CAPTAIN BEEFHEART
This wasn't the apocalypse . . . which is why it wasn't punk rock. It wasn't Artaud, it wasn't Genet, it wasn't Iggy or Richard Hell or Patti Smith or even Johnny Rotten. It wasn't romantic, tragic, or even fuck-you drugged out antisocial 13th Floor Elevators skree. It was the blues.
It was smashed-up, rebuilt, straight up real blues. From a California white boy of questionable (social) sanity. It wasn't new: it was old, it was very old. As old as Ives & Charlie Patton. As old as howling at the empty sky. It wasn't out, it was in . . . and so far gone.
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Captain Beefheart shattered music & lived with the beautiful fragments. More, he knew the fragments were whole, a world in a snowflake. He lived sound, he lived word (does it need to be said that he's rock's only poet?), he lived rage, he lived lust. Love doesn't need to be said.
[Bill]
