Underground Artists Series: Captain Beefheart - an underground artist of music, poetry and painting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain Beefheart

Don Van Vliet (/væn ˈvliːt/, born Don Glen Vliet;^[2] January 15, 1941 – December 17, 2010) was an American musician, singer-songwriter and artist best known by the stage name Captain Beefheart. His musical work was conducted with a rotating ensemble of musicians called the Magic Band (1965–1982), with whom he recorded 13 studio albums. Noted for his powerful singing voice with its wide range,^[3] Van Vliet also played the harmonica, saxophone and numerous other wind instruments. His music blended rock, blues and psychedelia with avant-garde and contemporaryexperimental composition.^[4] Beefheart was also known for exercising an almost dictatorial control over his supporting musicians, and for often constructing myths about his life.^[5]

During his teen years in Lancaster, California, Van Vliet developed an eclectic musical taste and formed "a mutually useful but volatile" friendship with Frank Zappa, with whom he sporadically competed and collaborated.^[6] He began performing with his Captain Beefheart persona in 1964 and joined the original Magic Band line-up, initiated by Alexis Snouffer, in 1965. The group drew attention with their cover of Bo Diddley's "Diddy Wah Diddy", which became a regional hit. It was followed by their acclaimed debut album Safe as Milk, released in 1967 on Buddah Records. After being dropped by two consecutive record labels, they signed to Zappa's Straight Records. As producer, Zappa granted Beefheart unrestrained artistic freedom in making 1969's Trout Mask Replica, which ranked 58th in Rolling Stone magazine's 2003 list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.^[7] In 1974, frustrated by lack of commercial success, he released two albums of more conventional rock music that were critically panned; this move, combined with not having been paid for a European tour, and years of enduring Beefheart's abusive behavior, led the entire band to quit. Beefheart eventually formed a new Magic Band with a group of younger musicians and regained contemporary approval through three final albums: Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller) (1978), Doc at the Radar Station (1980) and Ice Cream for Crow (1982).

Van Vliet has been described as "...one of modern music's true innovators" with "...a singular body of work virtually unrivalled in its daring and fluid creativity."^[4][8] Although he achieved little commercial or mainstream critical success,^[9] he sustained a cult following as a "highly significant" and "incalculable" influence on an array of new wave, punk, post-punk, experimental and alternative rock musicians.^[8][10] Known for his enigmatic personality and relationship with the public, Van Vliet made few public appearances after his retirement from music in 1982. He pursued a career in art, an interest that originated in his childhood talent for sculpture, and a venture which proved to be his most financially secure. His expressionistpaintings and drawings command high prices, and have been exhibited in art galleries and museums across the world.^[4][11][12] Van Vliet died in 2010, having suffered from multiple sclerosis for many years.^[13]

Gaze into the Psychedelic Hole of Peace!!

Vashti Bunyan: Heartleap Cover.

Acid Folk Series. Vashti Bunyan. New Album: Heartleap.

Photo by Whyn Lewis

Cult folk singer-songwriter Vashti Bunyan returned in 2005 with the great Lookaftering, her first LP since her 1970 debut Just Another Diamond Day. Now, Bunyan has announced a third record, Heartleap, to be released October 7 in the U.S. via DiCristina and October 6 in the UK via FatCat. She has also announced a UK fall tour—see the dates below.

In the time since Lookaftering, Bunyan has also released a 2007 archival collection of singles and demos, Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind, named for her 1965 debut single penned by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. In the fall of 2008, a documentary about Bunyan's life premiered in England, directed by Kieran Evans.

Heartleap was written, produced, and primarly arranged by Bunyan. It was mostly recorded by Bunyan alone in her own studio, according to a press release, as well as in other studios in England, Scotland, and the U.S.

Acid Folk Series: New album by Goddess of Acid Folk, Vashti Bunyan.

 VASHTI BUNYAN - HEARTLEAP (2014)

REVIEW

BY FATCAT RECORDS
Now based in Edinburgh, Vashti’s story tells of the thwarted promise of early fame, disenchantment, long-term exile and eventual rediscovery. In the mid-‘60s, after quitting art school to concentrate on music, she was discovered by The Rolling Stones’ guru, Andrew Loog Oldham, signed to Decca and recorded a single written by Jagger / Richards. Reviews touted her as ‘the new Marianne Faithful’ or the ‘female Bob Dylan’ (though Vashti claimed to be neither), yet further singles remained unreleased, leading to a sense of despair and a rejection of the music industry. 

