Don Van Vliet

This morning snatches of Moonlight on Vermont ring out across the snow, across the frozen reservoirs , the stilled airports and stalled motorways of the U.K. The BBC Radio Four news marks the passing of Captain Beefheart , adopted as one of our own, loved here for his humour, his originality and his failure to find conventional success. Cherished by the beloved John Peel and a generation of musicians and writers and bedroom dreamers. He still comes rumbling through our petrified forest.



Steal Softly Thru Snow



The black paper between a mirror breaks my heart
The moon frayed thru dark velvet lightly apart
Steal softly thru sunshine
Steal softly thru snow
The wild goose flies from winter
Breaks my heart that I can't go
Energy flys thru a field
'n the sun softly melts a nothing wheel
Steal softly thru sunshine
Steal softly thru snow
The black paper between a mirror breaks my heart that I can't go
The swan their feathers don't grow
They're spun
They live two hundred years of love
They're one
Breaks my heart to see them cross the sun
Grain grows rainbows up straw hill
Breaks my heart to see the highway cross the hill
Man lived a million years 'n still he kills
The black paper between a mirror
Breaks my heart that I can't go
Steal softly thru sunshine
Steal softly thru snow



Don Van Vliet . January 15, 1941 – December 17, 2010.

From Trout Mask Replica.1969.


That’s Right, The Mascara Snake.


Heh-heh-ha-ha . . . Fast ‘n bulbous.
Fast ‘n bulbous!
That’s . . . heh-heh.
OK, do it again, then you’ve won.
I love that, I love those words.
Fast ‘n bulbous!
That’s right, The Mascara Snake, fast ‘n bulbous!
Bulbous also tapered.
Yeah, but you’ve gotta wait until I say, “Also, a tin teardrop.”
Oh, Christ.
Alright, again, beginning.
Fast ‘n bulbous!
That’s right, The Mascara Snake, fast ‘n bulbous! Also, a tin teardrop.
Bulbous also tapered.
That’s right!

A squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is fast and bulbous, got me?

From Trout Mask Replica.