More coverage of the recently departed Don Van Vliet, aka Captain Beefheart.

Here’s a nice remembrance in the New York Times.

Finally, if you’re going to read just one piece to understand the appeal of Captain Beefheart to those relatively few of us who care, this is the one to read. Writing for the Los Angeles Times, Randall Roberts notes: “on first listen the best of Van Vliet and band, even 40 years later, sounds wrong – but only in the way that, say, Marcel Duchamp’s cubist painting ‘Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2’ looks wrong.” That’s exactly right. As Van Vliet noted in a radio interview 30 years ago, the 4/4 mandate of rock music sounded so boring, and so he wanted to break that up. And that’s something he did to great distinction with every album.

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