After living under canvas in the bushes behind Ravensbourne College of Art, she bought a horse and cart and set off in 1968 with her boyfriend for the dream of a creative colony that the singer Donovan was setting up on the Scottish Isle of Skye. It took them nearly two long years to get there, by which time Donovan had left, but the experience formed the songs for ‘Just Another Diamond Day’, the album recorded by Joe Boyd (and featuring members of The Incredible String Band and Fairport Convention) in November ‘69, during a trip back to London. On the album’s muted release in 1970, rather than hang around to promote the record, Vashti left the city again to live with the Incredible String Band in the Scottish Borders, and then (with horses, wagons, dogs and children) on to Ireland and back - to obscurity in the Scottish hills. 

The record slipped out in a tiny pressing and was rapidly forgotten, yet gradually over the years accrued a cultish currency as a lost English classic. In the late ‘90s, typing her own name into an internet search engine, Vashti became aware of this interest, and after tracking down the masters / rights, ‘JADD’ was re-released on the Spinney label – almost thirty years after she had “abandoned it and music forever” - to huge critical acclaim (The Observer Music Monthly placed it at 53 in their ‘Top 100 British albums’). A host of young, new admirers emerged citing her influence, and Vashti has since recorded with Piano Magic, The Cocteau Twins’ Simon Raymonde, Devendra Banhart, and with Animal Collective on the ‘Prospect Hummer’ EP that FatCat instigated in 2003 and released in May 2005. Following our contact with Vashti, we began chatting and offering advice on some new songs she was writing and looking for a home for. After a while, it occurred to us that instead of advising her on other labels, maybe FatCat could be that home. Vashti happily agreed and the result was her album, the truly beautiful ‘Lookaftering’ released in October 2005


With a new journey starting here, ‘Lookaftering’ achieved huge critical success, and saw Vashti once again taking to the road for a string of successful live shows and radio and TV appearances across Europe, North America, Australia and Japan. Following months of discussions, searching for masters and attempting to obtain clearance for them, in October 2007, we released the stunning double CD, ‘Some Things Just Stick In Your Mind’, a lavishly-packaged collection of Vashti’s early singles and demos, dating from the period pre-‘Just Another Diamond Day’, 1964-67, the second disc containing material on a reel-to-reel tape she’d accidentally discovered, which was from her first ever recording session.

In February 2008. FatCat released a limited edition remastered pressing of the historic 7” single, ‘Some Things Just Stick In Your Mind’, written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Originally released way back in May 1965 on the Decca label (as just ‘Vashti’, no Bunyan), the single was actually the young London-based singer’s debut record. The track is backed by her own beautiful song, ‘I Want To Be Alone’ on the B-side.

In October 2008 a world premiere screening of a new feature-length documentary about Vashti’s life was screened at the prestigious British Film Institute, as part of The London Film Festival. Previously responsible for the ‘Finisterre’ film made with St. Etienne, BAFTA winning director Kieran Evans’ beautiful documentary features footage of Vashti preparing for a concert at the Barbican, indicative of the revival of interest in her music, and sees her retrace the journey that would inspire her landmark work, ‘Just Another Diamond Day’.

Vashti put her touring boots back on in early 2010, playing shows in Japan, Canada and Singapore - as well as shows in the UK - and entirely missing FatCat’s deadline for delivering a new album - with only four new songs completed by this time.

A hiatus in her song-writing and recording came with the untimely passing of Robert Kirby in 2009 - who had arranged three of the songs on 1970’s ‘Just Another Diamond Day’ and with whom she had just reconnected. They had planned to work on new arrangements together. It was another two years before she decided she must arrange the music herself - with Robert always in mind.

Through the following three years a new album slowly emerged, recorded mostly by Vashti herself in her own studio, and is set for release on FatCat in Autumn 2014, alongside tour dates in UK and Europe.

