The Mirror Man Sessions [CD]

This album (or at least the original vinyl LP) was my introduction to Cpt Beefheart. My chum Paul Rossetti said "turn the bass up full" so I did. Until I discovered reggae a few years later, it was the only music that made sub-woofers worthwhile.

This CD contains the vinyl's original 4 tracks, plus more from the same recording sessions. The jazz & blues progressions intertwine mischievously, sometimes luminous and sometimes impenetrable. As opposed to the shorter compositions on virtually all their other official releases, live and studio, these are rare examples of how the Magic Band could stretch and compress, fall apart and coalesce, explode and repress, focus and digress.

But are they really jamming? As with all Beefheart, you never know how much was actually improvisation, because the maestro was known to encourage and persuade his musicians to rehearse the most astonishingly adventurous lines until the most unlikely of musical structures could be repeated note-for-note over and over again. "Tarotplane" and "Mirror Man" SOUND improvised in places, so that's good enough for me.

If you don't relish the tightly-crafted song packages that make up Troutmask Replica, the illusory freeform of Mirror Man could be your introduction to the amazing world of Don Van Vliet.

From 1967 to 1972 Captain Beefheart released what is, to my mind, the greatest run of releases by any artist ever. Safe As Milk, Strictly Personal, Trout Mask Replica, Lick My Decals off Baby, Clear Spot and the Spotlight Kid comprise four classics and two of merely great status. Had the material which features on the Mirror Man Sessions been released at the time of Strictly Personal, the number of classics would have been increased to five. The history behind the release of Stricly Personal in 1968 and Mirror Man in 1971 is explained in the informative liner notes to this release and I shall leave you to read for yourselves if you are not already familiar.

However, what you need to know is that the nine songs which comprise the Mirror Man Sessions are utterly brilliant and constitute obscenely good value at 80 minutes for £5. Moreover they are completely different in sound and structure from both 1967's Safe As Milk and 1969's Trout Mask Replica. "Tarrotplane" is probably the highlight, a near twenty minute blues juggernaut far more uniform in tempo, key, time signature than Trout Mask Replica which showcases musicians at the hight of their powers (as a number of people have commented, the Magic Band were one of the few none-reggae artists to merit investment in serious bass amplifiers. The versions of Trust Us and Safe as Milk better those on Strictly Personal and showcase Beefheart at his most direct. The way the guitars engage nearly two minutes into "Trust Us" leading the whole band to open up nearly rivals "Big Eyed Beans from Venus" in sheer dynamic attack. Accessible and like nothing else at the time, with these recordings Beefheart and the Magic Band shamed so many blues revivalists in their mastery and interpretation of the idiom. Why the Mirror Man Sessions is not as acclaimed as it should be is a mystery. Trout Mask Replica's infamy is well deserved and "Safe as Milk" and "The Clear Spot" might be the best entry points but the Mirror Man Sessions remains a crucial part of the Magic Band's legacy. Gimme dat harp boy.

Captains Beefheart's Mirror Man is a long album that contains some of the heaviest and most blues orientated songs he ever wrote. Originally released in 1971 but recorded much earlier, and with only the first four songs, this release benefits from several extra tracks; mainly from the Strictly Personal sessions. The re-mastering is really top notch and everything comes out sounding nice and clean; well, the quality of sound that is. As always the music presented here is anything but nice and clean.

`Tarotplane' is a long, and I mean long, bluesy type track where you can expect to encounter some of the swampiest sounding guitars ever heard; and with Beefheart howling some of his most absurd lyrics ever. At twenty minutes though you do have to be in a special kind of mood for it, along with `Mirror Man', so I've discovered that this album works quite well as background music... if you're insane.
The songs `Kandy Korn' and `25th Century Quaker' are the two highlights of the original album. `25th Century Quaker' starts of with one of his best riffs, a really simple tune that does sound pretty 25th century; though not quite as futuristic as `My Human Gets Me Blues' or `Big Eyed Beans from Venus'. `Kandy Korn' is probably the best one though, with its weird changes in tempo and style, going from soft to heavy at the flick of a switch, and its long instrumental sections.

You also get a version of `Trust Us' which, while good, isn't as good as the version presented on the re-mastered `Safe as Milk'. You do get the best version of `Safe as Milk' the song though, and some of the other extra tracks are pretty good too. Overall, it is a good album that every Beefheart fan should own, but it's probably my least favourite of his albums.