This one's for Nelson Talbott and Captain Beefheart

While growing up, my friends and I all enjoyed music, and we had a lot of fun discovering new sounds.

One such friend is Nelson Talbott, and I'll never forget the day he bought Trout Mask Replica by Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band. The look on his face as we listened to the album was priceless.

I thought of that recently while reading through a book called 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. It includes Trout Mask Replica. So Nelson, just for you, here are some of the things they had to say about that legendary album.

"After the experimentalism of the hippy movement, the avant-garde's influence on rock blossomed with the likes of Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band, and Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. With Beefheart's old high-school friend Zappa on production duties, Trout Mask Replica fused blues, country, free jazz, and southern boogie into an opus that would go on to become one of the most influential albums of the Seventies and beyond.

"The double albums 28 tracks are generally seen as too testing for most, with the freewheeling approach to composition and lyrics bewildering the casual listener. However, Zappa's tight control behind the desk helps form an abstract canvas for the Captain's flights of lyrical fantasy, with "Moonlight in Vermont," "Neon Meate Dream of an Octafish," and "Old Fart at Play" among the most memorable.

"Beefheart did not use headphones when recording his vocals for the album -- the result was that he sang in time to the reverberations in the studio, which added another element of complexity to their already heady brew. Trout Mask Replica went on to be influential far beyond the success the Magic Band enjoyed at the time, with prog, punk, and new wave all taking cues from this late Sixties masterpiece."

Nelson, it's not every day that a friend buys an album that is a masterpiece. Well done.