Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band
Anderson Theater, New York City
1972-01-15

Lineage: AUD>tape (unknown gen)>WAV (using Wavelab)>FLAC (level 8, using Trader's Little Helper)

Tracks:
01. Hair Pie: Bake III (3:01)
02. Alice In Blunderland (9:59)
03. Old Black Snake (3:36)
04. Steal Softly Thru Snow (3:58)
05. Click Clack (5:07)
06. Grow Fins (5:38)
07. I'm Gonna Booglarize You, Baby (5:20)
08. When It Blows Its Stacks (6:41)
09. Abba Zaba (3:53)
10. Peon (3:33)
11. Woe-Is-Uh-Me-Bop (3:10)
12. Band Intro (1:11)
13. Spitball Scalped A Baby (4:58)
14. More (2:25)

Total length: 62:30

Quality: 4.5/10



Line-Up:
Captain Beefheart/Don Van Vliet: vocals, saxophone, harmonica
Rockette Morton/Mark Boston: bass guitar, guitar
Oréjon/Audi Hon/Roy Estrada: bass guitar
Zoot Horn Rollo/Bill Harkleroad: guitar, slide guitar
Winged Eel Fingerling/Elliot Ingber: guitar, slide guitar
Ed Marimba/Art Tripp: drums, percussion, marimba

Photos by Ed Gallucci (Don Van Viet) and Eric Rudolph (Mark Boston). Source: Crawdaddy. March 19, 1972.

Comments:
Patrick Carr: The Anderson Theater is in that area of New York now known as the Lower East Side. Once it was called The East Village, when Flower Power sowed its stone fields with the waifs and strays and prophets of the New America. Even if it is no longer a cool 'n groovy place to live, let alone hang out on a Saturday night, some Junior Entrepreneurs chose the Anderson for the scene of Captain Beefheart's recent sell-out concert.
On stage, they are a visual delight: Rockette Morton, looking like a reincarnation of Baudelaire, Toulouse-Lautrec and Gene Vincent all rolled into one, jerks the most astounding dance to the thrashing of his bass that you are ever likely to see. His playing is certainly the best of any bass-player I have ever seen, and Charlie Mingus is likewise impressed. Zoot Horn Rollo and Winged Eeel Fingerling sway in unison, and blend two beautiful flowing fluid guitars. Ed Marimba, monocle and yachting cap secure from the rhythms of his drums, blows out the patterns of the skins.
Beefheart stands and paces, watching like a benevolent giant until he moves up to the microphone to howl and screech and moan and rasp any one of a thousand voices from the Mississippi delta to the farther reaches of the Cosmos, or play chaotic rainbows from his horns.
I cannot describe their music, just as I cannot tell you how Beefheart plays with the words in his head (except by saying that he does play with words, turning the boundaries of semantics into starting-points for the surreal expansion of meaning). Beefheart tries to paint the clouds in music; he comes in colors.
(Patrick Carr: Where Are The Animals In This Program. A Study of Captain Beefheart. Crawdaddy. March 19, 1972

Bill Harkleroad: I also remember playing with Larry Coryell and Eleventh House as our opening act at the East Town Theatre in New York. (There is an Eastown Theater in Detroit.) He had Alphonse Mouzon on drums. (The Coryell LP Introducing Eleventh House with Alphonse Mouzon listed on percussion for the first time is from 1974) Larry looked like he was around twelve years old although he was probably around forty at the time (born April 2, 1943). He slung on one of those big Gibson Super 400's and he was just dwarfed by it. He was always kinda fun - I talked to him maybe four or five times and he'd say, "hey you Beefheart guys what's goin on? Let's go out and play some music", and he'd go out there and rip out some stuff. And those guys were just damned good. Just because it wasn't atonal and polyrythmic with an attitude, didn't mean it wasn't good.
(Bill Harkleroad: Lunar Notes)

Guy Gonzo: Every Beefheart performance was astounding. Especially my first one, a year or two before at the Anderson Theater on 2nd ave. It was just other-worldly. The band, their get-ups, the music, THE AUDIENCE! What a freak show. And they say "There's nothing like a Greatful Dead concert."
(Fender Discussion Forum: Moe's Tavern)


Circular: This publication is not without its New York contacts, one of whom furnished this report of Beefheart's Gotham triumph: Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band made a rare concert appearance in the Big Apple and performed a truly magic set before a sell-out audience of Beefheart connoisseurs.
After an exceptional performance by the great Larry Coryell, the curtains in the old but funk-filled Anderson Theater rose to the apocalyptic bass solo of the one and only Rockette Morton. Morton was shortly joined by the Captain, Zoot Horn Rollo, Ed Marimba and Winged Eel Fingerling who, as a collective unit, proceeded to work the Citizens for Beefheart (sponsors of the concert) into a veritable frenzy with their blues-flavored excursions into the outermost reaches of the cosmos.
After providing the audience with an hour-long high, the Captain responded to the pleas of the cheering throngs ("More! More!") with an encore of -what else- More, which he whistled, unaccompanied. Q: I heard that New York was just sensational.
Don Van Vliet: I wish you could have heard it. I did Black Snake Blues. I dig that song.
Q: You did some things a cappella, didn't you?
Don Van Vliet: Yeah. My voice is really there.
(America Is Bullish On Captain Beefheart. Circular Vol. 4 #4, January 31, 1972)