Real and honest thoughts on Trout Mask Replica

one of these albums that you can listen over and over again and it never gets boring. A masterpiece all the way through.

>>69600952
this

It is one of my favorite records. Sometimes I think it's my absolute favorite. I listen to it 50-75 times a year in entirety, with certain tracks getting over 100 plays a year.

It took me years to get into, though. I've been listening to safe as Milk for almost a decade and loved it right off the bat. I downloaded tmr immediately after, but thought it was shit for a long time. Now I think it's infinitely better.

>>69600897
Once I started listening to Frank Zappa I started to appreciate the album a lot more for what it is. Is it something I can just throw on and enjoy? No, not at all, but I think it is a great album in its own way.

>>69600897
Pretentious and self indulgent, but still enjoyable

>>69600897
It's wonderful, probably the most complex rock album I've heard where the complexity is actually valid and not just wankery.

It appeals to me in the same way that breakcore or math rock does

>>69601195
This.

People are afraid to call it a flawed or imperfect album but that's what it is. I see a lot of people just taken in completely and convinced it's some sort of artistic apex and it just isn't. There are plenty of sections where Van Vliet is just taking the piss and you've got to be blind not to see that. Regardless it's still a fun record with a lot of very accomplished material.

I also feel like 'It Comes To You In A Plain Brown Wrapper' is essential listening if you're into this record.

>>69601402
THIS
because of scaruffi-core people anyone who who tries to be reasonable and point out the fact a goofball record is inherently hard to be any creative apex gets attacked for being "pleb" or that they need to "listen to it one more time"
I really really like this album but to call it a 10/10 is really pretentious imo

f

its gud

>>69600897
I think it's very good. But objectively, I think it's interesting, and a definite must listen if your a music lover.

But TMR raises a question: If something is done badly, on purpose, and it comes out bad, did it succeed or did it fail?

I know it sounds dumb, but I've been wondering this for a while. As a musician I take some inspiration from beefheart and love to arrangements on stuff like TMR, Lick my decals off and shiny beast, which are quite strange records.

There's constant discussion about this album because everyone says its meticulously practiced and detail, were every note is written, while others think its random garbage. But if it intended to sound like that, did Beefheart do good or bad?

>>69601751
>the fact a goofball record is inherently hard to be any creative apex
that's not a fact at all. trout mask for one wouldn't be the same if it was completely serious, without the dada poetry or the studio banter, and it would be much less enjoyable

>>69601751
If you're a tryhard and you try hard to "get" TMR you probably deserve to be called a pleb. And you really should listen to it one more time, but without a buttplug up your arse.

>>69602152
kind of. i have a hard time believing that people who take their music taste, their 4chan posts, themselves or their rym account very seriously for some ungodly reason understand tmr on a sort of visceral level, rather than this "i get the gist of what it's about or its place in history or its influence, yeah i read about that" thing because of its status

>>69601751
Sense of humor = goofball record. I especially doubt he wanted the record to be a joke with the legendarily harsh rehearsal period

>>69601896
It wasn't intended to be bad, it's just an strange songwriting style that to this day few other people have attempted

>>69602325
Meant to say sense of humor=/=goofball record

If you don't listen to blues, folk, and other forms of american roots music you don't understand this album. It isn't math rock, its a fuckin blues record.

>>69602353
Yeah but also if you are not black you don't understand blues

>>69602353
>It isn't math rock
it might aswell be

>>69600897
I listened to the first quarter and while I didn't think it was too repulsive, it didn't interest me enough to keep going.

>>69602353
blues is merely the container he encapsulates his artistic ideas within
the genre is entirely irrelevant to the reasons why it's a milestone of experimental/abstract music

>>69602325
the harsh rehearsal is an important thing to keep in mind - despite how it sounds this wasn't a fun record to make

>>69600952
yep

>>69600897
the greatest rock album of all-time

so idiosyncratic and forward thinking that it sowed seeds for genres that would pop up 40 years later

possibly the greatest album ever imo

I do think it's a fantastic, if rather flawed, record. Through most tracks there's enough happening to have multiple listens be engaging, and giving it a post-50s rock undercurrent only helps in it being more engaging in ways some of its art music influences couldn't be. Most people look at either Beefheart's delivery, or the guitar duo going crazy, or the cool horn parts, but my personal favorite thing about this album's honestly its rhythm section consisting of bassist Rockette Morton and John French/Drumbo on drums. Every track on this album could easily sound like it's a mess of two different songs put together, but how it works is how those two guys rein in everything else the rest of the band is doing to make each individual track feel more cohesive than it has any right to be.

That being said, it definitely has some pretty glaring flaws which I really don't get why people just gloss over. First is the mixing/mastering on it. An album that tries to have as many intricacies as this one really doesn't benefit at all from a production style that's not only muddy as fuck, but also rather focused towards having a pop music style production where the vocals are by and far the loudest thing in the mix. It's partly not surprising considering that this was John French/Drumbo's first professional go at engineering a record, but Zappa and Dick Kunc who were also on that team had previously done pretty well on the Mothers Of Invention albums; it's a surprise this one sounds like such a mess.

Continuing in next post.

>>69602679
I would agree, but if you have a working knowledge of the musical form he is acting within it really does bring a whole other level of depth to his genius.

>>69602454
True, if you weren't born as a poor black sharecropper in the south around 1890 you'll probably never truly get the blues.

>>69603398
Another very obvious flaw with this album is how uneven the actual overall cohesion and pacing of the album is. It has a lot of random bits that all at first, because of their gimmicky nature, are entertaining as hell and seem to fit well with the overall atmosphere presented on the album. But on repeated listens they all lose their muster maybe with the exception of Fast and Bulbous. Doesn't help that none of it holds the same level of cohesion similar things in concept albums tend to either. Ultimately, kinda like the annoying level of skits you can find in some Golden Age hip hop, it's very outdated and only not lambasted as such by others I believe because of the gimmick factor that it holds.

My last personal beef with this album is in some of its songwriting/composition. This is more of a subset of my beef with the overall cohesion/pacing, but a big part of it, too. Too many tracks on the album, when looked at individually, aren't all that great (Frownland, Dachau Blues, Bill's Corpse), with some of those not even having the busyness this album's known for. Then there's also the fact that for being a relatively long album, it doesn't contain the level of versatility such a long work requires, giving a feeling of uniformity within its randomness. Compare that to other large sized albums of that time like Dylan's Blonde On Blonde, or Zappa's Uncle Meat, or Miles Davis' Bitches Brew where there's large differences in track lengths, dynamics, and rhythm to maintain a good enough pace while introducing some level of variety to make it all work.

Overall I still do enjoy the album a lot, but I think that it's certainly not Beefheart's best due to the many glaring flaws the album has once you truly get past the surface level surreal goofy gimmick and get into the nitty gritty. My personal favorite Magic Band record, as was the favorite of Beefheart himself and most Beefheart fans before TMR got memed to death, is Lick My Decals Off, Baby.