Pleb

>Pleb
Trout Mask Replica
>Contrarian
Safe As Milk
>Patrician
Lick My Decals Off, Baby

discuss

Trout Mask is the most contrarian album of all time
Lick My Decals off is quite patrician, along with Shiny Beast, Bat Chain Puller

I will say I think Lick My Decals off, Baby is a more focused Trout Mask, but part of the charm of Trout Mask is it's lack of focus. I dig a number of songs, but as a whole I don't think it's as fascinating you know.

>ascended
The spotlight kid

>Safe as Milk
>Contrarian

But that's his most accessible and "fun" album. That's the pleb choice if anything. Bat Chain Puller is best.

I agree in terms of the music people heard of from Beefheart, though a case can be made to switch TMR and SAM in more general sense.
That really just sounds like you care for the gimmicks behind the music rather than what's actually going on musically. What makes TMR good is the parts where it's actually got its shit together (instrumentalists so skilled that they are playing very syncopated from each other all at the same time.) The lack of focus aspects of the music is what makes it shit or initially entertaining but not musically (terribly mixed by Hack Zappa, a lot of non-musical filler, tracks that end up being way too samey due to lack of variety in harmonic progression/technique, being too long.)

It's all about Clear Spot man

I never said it was better, I just said the appeal of the album seems to be the lack of focus. So it makes sense that people don't like this as much. I still again dig a lot of what's going on, but it could also be I heard Trout first and have more of a connection to it. Again I'd never say Trout is a wholy better album, it's just different. Also I do know Trout Mask isn't just shit thrown to the fan, but it sounds like that. and there's something about it that doesn't (to me at least) feel like it's 78 minutes long. Like it just comes and goes. Where there are a few tracks on Lick My Deals where I just don't return.

also Zappa produced and engineered, I don't think there was any mixing on the record. and there are stories about Zappa telling beefheart to sing on beat but he refused to and the reason the vocals are off is supposedly because of a delay from the way he made them record it.

If you think Don's the genius you're wrong, John and the band did more to give it the sound than anything beefheart ever did. They made the album out of boring piano recordings and performances released on that boxset form the 90s'

There is lack of focus, but not exactly in the way people think there is. like you said, French was the one who arranged TMR, and that dude's a genius when it comes to rhythms. It's probably why he was initially left off credits for a lot of the stuff on TMR, and why Don threw him down the stairs and let Zoot take over on Decals in place of French (as the guy that puts it all together). Although Decals doesn't have TMR levels of syncopation on most of its tracks, it's far more harmonically colorful, it's melodies last for longer than a couple measures, it's far more diverse structurally, and it's instrumentation is far more colorful too thanks to Don taking up more horns and Ed being the additional percussionist. Which kinda makes sense since the guitarist is the one doing it instead of a rhythm section guy. All this if anything actually makes Decals far tougher to digest compared to TMR if we discount how much filler there is on TMR and how badly TMR is mixed.

>I don't think there's any mixing on the record
That's the problem. I think Hack Zappa went the lazy route; he's the engineer it was his job to take care of the record's mix. Instead I think he just had all the instrumentalists record together then have Don record his vocals separately which is why the vocals overpower the rest of the instrumentals (which, if as a listener you latch onto the vocals it makes it easier the music easier to digest due to the many moving parts otherwise.) This really ruins the clarity/identity of each part involved. But this is not the case on Lick My Decals.

Don's an overrated hack, but he was surrounded by geniuses of instrumental performance and arranging.

>Don's an overrated hack, but he was surrounded by geniuses of instrumental performance and arranging.
Your whole post is immensily ignorant but this is just ridiculous. Van Vliet always was the smartest, most creative guy in the room, from age 5 til his death.

>how much filler there is on TMR
Literally not a single second. Pleb with low attention span should indeed stick to 30minutes record/composition.

everyone in the magic band claims that album was just a failed attempt at being commercial and no one in the band had fun making it

B8

>Zappa recorded instruments together and vocals later
This is actually 100% true. I saw the Bizarre/Straight documentary and this is how they said it was tracked.

Lmao
Non-music based interludes, and tons of tracks that do nothing different from one another often approaching syncopation in the same way. TMR being that fucking samey and having to use dumb muh fast and bulbous gimmick is why it's the short attention span album. Decals requires far more attention for the reasons I have already mentioned and its half TMR's length.

>Decals requires far more attention for the reasons I have already mentioned and its half TMR's length.
>Decals requires far more attention
Not only is this debatable, especially about this " muh longer melodies, muh better mixing" argumentation, but it doesn't say anything about the actual quality of the compositions themselves.

So tighter is better ? And melodies are good, especially in experimental rock ? All these non-music interludes you're bashing and pretty much refuse to consider could be regarded by many as "colourful".

Actually
>Pleb
>Safe As Milk
Contrarian
>Lick My Decals Off, Baby
>Patrician
>Trout Mask Replica

>>Pleb
>>Safe As Milk
Too good to be regarded as pleb, honestly. Would pick Shiny Beast personally.

At the end of the day, "quality" is subjective. But I can at least point out actual aspects, actual qualities of the compositions to back up my point. You can hear all of this, too.
It's really a pity that's how they recorded it. Take out the filler and record it correctly, and boom you get a far crazier sounding record as all moving parts will be front and center.
>tighter is better?
Yes? Like, these works require crazy amounts of technicality, and being tight is what makes it work. These aren't loose psych jams. TMR's syncopation wouldn't work if everyone wasn't so tight with each other.
>melodies are good? Especially in experimental rock?
Oh god you got no clue what I have been saying this whole time. You're new. On a side note, learn to read carefully what someone else is saying and what they mean. But yes, I don't like melodic phrases that are only one to two measures long in the same damn minor pentatonic blues shit as everything other generic rock from the time (TMR) as much as phrases that can range from one to twenty measures with far more colorful harmony and experimental structures (Decals). The latter is far more experimental especially in Rock that loves to sticky to bluesy melodies. Both have melodies, even the most experimental shit often has melody in it (eg Coleman's Free Jazz or Stockhausen's Kontakte). I was saying I like more variety in my melody and harmony personally.
>interludes as colorful
Cool, but I feel like giving abstract works something non-abstract only ruins their power especially in music with its ability of being a universal language, that and I feel that the interludes are nowhere near as engaging as the rest of the music cuz I wanna hear music not audiobook spoken shit.

>You're new.
No, and TMR only work as a zeitgeist, btw, even thinking about recording it again is a joke and a jazz fan, especially, should see that.

At this point, if you want to cherry pick, I could should bring up Stockhausen's Strahlen and call it easy-listening to counter that "more attention" compliment.

Next time you call Ayler's ghost theme "melody in experimental shit", because that would be backing your point, I guess.

>No, and TMR only work as a zeitgeist, btw, even thinking about recording it again is a joke and a jazz fan, especially, should see that.
Why would it not work? How many rock records do you know that mess with syncopation to that extent? Not to mention it has only been done with a limited, bluesy context, what if we do it without that? Work with a different set of rhythms? Etc. This is just conjecture you pulled out of your ass.
>At this point, if you want to cherry pick, I could should bring up Stockhausen's Strahlen and call it easy-listening to counter that "more attention" compliment.
Cherry pick for what? Exactly what are you talking about here? I used Stocky as an example of how melody is often there in even highly experimental stuff. Strahlen has it, too. In fact it's constantly changing in Strahlen based on what's being played on percussion and the recorded sound channels, often both creating a melody together. Something like that requires far more attention than any Magic Band work because of how many non-repeating moving parts it entails. While not abrasive, it's certainly not easy listening.

Difficult to disagree with this one