8. Captain Beefheart & His Magic BandClear Spot
There’s a lot of that angular, jangly stuff going here but what I get from this record, and I’m thinking of songs like ‘My Head Is My Only House Until It Rains’ and ‘Her Eyes Are Like A Blue Million Miles’, are totally heartfelt gifts of the soul to another person.
I remember sharing a flat in west London and listening to this in the evening and listening to lines like, ‘my arms are just two things in the way until I wrap them around you’ and I thought that was absolutely extraordinary. And that made me realise that you can be art as fuck but you can also be sensitive as well and you can get out the stuff you want to get out. This was like an education for me.
I got into this around the end of Magazine. I know the other Beefheart albums, sure, but this one, for me, rounds it off. It makes sense of everything that I’m trying to get out of him.
Again, it’s that slightly being in awe of musicianship. Some of the guitar playing on this record is just incredible. You hear this rhythm and then these figure played around the rhythm. I heard this story that he makes it all up and teaches the others to play it. It’s extraordinary.
