KC Rawley: Dec 19, 2010

"Trout Mask Replica," considered by many to be Don Van Vliet's masterpiece, is No. 58 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

The same year that the Beatles were tearing up the charts with their first American release, an oddly charismatic Lancaster man, Don Vliet, was playing dances at the Antelope Valley Fairgrounds in the personae of Captain Beefheart, with a backing group dubbed the Magic Band.

Decades later, "Meet the Beatles," would be named Number 59 on the Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. One place higher, at Number 58, is Captain Beefheart's breakthrough album, "Trout Mask Replica."

That year, 1964, I was deep in throes of that malady some people have never recovered from: Beatlemania. The Fab Four were ruling the airwaves and conquering American television. I was 10-years old, and the British Invasion totally shaped my rock and roll aesthetic. I like my songs to be 3 1/2 minutes long, with a hook and a bridge, and my collection is heavy on power pop.

So it was a huge leap for me when I transfered from Simi High School to Royal in 1970 and fell in with a group of boys totally dedicated to the weirdness that was Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart, and the GTOs.

I was Wendy among the Lost Boys, and they mocked my fondness for English trad-rock bands like Fairport Convention, the Strawbs, and Steel-Eye Span. When they put on "The Captain," as they called Beefheart, I groaned. His ranting and atonal noodling just gave me a headache. When they were done, I'd play some Emerson, Lake and Palmer.

I came to love Frank Zappa, but mostly the stuff that was less experimental and more pop, like "Hot Rats," or "Just Another Band from L.A." But I never could get into Beefheart, not that I tried too hard. When I protested yet another playing of "Trout Mask Replica" or "Lick My Decals off, Baby," the Lost Boys would say things like "But, he's a genius!" or "He has a four-and-a-half octave vocal range!"

For some reason they thought that I would be impressed by the Captain's odd time signatures, when really, all the music I liked was in 4/4.

I've always been somewhat of a reactionary when it comes to music. When I first heard the B-52s, Devo, and Sex Pistols, I believed that I had never heard such rubbish in all my life. Now, I love them all.

When I moved to the Antelope Valley and found out that Beefheart was a native son, if not a celebrated one, I was intrigued. I always planned to write a comprehensive story about Don Van Vliet, before I left the paper. My friend Lynn loaned me a DVD on him that sat on top of my bookcase for years.

But like so many things, it never came to pass. So yesterday, after I heard about his death, I finally watched the 2006 release, "Captain Beefheart: Under Review," which features many of the local musicians, biographers, and British rock critics talking about each LP.

I learned many things from that viewing: mostly that I still hate "Trout Mask," but there are more accessible albums that I'd really like to hear all the way through, like "Clear Spot." I love his voice now that I am older, probably because I was broken in by years of Tom Waits.

I called Congressman Buck McKeon's former field representative, Lew Stults, who knew Vliet before he added the "Van," and booked Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band back in 1964-65. He said that even then, the Captain could work a crowd.

"He was a bit of a con man," Stults said. "He had an air about him that was all for the stage." That was, when the Captain wasn't at his day-job selling shoes at Kinney's on Sierra Highway.

Stults was part of a car club called the Cordials when he went to Antelope Valley High School, and they put on dances at the Exposition Hall at the AV Fairgrounds. The club hosted a Battle of the Bands, which Van Vliet's band easily won.

"They were doing covers of blues songs, like Howlin' Wolf and Lightnin Hopkins, and somewhat edgy versions of popular songs," Stults remembers. "They did the Rolling Stones better than the Stones themselves."

On the DVD, someone recalled Van Vliet's vocals as being like "Howlin' Wolf on acid."

The Magic Band was a big draw when the Cordials booked them for dances, and "Captain Beefheart growled and prowled the stage. We'd get 200 or more people on a Friday night. We used to pack the place."

A 1975 promotional photo.

Eventually the band put out the "Diddy Wah Diddy" single, the "Safe as Milk" LP and started playing the Whiskey A Go Go. Then came the years of musical innovation and experimentation that gave Van Vliet and a revolving cast of band members notoriety and slavish devotion from legions of other Lost Boys, if not huge piles of money.

Ultimately, the visual art that Van Vliet had been doing since he was child, and practiced at Antelope Valley College, became a more sure source of income than rock and roll and he left music behind, at least professionally. His abstract art was very successful.

"He was a guy who refused to go mainstream," said Stults. "Now he's considered a genius."