Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band
Lick My Decals Off,Baby

When Don met Frank: Beefheart Vs Zappa, is the box set that includes the two DVDs From Straight to Bizarre and Captain Beefheart under review. From there, I learned to appreciate Beefheart. Before, I absolutely didn't understand him. Zero. Perhaps the fact that, at the time I first listened to Beefheart, I was into more conventional bands and dismissed him with disappointment. Watching the aforementioned documentary, I became quite intrigued and discovered the fertile underbrush of the Zappa orbit from which Beefheart also hails: an environment made up of groupies like the GTOs, a young rebel like Alice Cooper, schizophrenics like Wild Man Fischer, and Don van Vliet, known as Captain Beefheart, Frank Zappa's schoolmate.

In 1970, Don van Vliet and company had behind them “Trout Mask Replica,” today considered the Magic Band's debut work, which, however, did not lead to any commercial success at the time. Sealed off in a small house in the Woodland Hills of Los Angeles, the band members played for eight months almost in a kind of isolation that led to troubled relationships within the group. “Trout Mask Replica” is a real subversion of the most harmonious way of conceiving music. This experiment continues with “Lick My Decals Off, Baby” (Literally: Lick the Stickers Off Me, Baby), a provocative title, which according to Beefheart, would be an invitation to rid oneself of “labels,” whether imposed by critics or the public, and to evaluate things beyond the surface (hence the term “decals”: a great lesson for the writer, as I initially did not understand Beefheart at all). It was indeed the critics who described “Lick My Decals Off, Baby” as a superior album compared to everything the band had done before. Again produced by Straight Records, Frank Zappa’s (licked off) label. The production was no longer in the hands of school friend Frank Zappa since Beefheart himself took charge of it.

How to classify this record? Progblues? Avantprogblues? Perhaps one would fall precisely into what Beefheart did not want: labels. And this is precisely the beauty of this record, which is certainly unclassifiable, at least in the common understanding of the genre. Madness and genius are fused, inseparable here. The album begins with the most important manifesto of the record, the title track, in which it becomes clear how great the organized delirium that dictates the tone of the album will be. Undoubtedly there is a bluesy base (see the hypnotic delirium of I Love You, You Big Dummy or The Smithsonian Institute Blues), deeply tempered by whatever crossed Beefheart’s mind. The repetitiveness of Space Age Couple is also, for example, overwhelming.

The instrumentals of the album are very beautiful, mostly played by Zoot Horn Rollo on guitar and Rockette Morton on the bassius O'Pheilius, that is, the multi-string bass (One Red Rose That I Mean and Peon), and sometimes with the “disturbing” Beefheart on sax (Japan In A Dishpan).

The lyrics seem apparently nonsensical, like in The Buggy Boogie Woogie, as well as The Clouds Are Full Wine (not Whiskey or Rye), but are actually permeated with a heart-wrenching realism and symbolism in the rapid-fire associations of shots or images.

On percussion, we find Art Tripp, who had already collaborated with Zappa on Cruising with Ruben & The Jets (1968), Uncle Meat (1969), and would collaborate in 1970 on Burnt Weeny Sandwich and Weasels Ripped My Flesh, as well as on the zany album by Wild Man Fischer and King Kong, the tribute to Zappa by jazz violinist Jean-Luc Ponty. He particularly stands out in Woe-Is-uh-Me-Bop and I Wanna Find a Woman That'll Hold My Big Toe Till I Have To Go. Drums saw the return of John “Drumbo” French, who had left the group due to dissatisfaction with the oppressive environment of the “Trout Mask Replica” recording sessions, soon called back.

A subverter at heart, we feel this especially in Flash Gordon’s Ape, an organized acoustic chaos that closes the album. The album as a whole is like a strong perfume, initially striking us with violence, forcing us to recoil almost annoyed… until it abates, leaving a heart note, that central phase, in which one listens obsessively and finally… regularly inserts it into the stereo, leaving a pleasant finishing note.

The beautiful design of the album cover deserves a final mention, with the title written in elegant whorls and bordering a nearly aristocratic photo of the band dressed in tuxedos in a luxurious manor. The cover gives no hint of the madness contained within the album, unlike the previous one. On the back, there is a visionary painting by Captain Beefheart and, prophetically, his future, as he would dedicate himself exclusively to painting starting in the 1980s.

For years, the album was not released on CD until the intervention of Rhino, who, thank heavens, made it accessible to fans of the new generations. (The denied release stems from the fact that the quirky Wild Man Fischer, one of the artists sponsored by Zappa, narrowly missed hitting Zappa's young daughter Moon Unit with an ashtray, and in retaliation, the entire Bizarre/Straight Records catalog remained in limbo for years).

“Lick My Decals Off, Baby” remained in the top 20 of the UK charts for seven weeks.

It was, not surprisingly, Beefheart’s own favorite album.