Don van Vliet a.k.a. Captain Beefheart 1941-2010

A few quotes:

• I don’t think there’s any way you can *know* music. The minute you *know* it, you stop playing, and the minute a person stops playing, the music isn’t playing anymore.

• I don’t want to sell my music. I’d like to give it away because where I got it, you didn’t have to pay for it.

• There’s no competition with our music. It can’t be compared or impaired, or impaled with points or justifications…It means absolutely nothing, just like the sun.

• The stars are matter, We’re matter, But it doesn’t matter.

• I live up at Eureka, among the big trees, and I tell you, those things are really saying something. You gotta work to hear what they’re saying.

• I’ve been getting inspiration from women, the way they move, their gestures. I think it’s important that there be some men who appreciate women for what they are: women; not as some kind of extension of man. There’s been a big ecological imbalance for years, what with women taking a back seat to men for so long. Their influence on life has been mutated, and, because of it, the men have been getting into wars and screwing things up. My inspiration comes from appreciating women for what they are.

• I also get a lot of inspiration from animals. I’ve always been looking at animals. I was at the zoo every day of my life from age 5 to 13. On my place I have lots of goats, horses, cows, cats, dogs. A lot of other animals eat here too: raccoons, coyotes, even a badger-gorgeous, tough, funny little animal. There’s a lot to be learned from animals. They learned karate from cats. The way they move their hands in karate is the same way cats move their tails when they encounter one another. They learned yoga from the cats and the small animals. I think that most of the things there are to be learned can be learned from animals.

• You can tell by the kindness of a dog how a human should be.

• I’m not really here, I just stick around for my friends.

• THE CONSUMER SOCIETY: “A carrot is as close as a rabbit gets to a diamond.”

• DRUGS: “It’s not worth getting into the bullshit to see what the bull ate.”

• EVOLUTION: “I think that man has the most highly developed intelligence. I think men get so intelligent that they’re stupid.”

• MENTAL HEALTH: “The largest flying land mammal is the absent mind.”

A Major Website & a Wiki Entry

Lyrics transcribed by Richard Hibbert.
Bat chain Puller Bat chain puller Puller, puller A chain with yellow lights That glistens like oil beads On its slick smooth trunk That trails behind on tracks, and thumps A wing hangs limp and retreats Bat chain puller Puller puller Bulbs shoot from its snoot And vanish into darkness It whistles like a root snatched from dry earth Sodbustin’ rakes with grey dust claws Announces its coming in the morning This train with grey tubes That houses people’s very thoughts and belongings. Bat chain puller Puller puller This train with grey tubes that houses people’s thoughts, Their very remains and belongings. A grey cloth patch Caught with four threads In the hollow wind of its stacks Ripples felt fades and grey sparks clacks, Lunging the cushioned thickets. Pumpkins span the hills With orange crayola patches. Green inflated trees Balloon up into marshmallow soot That walks away in forty circles, Caught in grey blisters With twinkling lights and green sashes Uuh Pulled by rubber dolphins with gold yawning mouths That blister and break in agony In souls of rust They kill gold sawdust into dust. Bat chain puller, Puller puller.
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51 Minute Documentary with Frank Zappa, Ry Cooder and Matt Groening.