Captain Beefheart, Dead at 69

Captain Beefheart & Frank Zappa

Don Van Vliet,

 aka Captain Beefheart,

 dead at 69

(AP) – 2 hours ago

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Musician and artist

 Don Van Vliet, who performed a complex brand 

of experimental rock under the name Captain Beefheart,

 died Friday. He was 69.

Van Vliet was probably best known

 for the album "Trout Mask Replica,"

 which was released in 1969

 by Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band.

The album's angular, dissonant take on blues rock

 and Van Vliet's growling, surreal lyrics

 put him outside the mainstream,

 but staked his place in rock history.

Rolling Stone magazine recently ranked "Trout Mask Replica"

 number 58 on its list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

 The album was produced by fellow experimental rock pioneer 

Frank Zappa, a high school friend from the desert town of Lancaster,

 Calif.

By shunning commercial success and a more accessible sound,

 Van Vliet became a role model for subsequent generations of musicians.

 His music is cited as an influence on the rise of punk, post-punk

 and new wave.

 Beefheart is also claimed as a kindred spirit by free jazz musicians

 and avant-garde classical composers.

In the 1980s, Van Vliet turned full-time to art.

 He painted in a raw, expressionistic style and showed

 his acclaimed work widely even as he withdrew from the public eye.

He is survived by his wife of more than 40 years.

Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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On The Way

It's ALOHA Friday

in Hawaii!

"Great events make me quiet and calm,

it is only trifles

that irritate my nerves."

Queen Victoria

See the little Prince leaving his royal parents and going into the Hawaiian

AfterWorld?

Lobby mural in the Leiopapa a Kamehameha Building (State Office Tower). 

235 South Beretania Street, Honolulu,

  named after little Prince

 Albert Edward Kauikeaouli Leiopapa a Kamehameha;

 Born to King Kamehameha IV and Queen Emma

 on May 20, 1858,

 he was only four-years old when he passed away

 due to meningitis on August 27, 1862.

 The spirit of the young prince, affectionately known to the people as

 Ka Haku O Hawai'i "The Lord Of Hawai'i,"

is said to inhabit the building named in his honor to this day:

Leiopapa a Kamehameha translates to"

 "The Flower Of His Father Kamehameha."

Much hope rested on this little boy whose godmother was

Queen Victoria.

Hawaii still loves protocol and pageant.

This is the Brothers Cazimero's Christmas Show

at the historic Hawaii Theatre

"You can become a winner

only if you are willing

to walk over the edge."

Damon Runyon

(for Robert Cazimero)

Iolani Palace by Night.

Electrified by Edison himself, years before the US White House.

Honolulu's citizenry gathered right here

at eve to watch the lights come on all at once,

a bit of magic we take for granted today.

 "Our children

 (and elderly parents! cloudia)

 give us the opportunity

 to become the parents we always wished

 we had."

Louise Hart

By Day

"Morality may consist solely

 in the courage to make a choice."

Leon Blum

In Gingerbread!

"And I had but one penny in the world. 

Thou should’st have it to buy gingerbread." 


 William Shakespeare,
 Love’s Labours Lost

"The child with his sweet pranks, the fool of his senses, commanded by every sight and sound,
 without any power to compare and rank his sensations,
 abandoned to a whistle or a painted chip, to a lead dragoon, or a gingerbread dog,
 individualizing everything, generalizing nothing,
 delighted with every new thing,
 lies down at night overpowered by the fatigue, which this day of continual pretty madness has incurred.


 But Nature has answered her purpose with the curly, dimpled lunatic.
 She has tasked every faculty, and has secured the symmetrical growth of the bodily frame,
 by all these attitudes and exertions /an end of the first importance,
 which could not be trusted to any care less perfect than her own." 


 Ralph Waldo Emerson

Meanwhile. . .

May you delight in everything that comes today.

May the child in you stir

and awake

for a season of Wonder

and radical Hope.

That is my wish for 

YOU.

        What is YOURS?  cloudia