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| | Captain fantastic | | Guardian Unlimited Arts |
 | | Casual listeners might hear it as a lot of clatter and wailing (which is how it struck me on first hearing), but once you get past the audacious unfamiliarity of Trout Mask Replica, you realise that this was not just some big improvised mess, but in fact the most tightly composed polyrhythmic rock'n'roll ever written. |
 | | Don Van Vliet, also known as Captain Beefheart, created an entirely original music by grafting the unsentimental blues growling of Howlin' Wolf and Son House to the stringent performing demands of Igor Stravinsky, Ornette Coleman and Van Vliet's high-school pal and collaborator, Frank Zappa. |
 | | I saw Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band perform in assorted line-ups over the following decade, and each time was floored by the intricacies of the songs and the almost hive-mind precision of the band, who nailed the rhythms and changes with the perfection of a classical chamber ensemble and yet still rocked out. |
| arts.guardian.co.uk /features/story/0,11710,931097,00.html (691 words) |
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