Captain Beefheart And The Magic Band / Doc At The Radar Station (Vinyl LP)

Description

Vinyl LP / Reissue

 180 gr audiophile vinyl pressing

1980-US

Format: Vinyl LP

#Ref: MOVLP2787

Release date: 2021

Release notes

Doc at the Radar Station is the eleventh album by American blues rock band Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band. Released in 1980, this album resulted in a resurgence of Beefheart’s (also known as Don Van Vliet) popularity. The album, which was self-produced by Beefheart, was critically acclaimed as well. It would be Beefheart’s second-to-last album before his retirement from music. The album is now available on black vinyl.

As the 80s rolled around, many iconic artists from the 60s would struggle to find their place in the decade. Captain Beefheart, however, though boasting a 60s discography that re-wrote what was possible for a mere three-minute song, came back revitalized. The punk and new wave scenes of the late 70s and early 80s had embraced his creative freedoms, while Beefheart himself, after seemingly turning his back on boundary-pushing music, unleashed a late-period Magic Band that asserted his credentials as one of rock’s true visionaries. They super-charged themselves for 1980’s Doc At The Radar Station, released in August 1980 as his penultimate album. Portentously, it boasted an artwork painted by Beefheart himself – the final album to feature his own work on the sleeve, as if signposting Beefheart’s eventual decision to retire from music and pursue painting in the middle of the decade.

Doc At The Radar Station marked the first Magic Band credit for New York art-rock icon Gary Lucas – continued evidence of Beefheart’s influence on NYC’s downtown art scene (it’s an influence that never left: the album’s opening track, “Hot Head,” is a clear ancestor to Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ early outings). Further youthful bite came courtesy of Eric Drew Feldman, a multi-instrumentalist who had joined the fold for 1976’s Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller), – two artists who wore their Beefheart influences openly.

Tracklisting