"pappy with the khaki sweatband, bowed goat potbellied barnyard that only he noticed, the old fart was smart...the old gold cloth madonna dancing to the fiddle and saw, ...he ran down behind the knoll 'n slipped on his wooden fishhead...." (opening of "old fart at play" from Captain Beefheart's "trout mask replica").
The strapline to the Big Swifty blog is "a flavour of budd living", an appropriate pun on Captain Beefheart's composition "flavor bud living", my little joke probably going over the "sam with the showing scalp flat top" heads of most of my readers.
Don Van Vliet (the Captain's "real" name) died yesterday, leaving a legacy of about twenty albums of quirky music and entertaining wordplay, and a stack of paintings for his other career as a painter. It always amused Don that his writings were taken by some as zen wisdom. In my head I can hear Don reciting/singing, and also my pal Rod who could cover it very well. Indeed, Rod read Don's "Orange Claw Hammer" at our wedding reception, in his best Beefheart snarly drawl.
"thirty years away can make a seaman's eyes, uh round house man's eyes, flow out water, salt water" Well over thirty years of listening pleasure, and our own special celebration seven years ago.
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