Trout Mask Replica
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The Mascara Snake: "Fast 'n' bulbous!" —Intro to "Pena"
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Captain Beefheart's most well known and notorious album. Released in 1969, and produced by Frank Zappa, the record has never been a mainstream success, but became a cult icon for anyone with an ear for the bizarre and experimental.
Trout Mask Replica is especially known for being a difficult experience for people who listen to it for the first time. The record is known for its jagged rhythms, lack of traditional harmony and melodies and dissonant sounds. Many listeners give up after trying only a few songs or only playing it once. However, for the patient listener Trout Mask Replica can be a experience that changes one's view of traditional harmony and melody.
Several avant-garde, progressive and alternative rock musicians have been influenced by Trout Mask Replica's free, bizarre and adventurous spirit. Nowadays it's generally acclaimed as a landmark album in rock music history.
Tropes used in Trout Mask Replica include:
- Album Title Drop: "Old Fart At Play": "(...) the nose of the wooden mask/where the holes had just been a moment ago/was now smooth and amazingly blended camouflaged in/with the very intricate rainbow trout replica."
- And Starring: Frank Zappa, producer of the record, can be heard on the track "The Blimp".
- Bawdy Song: "Pena": "The smoke billowing up between her legs made me vomit beautifully."
- Better Than It Sounds: Literally!
- "Dachau Blues", a blues song about Nazi concentration camp Dachau seems like an inappropriate idea, but it's actually a powerful and dramatic song.
- Big Beautiful Woman: Big Joan in "When Big Joan Sets Up".
- Control Freak: Beefheart forced his musicians to listen to his orders and wanted everything to sound exactly as he wanted it. He even recorded his vocal parts without ear phones, listening to the leakage from the studio, resulting in the lack of synchronisation between vocals and music.
- Cryptic Conversation: The intro to "Pena"
- Cryptically Unhelpful Answer: The intro to "Pachuco Cadaver": "A squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is fast 'n bulbous, got me?"
- Darker and Edgier: Not only was Trout Mask Replica musically more extreme than Beefheart's previous albums (due to the fact that Zappa gave him total creative control!) but the lyrics were far more absurd and disturbing.
- "Dachau Blues" sings about the Holocaust.
- "Veteran's Day Poppy" is about a woman lamenting the death of one of her children during the war.
- "Ant Man Bee" tells about man's destruction of the environment.
- The tracks "Pachuco Cadaver," "Bill's Corpse," "Fallin' Ditch," and "China Pig" all feature death.
- "Pena" describes how a woman sitting on a turned on waffle iron makes the protagonist "vomit beautifully," while "Neon Meate Dream Of A Octafish" features a pun on the word "incest."
- Everything Has Rhythm: Patient listeners eventually discover that this record does have rhythm.
- Fictional Country: "Frownland"
- "Frownland" is what Beefheart calls someone else's negative outlook on life. He's saying he wants to enjoy the world without being put off by the cynicism of others around him. It's not literally about a country, although plenty of Beefheart inspired fiction uses this as a setting.
- Fish People: Beefheart wears a carp's mask on the cover (and not a trout as the cover implies.)
- Genre Busting: Beefheart was originally a blues singer, but this album doesn't sound anything like it. It's too extreme for rock either and is usually categorized under avant garde or progressive rock. Sometimes it's categorized under "outsider music" as well.
- Except for "China Pig," which is standard blues, albeit with some slightly odd lyrics.
- Grief Song: The mother in "Veteran's Day Poppy."
- Guttural Growler: Beefheart.
- Hilarious in Hindsight:
- Beefheart sang in "Wild Life" that he's going to the mountains, because "wild life is a man's best friend." In 1982 he stopped making recordings and lived his final years in the middle of nature (although it weren't the mountains, but the Mojave Desert).
- The line "this is what is gonna make Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band a big hit" in "The Blimp."
- Hobos: "Orange Claw Hammer" and "Hobo Chang Ba"
- Humans Are the Real Monsters: Arguably a major theme throughout the album.
- "Dachau Blues": "The world can't forget that misery / An' the young ones now beggin' the old ones please / To stop bein' madmen 'fore they have t' tell their children / 'bout the burnin's back in World War Three's..."
- "Ant Man Bee": "In God's garden only man and the ants won't let each other be."
- "Steal Softly Thru Snow": "Man's lived a million years 'n still he kills."
- In Harmony with Nature: "The Dust Blows Forward And The Dust Blows Back," "Sweet Bulbs," "Ant Man Bee," "Wild Life"
- Jerkass: Captain Beefheart mentally and physically harassed his band members while rehearsing for this album. Beatings, negative reinforcement and tactics similar to brainwashing weren't uncommon, with Beefheart making a habit of putting members "in the barrel", subjecting them to continuous beration until they collapsed in tears. He and his musicians lived in complete isolation in an empty house for 8 grueling months practicing up to 14 hours a day, living on a bare subsistence diet with no support beyond welfare and contributions from their parents. And when Zappa suggested they record the album in the house, Beefheart got suspicious that he was trying to save money and insisted they use a professional studio.
- Love It or Hate It: This record has quite some obsessive fans, including Matt Groening, who claims it's his favorite record of all time. But there are zillions of people who will never enjoy listening to Trout Mask Replica. Even devoted Beefheart fans don't always play this record that often.
- Groening himself acknowledged it took "about six or seven" listens before it "clicked."
- Lyrical Dissonance: But then again, even the music is dissonant.
- Nature Hero: "Wild Life" is about a man who decides to go up to the mountains to live with the bears.
- The Poppy: "Veteran's Day Poppy"
- Punny Name: "Sugar 'N Spikes" instead of the phrase "sugar and spice."
- Record Producer: Frank Zappa
- Sanity Slippage Song: Multiple examples, but most obviously in "Orange Claw Hammer": "God, before me, if I'm not crazy is my daughter!"
- Something Blues: "Dachau Blues" and "My Human Gets Me Blues"
- Stage Names: Beefheart gave his band members new, colorful stage names during the preparation of this album, including "Zoot Horn Rollo," "Antennae Jimmy Semens," "The Mascara Snake," "Rockette Morton" and "Drumbo."
- Stop and Go: "When Big Joan Sits Up", after the line "she's out of reach".
- Starving Artist: The band members were once arrested for stealing food because of the starvation diet they were forced on, with Zappa bailing them out.
- Studio Chatter: The page quote.
- Throw It In: Seeing as Frank Zappa was fond of this, it's unsurprising that a certain amount of studio chatter was left in some of the spoken-word tracks.
- True Art Is Incomprehensible
- The confusing thing about this is sometimes Beefheart will pick words for their sounds, not for their meaning. Other times he will make quite an insightful environmental observation. First time listeners are not always sure whether the nonsensical lyrics have hidden meanings, or if the serious lyrics are in fact nonsensical.
- Vindicated by History: Trout Mask Replica was originally not a success, but today music critics consider it to be one of the most important and influential albums in music history.
- What Do You Mean It Wasn't Made on Drugs?: Beefheart denied it, but did have some experiences with marihuana and LSD. According to John French's book, Beefheart once took LSD and looked inside a band member's cupboard in the dark, only to find a pile of potatoes so old that they were starting to grow roots again. This scared the shit out of him, and for a long time he remained convinced that he had seen an alien.
- Word Salad Lyrics: Every track with lyrics.
- World of Chaos: Beefheart's lyrics and topics defy the laws of physics.
- World War Three: Mentioned in "Dachau Blues"