Ives” song, named for the American modernist composer Charles Ives . This version was only released in July 1992 on the album You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore, Vol. 5 .

While at Whitney Studios in Los Angeles, the band recorded 20 instrumental tracks in one six-hour session. ^[4] The next few days, Van Vliet separately recorded his vocals. However, instead of recording in headphones, he sang while listening to the instrumental track weakly reaching from the control room ^[5] . As a result of this, the vocals do not sound exactly in sync with the band; When asked about synchronization, Van Vliet answered: “This is what they do before an attack by paratroopers, is it?” ^[6] .

• Don van Vliet (Captain Beefheart) - vocals , saxophone , bass clarinet , musical , shahnai , horn

The magic band

• Bill Harkleroad - guitar , flute
• Jeff Cotton - guitar, vocals ("Pena", "The Blimp")
• Victor Hayden - bass clarinet, vocals
• Mark Boston - Bass
• John French - Percussion , Percussion

Additional musicians

• Doug Moon - Guitar ("China Pig")
• Dick Kunz - voice ("She's Too Much for My Mirror")
• Gary Marker - Bass Guitar (Moonlight on Vermont, Veteran's Day Poppy)
• Frank Zappa - voice ("Ella Guru," The Blimp "," Pena ")
• Roy Estrada - bass ("The Blimp")
• Arthur Tripp - Percussion and Percussion ("The Blimp")
• Don Preston - Piano ("The Blimp")
• Ian Underwood - Saxophone ("The Blimp")
• Gardner Bank - Saxophone and Trumpet (“The Blimp”)

• Mike Barnes, Captain Beefheart: The Biography (2004)