The CD kicks off with “Hair Pie: Bake III,” which begins
nearly in full force. No introductions, no stage banter, just right into it. Of
course, it’s possible that there was something before this, and whoever was
recording the show started his tape a bit late. Who knows? “Hair Pie: Bake III”
is a loud, odd instrumental track, a bass solo. A strange way to begin a show,
no? Well, this is Captain Beefheart, so you can just forget normality. It leads
straight into “Suction Prints,” a thumping and unrestrained instrumental. They
then go into “Low Yo Yo Stuff,” the lead-off track from the band’s 1972 release
Clear Spot, and finally we can hear
that familiar bluesy rough voice of Captain Beefheart. They follow that with
another tune from Clear Spot, “Nowadays
A Woman’s Gotta Hit A Man.” One thing about Captain Beefheart And The Magic
Band, they sure came up with some great, memorable titles. (Hey, who else would
write a song titled “I Wanna Find A Woman That’ll Hold My Big Toe ‘Til I Have
To Go”?) It’s a shame the sound quality
is so poor, because it’s hard to make out the lyrics at times, and the lyrics
to this tune are pretty awesome. Check out these lines: “You gotta wait for your woman/Let her know you’re there/I knew I had to
go out and tell all of the women/That I knew they were there/Now everywhere I
go the women all know that I know/There ain’t no, there ain’t no other place to
go but there/Yeah, I’m talkin’ about women, man/They don’t have to hit me/To
make me know it’s there.”
“Abba Zaba” is a very cool track from the band’s debut
album, 1967’s Safe As Milk. This is a
good version, but of course I wish the sound quality were better. There are
band introductions before the band goes into “Sugar ‘N’ Spikes,” an
instrumental. And there is a bit of stage banter between that track and “Peon,”
another instrumental tune, this one from the 1970 album Lick My Decals Off, Baby.
Most of this material is obviously original, but the band
does play a few covers. The first is “Old Black Snake,” a John Lee Hooker song
(which was originally titled “Black Snake”). Before that song, you can
distinctly hear audience members talking. And this one is all Captain Beefheart
– some harmonica at the beginning, and then the vocals performed a cappella. It’s
a short version. The band also does “I’m A King Bee,” written by Slim Harpo,
and “Sugar Mama,” the blues standard adapted by Howlin’ Wolf. Though these two
songs are listed as separate tracks on the CD case, they are in fact on one
track, done as a medley.
The band does a ten-minute version of “Mirror Man,” which
is actually quite a bit shorter than the original album version (which is
approximately fifteen minutes). The CD concludes with “Big Eyed Beans From
Venus” and “Golden Birdies,” the closing tracks from Clear Spot.
CD Track List
- Hair Pie: Bake III
- Suction Prints
- Low Yo Yo Stuff
- Nowadays A Woman’s Gotta Hit A Man
- Abba Zaba
- Band Intro
- Sugar ‘N’ Spikes
- Peon
- I’m Gonna Booglarize You Baby
- Old Black Snake
- Alice In Blunderland
- I’m A King Bee/Sugar Mama
- Mirror Man
- Big Eyed Beans From Venus
- Golden Birdies
Live From Vancouver
1973 was released on February 17, 2015 through Gonzo Multimedia.
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