1. Frownland
2. The Dust Blows Forward 'n the Dust Blows Banck
3. Dachau Blues*
4. Ella Guru
5. Hair Pie: Bake 1
6. Moonlight on Vermont*
7. Pachuco Cadaver*
8. Bills Corpse
9. Sweet Sweet Bulbs
10. Neon Meate Dream of a Octofish
11. China Pig
12. My Human Gets Me Blues
13. Dali's Car
14. Hair Pie: Bake 2
15. Pena
16. Well
17. When Big Joan Sets Up
18. Fallin' Ditch
19. Sugar 'n Spikes
20. Ant Man Bee
21. Orange Claw Hammer
22. Wild Life
23. She's Too Much for My Mirrror
24. Hobo Chang Ba
25. The Blimp (Mousetrareplica)
26. Steal Softly thru Snow
27. Old Fart at Play
28. Veteran's Day Poppy
****
There's a quote from John Cage - something to the effect of "Finnegan's Wake is a book I greatly admire but have never read". In a lot of ways, I feel like Trout Mask Replica is the Finnegan's Wake of albums. It's immensely important, people have been debating its merits and impact for ages, and the average person has never actually gotten through the whole thing. And truth be told, you don't really need to listen to this whole album. Pretty much every trick and innovation it has to show you is present in the first side, which also contains the two best songs. Hell, really all you need to know is that this album exists, and that it basically throws every idea about what makes for listenable guitar music out the window. The music here has been incredibly influential, and loads of bands have expanded upon Trout Mask Replica's jagged, atonal skronk to produce music of their own which is far easier to digest. But the sheer abnormality of this album is its raison d'étre, and while you could die happy never hearing "Hobo Chang Ba", this album is, I think, worth experiencing and engaging with. As opposed to Finnegan's Wake, which is really only worth reading if you're like me and want to justify possessing a degree in Literature when you've wound up working as a cleaner.
I think this album probably worked better on vinyl. It's not really meant to be listened to all in one go, I think. It would be better to pick and choose between sides, listen to twenty minutes here and there, and just sort of dip into this music. That said, playing Trout Mask Replica through from start to finish can be an enjoyable experience. I remember when I first bought this album, over twenty years ago, I was drawn in by the allure that surrounds it. Of course I found it baffling, and after listening to the CD once put it away somewhere and promptly forgot about it. But I've come back to it now and then over the years, and listening to it through a few times for this project something really clicked. At times it sounds like senseless noodling, but after a while the various guitar lines and odd time signatures click, and Beefheart's fractured poetry takes on a kind of surreal resonance. I wouldn't sit and listen to it through on headphones, but it's great to have on around the house.
You could be forgiven, listening to this for the first time, for thinking it was all made up on the spot. But this music was tightly composed and obsessively rehearsed. In fact the conditions under which this music was created were infamously cult-like. Beefheart locked his musicians in a house, psychologically dominated them, and at one point allegedly threw a guy down a flight of stairs. The musicians rehearsed for twelve hours a day. If you play the guitar, you'll appreciate how difficult it would be to replicate this music, but apparently the Magic Band could do just that. It's a bit sad, really - I encountered a quote once from a member of the band where he observed something along the lines of "Never have people suffered so much for so little reward". And really, if I spent months living on soy beans and playing till my fingers bled and the end result was "China Pig" I'd be a bit miffed, too. But then again there are minor classics like the anti-war song "Dachau Blues", the sprawling "Moonlight on Vermont", the groovy "Pachuco Cadaver", and the surreal song-story "Old Fart at Play". These are all pretty great songs. Personally, I think this is another double album that should have been paired down to a single disk of the best material, but the sheer excess of the enterprise is sort of the point. The Magic Band mine every possible variation from the formula they're working with here, and while the results aren't always all that memorable you can't ever say you're not getting your money's worth.
Well I've gone and written a post as long, rambling and weird as the album it deals with, and I haven't even said everything I wanted to. You should definitely listen to Trout Mask Replica, though. It's bizarre, rambling, surreal and more often that not very annoying, but it's not quite like anything else you'll ever hear.
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