9. Captain BeyondCaptain Beyond
Captain Beyond is like the lost masterpiece record, you know? It’s that classic record that because of band promotion or whatever, isn’t considered a classic record. That fucking record is over-the-top cool! It’s probably as well recorded as a record can be in any age. Even when I listen it now I go, "God DAMN that sounds good!" I don’t know what those guys were taking, but we are talking about a lot of talent. We’re talking about the first singer from Deep Purple, the bass player from Iron Butterfly and Bobby Caldwell on the drums – it’s fucking incredible! It just completely blew me away when I was a kid because I didn’t expect it, I’d never heard of it, much like these other records. It came out and it was just laying there looking badass and I put it on, and it sounded as good as it looked! I thought, well in my head, they would be playing Madison Square Garden and stuff and being the biggest band in the world. But I never heard much about them past their second record, they just completely disappeared. In a better world they would have been making documentaries about them now and they would have ten albums. It’s really good because they are very nicely segued songs. There is ‘Raging River Of Fear’ and, for me, just because of that title! ‘Raging River of FEAR’! How fucking cool is that? The record just sounds cool. The singer sings in a way that no other rock singer sings, kind of in a lower register, kind of like a crooner, a lounge crooner! But he’s singing rock! And nobody else can touch him. Every time I think about that record I still get excited. I think we listened to it like three days ago while we were playing in Germany or something and everybody was a bit bored before we went on, so I just put on Captain Beyond and everyone was really psyched to play!
Their second record [Sufficiently Breathless] is really good, but it’s just different. You know, it’s just not as heavy, and it had a bit more Latin influence. At first when I was a kid I was just like, "It’s not as heavy so it sucks", but now that I’m grown up I think it’s excellent in its own right. I think they made a third one too, and that one really does suck. But let’s not talk about that…