REVIEW
by Thom Jurek 
It's been nine years since Vashti Bunyan released her sophomore album, Lookaftering. When contrasted with the three and a half decades between it and her classic 1970 debut, Just Another Diamond Day, it seems like a blip. Bunyan has said in an interview that Heartleap will be her final album. That it sums up everything she has to say. For those who take in these tender, poignant songs about relationships (familial and interpersonal), life's experiences, and reflections, this is sad news. Bunyan produced and edited Heartleap herself; this is a first. She plays the guitar well enough, but though piano appears throughout, Bunyan doesn't play the instrument. She carefully assembled these parts, from single notes. While her use of the synthesizer was discouraged and put aside on her last offering, here it unobtrusively sits with organic strings, guitars, piano, and an occasional recorder. Despite the intense focus and years of recording, and contributions from other artists sent from as far away as New York and Los Angeles, Heartleap flows dreamily from the outset. "Across the Water" contrasts notions of being stuck emotionally and then becoming unstuck, free to live the life of one's choosing; Jo Mango's kalimba adds an earthy resonance. "Holy Smoke" -- with a subtle backing chorus from Devendra Banhart -- allows Gareth Dickson's ghostly, melodic electric guitar to support the airy yet determined vocal about refusing to allow grief and sorrow to claim the joy in one's life. "Mother," with its gently cascading, doubled piano lines and ghostly strings, is perhaps the set's most beautiful track, offering the memory of catching her own mother dancing, singing, and playing the piano in the precious few moments she had to herself apart from her daily duties. "Gunpowder" reflects on an at times complex communication in a continuing relationship with a former lover. The staggered and layered wordless harmonies that introduce "Here" are haunting; they underscore the quietly expressed but nonetheless real fear of abandonment articulated in its lyric. The closing title track is named for the cover illustration (Hart's Leap by her daughter, Whyn Lewis). Each line in the song begins with the word "heart." It takes in the entire cycle of love, joy, loss, grief, and the marks each leaves upon one as time passes. The melody, comprised of single piano notes and fingerpicked acoustic guitar, underscores a tome that feels captured in the moment. It's as if Bunyan wondered what might transpire once she uttered these words. The recording is her witness. The entirety of Heartleap is wispy, spare, understated, and moving in its insight and honesty. But this song -- and the compassion and empathy with which it expresses the enormity of these emotions in the cycle of life -- is perhaps the most piercing and affirmative in the lot. If there has to be a final statement from Bunyan, this painstaking, sometimes hesitant, and always brave and vulnerable one is not only fitting, but essential in comprehending the totality of her life's work. 

BIOGRAPHY
by Bruce Eder 
Vashti Bunyan is a folk chanteuse and singer/songwriter, best known for her 1970 album Just Another Diamond Day, which was rediscovered in the 21st century and dusted off with a new CD issue as one of the great musical finds of its era. Born in London in 1945 -- and counting herself a direct descendant of writer/preacher John Bunyan (1629-1688) -- she first took up the guitar while a student at the Ruskin School of Fine Art and Drawing, from which she was ultimately expelled at age 18 for spending too much time writing songs and not enough time painting. A bit of a free spirit even then, she took a trip to New York and, while there, fell under the spell of Bob Dylan's music, especially his album The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. Once back in London, Bunyan was committed to a career in music, and through theatrical agent Monte Mackay she soon met Rolling Stones manager/producer Andrew Loog Oldham. In his recollections in 2007, he saw and heard in her the equivalent of Juliette Gréco, Marie Laforet, and Françoise Hardy, except that she was English -- he signed her to Decca Records and for her debut single brought her the Mick Jagger/Keith Richards-penned "Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind." The record earned little attention, and Bunyan moved to Columbia for the follow-up, "Train Song," released in May of 1966. 

She moved into the orbit of Oldham's Immediate Records after its founding that year and recorded a brace of sides, mostly of her own music, none of which was issued commercially. She also cut one side with the Twice as Much (Immediate's answer to Simon & Garfunkel), entitled "The Coldest Night of the Year." The latter, with its Phil Spector-like production and beautiful harmonizing, showed off her singing at its most pop-oriented and commercial. This was during what one might call the "dolly bird" phase of Bunyan's career, in which she was part of the Swinging London scene (at least musically), and one supremely atmospheric and hauntingly beautiful performance of hers that did see the light of day was "Winter Is Blue," which turned up in Peter Whitehead's documentary Tonite Let's All Make Love in London (1967). Sometime after that, she left London in a horse-drawn wagon on a two-year journey into communal living in the Hebrides, with the ultimate goal of meeting folk icon Donovan on the Isle of Skye. She later chanced to cross paths with American producer Joe Boyd, who had made his name in London recording acts such as Pink Floyd and Fairport Convention. Throughout her travels Bunyan had continued writing songs, and in 1969 she teamed with Boyd to record her debut LP, the lovely Just Another Diamond Day, which included some assistance from such British folk notables as Simon Nicol and Dave Swarbrick from Fairport Convention, and the Incredible String Band's Robin Williamson. After completing the album she left for Ireland, dropping out of music to raise a family. 

