Doc at the Radar Station
The comeback, with John French back in the band and ideas rescued from the shelved Bat Chain Puller.
Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band, 1980
- Released
- August 1980
- Label
- Virgin Records
About half the songs rework old musical ideas. A Carrot Is as Close as a Rabbit Gets to a Diamond, Flavor Bud Living and Brickbats were originally recorded for the unreleased Bat Chain Puller. Biographer Mike Barnes wrote that skeletal ideas and fragments that would have mouldered in the vaults were transformed into full new material. John French rejoined: he plays guitar on every song, drums on Ashtray Heart and Sheriff of Hong Kong, and sings the second vocal on Dirty Blue Gene. Beefheart painted the cover himself.
Released on Virgin in the post-punk era, it reached a younger audience, and a KABC-TV report hailed him as the father of the new wave. Steve Huey called it the strongest album of his comeback. Pitchfork wrote in 2010 that Doc at the Radar Station and Ice Cream for Crow touched on the best of all his eras. Placebo briefly named themselves Ashtray Heart after one of its tracks.
Track listing
- Hot Head3:21
- Ashtray Heart3:26
- A Carrot Is as Close as a Rabbit Gets to a Diamond1:37
- Run Paint Run Run3:38
- Sue Egypt2:57
- Brickbats2:40
- Dirty Blue Gene3:50
- Best Batch Yet5:00
- Telephone1:33
- Flavor Bud Living5:08
- Sheriff of Hong Kong6:32
- Making Love to a Vampire with a Monkey on My Knee3:10
Personnel
- Captain Beefheart (Don Van Vliet) vocals, Chinese gongs, harmonica, soprano saxophone, bass clarinet
- John French slide guitar, guitar, bass guitar, drums, marimba, vocals
- Jeff Moris Tepper slide guitar, guitar, nerve guitar
- Eric Drew Feldman synthesizer, bass guitar, Mellotron, piano
- Robert Arthur Williams drums
- Gary Lucas guitar, French horn
- Bruce Fowler trombone
More from Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band
Safe as Milk (1967), Strictly Personal (1968), Trout Mask Replica (1969), Lick My Decals Off, Baby (1970), Clear Spot (1972)
Sources
- Doc at the Radar Station, Wikipedia
- Captain Beefheart, Wikipedia
- Captain Beefheart, Pitchfork (2010-12-19)