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Sit Down and Relax With Art Tripp


JSngry

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Wow, this was great.  I started watching, and couldn't stop until it was done.  Thanks for posting it.

As an aside, I know what Tripp said about Beefheart has been said by many other musicians, but for me, the aural evidence doesn't support the idea that Beefheart really wasn't the composer, didn't "know what was going on" or didn't "know how the parts of the music went together."  There was a consistent conception and progression from "Plain Brown Wrapper" through "Decals."  This was obviously Beefheart's music, and he in some way got the musicians to play that sound.  Certainly what would clear that up would be if Beefheart's famed piano improvisation tapes would surface, so we could hear the building blocks that became the "Trout Mask" and "Decals" compositions.

Perhaps the John French book would shed more light on this, but I can't bring myself to read it.

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I totally get the whole "Beefheart not the/a composer" thing because I've worked with an "artist" or two who operate like that - they give you some basic ideas and then expect you to make it into something coherent. It's a legit approach if the ideas come from somebody who has both the skill and the vision to know where they want it all to end up, and are not afraid to direct in quite specific (or abstract) terms as/if/when needed to get it there.

And I tell you true - there are too many who don't have either that inclination or skill. Some are just downright hustlers, nothing more. But I do give them credit for being "organizers", for being able to make something happen. What they do after that in terms of real credit and such, that's another matter altogether. Still, where there was nothing, now there is something.

As that pertains specifically to Beefheart, I honestly can't say, not having been there to see it in real time. Truthfully, I can see both sides being correct, just because even if "all" he did was to get those ideas down on piano for somebody/everybody else to actually realize...those were not insignificant ideas to begin with, right? But left unrealized/translated/codified/whatever, what would they have been rather than just ideas?

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Art Tripp seems to be a very nice guy.

As for Beefheart, from what I have read / seen, all the musicians, even the Trout Mask Replica band members who were psychologically (and sometimes physically) abused by Don and understandably hold a grudge against him, are at pains to confirm that the music ideas were Don's. The ideas were presented in a musically illiterate and disjointed manner, and the band members had to do a lot of work to arrange them, but these were his ideas nonetheless. Here is Gary Lucas's perspective:

 This is the piece that he is referring to:

 

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  • 1 month later...
On 5/2/2020 at 11:18 PM, mjzee said:

Wow, this was great.  I started watching, and couldn't stop until it was done.  Thanks for posting it.

As an aside, I know what Tripp said about Beefheart has been said by many other musicians, but for me, the aural evidence doesn't support the idea that Beefheart really wasn't the composer, didn't "know what was going on" or didn't "know how the parts of the music went together."  There was a consistent conception and progression from "Plain Brown Wrapper" through "Decals."  This was obviously Beefheart's music, and he in some way got the musicians to play that sound.  Certainly what would clear that up would be if Beefheart's famed piano improvisation tapes would surface, so we could hear the building blocks that became the "Trout Mask" and "Decals" compositions.

Perhaps the John French book would shed more light on this, but I can't bring myself to read it.

The John French book is an easy, entertaining read. 

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