NOTES

'cucamonga' (also the place where the young frank zappa had his first studio, around the 1963-64 time in which don vliet and he did recordings as 'the soots') is a program of the belgium radio and television broadcast company focusing on uncommon music. in october they will bring a series of specials on captain beefheart. besides the inevitable crazy music the program includes fragments of interviews with don van vliet and some former members of the magic band.

at the moment the broadcasts are in the finishing stage. already 'contracted' are a chat with the captain from 1974 (when he was a country & western singer for a while) and spoken words by gary lucas, ry cooder, john 'drumbo' french and eric drew feldman. further negotiations have resulted in permission to use material from their colleagues of the dutch supplement program.

the station is primarily meant for the dutch-speaking part of belgium, but also can be received in holland and the french-speaking part of belgium (and the north of france and a western part of germany too, i suppose).

these series of broadcasts aren't meant as a thorough review on the history of captain beefheart and the magic band, as the mere inspiration for the special was the release of the grow fins rarities, or better: the opinions of john french and other former magic band members on their times under the command of the captain, as laid down in the booklet 'there ain't no santa claus on the evenin' stage'. yet, the instalments follow a rough chronological order: in case of this starting part it's the time before 'trout mask replica'.

the tracks played during the first broadcast - which omitted 'the a&m sessions' and 'mirror man' - were taken from 'grow fins' and the recent buddah re-releases with bonus tracks:

that was the only music played during the 27 minutes of the first part, the rest of it was mainly stuffed with very reliable (beit pure dutch) narration connecting the songs and the other features: bits of interviews. most words came from JOHN drumbo FRENCH, the only member who was part of the magic band in both the years pre- and post-1974. in a rare telephone talk (to my best knowledge it hasn't been broadcasted or published elsewhere) he told who dídn't want to be interviewed for the 'no santa claus' project, and gave a compact summary of his lives and times with don van vliet.

some quotes from the program:

john french: My first impression of Don when I met him was that he was very opinionated and liked to say things that made other people feel uncomfortable [...].
* Don certainly was motivated by money and wanted to make money as much as anybody in the band did, probably more so, but he had less of an idea how to market himself in such a way as to make money.
ry cooder: Recording with Beefheart in the studio - 'cause he had his desert-band in those early ‘Safe As Milk’ days - that was good fun. He had really good ideas and great songs and it was challenging, because the songs had a certain complicated nature and how to make it sound good was all it was about. Because he would say: 'do this' and then you would say: 'how do you mean?'.

IMPORTANT
accidently i just found out you can read the plain TEXT of this program if you like!
(but narration still is in dutch...)

second part, 11 october well, why should i still make an extensive review while the brt (the broadcasting company) already brings the text of the trout mask replica (and a piece of decals) episode on the internet? to mention that john french tells some 'not commonly known' stories?

third part, 18 october the text about the composer don van van vliet is available so soon, i hardly get a chance to say that it contains some minor errors (like the fact in the dutch narration that the band gary lucas had for years wasn't the three-days project 'the killer shrews' but 'god and monsters') and that i doubt if don on stage really was improvising as much as john french states.

fourth part, 25 october the last part examined the end of his musicianship / beginning of his (paid) fine arts time, and had eric feldman and john french agree on the importance of don van vliet's lyrics, but disagree on the reasons for his artistic career. john also has some bad news about don's shiploads of unpublished material....