Captain Beefheart: Under Review
The music of Don "Captain Beefheart" Van Vliet is like certain works of literature: lots of people talk about how great it supposedly is, but relatively few have ever actually heard (or read) it. That could change with the release ofCaptain Beefheart – Under Review, an absorbing, comprehensive, and lengthy (nearly two hours) overview of this idiosyncratic character's career that serves as the musical equivalent of a Cliffs Notes for, say, James Joyce'sFinnegans Wake. Van Vliet retired from music in the early '80s in order to devote himself to painting, his first love; a disclaimer lets us know that neither he nor anyone in his immediate circle authorized this British-made film, and although there is lots of Beefheart music to be found here, the Captain himself is not interviewed. Plenty of others are, including many of the musicians who populated Beefheart's Magic Band over the years. Along with a host of critics and other "experts," they cover all the bases, from his earliest recording (a performance of the semi-hit "Diddy Wah Diddy" from the '60s teen TV showWhere the Action Isis just one of the extraordinary number of video clips included) to his last (the 1982 albumIce Cream for Crow). The consensus: Beefheart's sound, though obviously rooted in the Delta blues (especially Howlin' Wolf's), was unlike anyone else's. WithTrout Mask Replica, he blended a surreal sense of humor with dense, fragmented, seemingly chaotic (but painstakingly rehearsed) music; many others followed, including a few ill-conceived attempts at a more commercial sound, but that 1969 double album is still considered his masterpiece, a work that "reinvented conventional song form." Some of the filmmakers' choices are preposterous: drummer John "Drumbo" French is interviewed in a tree, talking into a telephone, while pompous Brit critic Alan Clayson holds forth from a church pulpit. But by and large,Captain Beefheart – Under Reviewis, as the Captain's himself put it, "fast and bulbous."--Sam Graham