Long out of print and a highly prized collectible, Just Another Diamond Day was finally reissued on CD in the summer of 2000 and attracted an extraordinary amount of enthusiastic press, as well as something like the sales to match. Suddenly, Bunyan was in demand, fans and writers knocking at her door and sending e-mails of encouragement and support. In 2005 she returned with Lookaftering, a reference to her years "lookaftering" her family. The album appeared on Fat Cat's DiCristina imprint and featured artwork by Vashti's daughter. The release was followed by a series of performances that took her all the way to New York City, among other international locales -- by that time, word had spread sufficiently about Bunyan as a rediscovered talent that the New York performance rated mention in The New York Times. In 2007, Fat Cat/DiCristina released Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind, a compilation of Vashti Bunyan's '60s Decca, Columbia, and Immediate recordings, plus a set of demos dating from 1964. 

2008 saw the release of a feature documentary, Vashti Bunyan: From Here to Before and that same year she revealed in an interview that she had begun to write some new material. In 2014, she announced that she had completed her third album, entitled Heartleap. Self-recorded and produced, she announced that it would be her final album. Heartleap was released in October of 2014.

Great nature writers series: Thoreau.

Great nature writers series: Thoreau.

Great nature writers series: The Life of Henry David Thoreau. Walden.

By Elizabeth Witherell, with Elizabeth Dubrulle



When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only. I lived there two years and two months. (Walden, 3)


With these words, Henry David Thoreau began the tale of his experiment of simple living at Walden Pond. Over the course of the next three hundred-odd pages, Thoreau outlined his philosophy of life, politics, and nature, laying the foundation for a secure place in the canon of great American writers. Although Walden enjoyed only moderate success in Thoreau's lifetime, his experiment at the pond would spark considerable interest in the years to come. The book has inspired other young people to follow his example and retire to a lonely spot--even if only in imagination--to ponder the world and their place in it. Thoreau's words expressed the concerns of many of his contemporaries as industrialization and war permanently altered the world around them, just as they struck a chord in a generation of young people in the 1960s and 1970s who opposed the modern military-industrial complex and sought peace and simplicity in their lives. For many, Walden has served as a touchstone.


In the years following Thoreau's death in 1862, his sister and his friends undertook the responsibility of editing his work. Posthumous editions of his previously unpublished or partially published works were produced by Ticknor & Fields and Houghton Mifflin, and articles about Thoreau and reviews of his writings appeared in newspapers and magazines. Thoreau's life and work have continued to provoke and inspire, and there are almost as many different opinions as there are readers. Which view of Thoreau is most accurate: The dour hermit of Walden Woods? The environmental guru? The antislavery crusader? The irresponsible layabout? The pacifist? The pantheist? The prophet? None suffices to represent Thoreau by itself; all find support in Walden.




THOREAU'S LIFE AT WALDEN POND


In late March 1845 Thoreau went to Walden Pond, a sixty-two acre body of water a few miles from his parents' home in Concord, Massachusetts, and selected a spot to build a house. The site he picked was on land belonging to his close friend Ralph Waldo Emerson; he and Emerson had already discussed Thoreau's plan to live on the land which Emerson had recently purchased. By July 4 of that same year, the house was substantially complete and Thoreau moved to the pond. The experiment had begun.


I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. (Walden, 90)


He also went to the pond to work on a book that was to be a memorial tribute to his older brother John, who had died three years earlier of lockjaw. The narrative frame of the story is provided by a boat trip the brothers had taken in 1839, but there are many philosophical digressions. This work, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, was Thoreau's first published book.


At Walden, Thoreau worked diligently on A Week, but he also explored Walden Woods and recorded his observations on nature in his Journal. He entertained visitors and made regular trips to town; friends and neighbors began to inquire about his life at the pond. What did he do all day? How did he make a living? Did he get lonely? What if he got sick? He began collecting material to write lectures for his curious townsmen, and he delivered two at the Concord Lyceum, on February 10 and 17, 1847. By the time he left the pond on September 6, 1847, he had combined his lectures on life at Walden with more notes from his journal to produce the first draft of a book which he hoped to publish shortly after A Week.


A Week was published in 1849, with a note at the back announcing the imminent publication of Walden; or, Life in the Woods. A Week was not well received by the public, however, and only two hundred copies of it sold in the first few years after its publication. Thoreau financed the volume himself. When publisher James Munroe returned the unsold copies to him in 1853, Thoreau wrote in a journal entry for October 28, 1853, "I have now a library of nearly 900 volumes over 700 of which I wrote myself--"


Considering the failure of A Week, publishers were not enthusiastic about Walden, and plans for its publication were postponed. Over the next five years, through seven drafts, Walden evolved from a sometime shrill justification of Thoreau's unorthodox lifestyle into a complex, multi-layered account of a spiritual journey.


I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life... (Walden, 91)




WALDEN'S RECEPTION AND THOREAU'S REPUTATION


Walden was published on August 9, 1854. Two thousand copies were printed, selling for $1 each. Unlike Thoreau's first book, Walden enjoyed moderate success from the first, and it continued to sell reasonably well after Thoreau's death in 1862. But in the 1870s and 1880s, critics attacked Thoreau's character and style of life, accusing him of crankiness and irresponsibility.


In the 1890s a group of admirers who had not known Thoreau personally but who had been affected by his writings began actively to promote him. One of the first substantial biographies of Thoreau, The Life of Henry David Thoreau, was published by an Englishman, Henry Salt, in 1890. Walden was reprinted several times in both America and England during the second half of the nineteenth century. In 1893 and then 1906, relatively complete editions of Thoreau's writings were published, increasing the accessibility of his work and his general popularity.


Beginning in the 1930s, interest in Thoreau began to rise markedly. Henry Seidel Canby's 1939 biography, Thoreau, reached the best-seller lists. In July 1941, the Thoreau Society of America was founded at a meeting in Concord. Still active today, the Thoreau Society's purpose is "to honor Henry David Thoreau, by stimulating interest in and fostering education about his life, works, and philosophy and his place in his world and ours, by coordinating research on his life and writings, and by acting as a repository for Thoreauviana and material relevant to Henry David Thoreau, and by advocating for the preservation of Thoreau Country."


Thoreau's popularity continued: six editions of Walden were published in 1948, eleven in 1958, and twenty-three in 1968, along with many editions of his other works. In 1966, a project to edit and publish all of Thoreau's writings was undertaken by a group of scholars under the sponsorship of the National Endowment for the Humanities . Under the editorship of Walter Harding (1966-1972), William L. Howarth (1973-1979), and Elizabeth Witherell (1980-present), the project, The Writings of Henry D. Thoreau, has published fourteen of its projected thirty-volume series with Princeton University Press. The Princeton Edition of Walden was published in 1971.


I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them. (Walden, 323- 324)




WALDEN POND AND WALDEN WOODS TODAY


In 1849, Thoreau's house at Walden Pond was removed from its site; parts of it were incorporated into other structures around Concord, including a barn near Estabrook Woods. Ten years after Thoreau's death in 1862, in a spontaneous tribute to the writer and philosopher, visitors to the pond began placing rocks, flowers, and twigs in a cairn on a spot near where the house had been. The cairn became a standard stop for pilgrims to Walden. In the 1940s, the exact site of Thoreau's house was located and excavated by Roland Robbins, and simple granite posts were placed to indicate the outline of the structure.


The proper use of Walden Pond and Walden Woods has been the subject of debate for over a century. Should it serve as a public park with full access for swimming, fishing, hunting, and camping? Should it be preserved in a pristine state? Should commercial development be allowed? For several decades, the area has been open to the public for swimming and fishing. Those who have felt that the pond was threatened by overuse have been very vocal in Concord, and during the 1980s the number of users per day was limited by closing the parking area when a certain capacity was reached. During the same period, though, the town made it possible for some of the land around the pond to be developed.


When the door to development opened, two projects were proposed: a large office building and a condominium complex. These plans were brought to the attention of Don Henley, lead singer of the rock group the Eagles, by a group of concerned local residents. Henley spearheaded a campaign to preserve the area, and rallied political figures such as Senators Ted Kennedy and Paul Tsongas, as well as a number of actors and musicians, to the support of the Walden Woods Project (WWP). WWP arranged a number of fund-raising events, including rock concerts, movie premieres, and a "Walk for Walden Woods," and successfully negotiated with the developers to purchase the endangered land, as well as additional land in Walden Woods.


THE LEGACY OF WALDEN


In order to continue the process of education about the need for preservation, the Walden Woods Project turned to the Thoreau Society and its half-century of experience and knowledge. The Society and WWP collaborated to found the Thoreau Institute, which is owned and managed by WWP and hosts seminars and forums on Thoreau, Transcendentalism, and the environment. The Institute is also the repository of the world's largest collection of Thoreau-related research material. The Thoreau Institute and the Thoreau Society promote continued interest in and research on Thoreau and his work.






This essay was written in 1995 for an exhibit commemorating the 150th anniversary of Thoreau's move to Walden Pond and his writing of the American classic, Walden; it has been updated for inclusion here. All references are to Walden, ed. J. Lyndon Shanley (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971).