Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band
Ungano's
New York City, NY
January 25, 1971

Lineage:
Aud>tape (low gen)>WAV (using Wavelab/Freefilter/Timeworks Mastering EQ)>FLAC (level 8, using Trader's Little helper)

Tracks:
01. Alice In Blunderland (7:33) 
02. When Big Joan Sets Up Bass Solo (0:32)  
03. When Big Joan Sets Up (6:52) 
04. Hair Pie: Bake III (0:26) 
05. Frownland Bass Solo (1:39)
06. My Human Gets Me Blues (3:48) 
07. Hair Pie: Bake II (0:50) 
08. I Wanna Find A Woman That'll Hold My Big Toe (Till I Have To Go) (2:05) 
09. One Red Rose That I Mean (2:17) 
10. Abba Zaba (3:32) 
11. Japan In A Dishpan (1:42)
12. Woe-Is-Uh-Me-Bop (2:16) 
13. Flash Gordon's Ape (11:09) 

Total length: 44:41

Quality: 7/10

Line-up:
Captain Beefheart/Don Van Vliet: vocals, tenor sax, soprano sax, bass clarinet, harmonica 
Rockette Morton/Mark Boston: bass guitar, guitar 
Drumbo/John French: drums, percussion 
Zoot Horn Rollo/Bill Harkleroad: guitar, slide guitar 
Winged Eel Fingerling/Elliot Ingber: guitar, slide guitar 
Ed Marimba/Art Tripp: marimba, drums, percussion

New Equipment
Bill Harkleroad: We also had a lot of connections outside of the normal rock crowd of musicians. Don was friendly with people like Ornette Coleman. I remember one particular occasion when Don was visiting Ornette and we were going to pick him up to take him to play this gig the band was playing at a Manhattan club. With us was the writer Langdon Winner and we were both in this taxicab with my three guitars in the back and Don's horns and stuff.
So, we pull up to Ornette's house on Prince Street, and I step out of the cab to go up to knock on the door. I'm standing there and all of a sudden I notice that Langdon's standing behind me because he really wants to go up to meet Ornette. And then we both turn around and notice the cab driver driving off with all of our instruments! And there goes my 1950's three digit Stratocaster - it was $360 or something, a Telecaster, Don's Mark IV Selmer Soprano and Tenor saxes. It was some bucks leaving in that cab! I don't blame Langdon for it, but I thought he was staying in the cab.
I ended up having to buy a guitar at a hawkshop, and borrowing another guitar from someone in the audience and of course with my very aggressive right hand technique I was ripping the strings off the bridge pieces - it was tough! It had to be the gig where Joe Henderson, Pharoah Sanders, Charles Mingus and Ornette Coleman had come to see us and I'm out of my mind because those were my idols!!!
(Bill Harkleroad: Lunar Notes)

Joe Gore: By this point, says Harkleroad, the musicians were listening almost exclusively to avant-garde jazz, even though they rarely improvised themselves. There were starstruck when Ornette Coleman, Pharoah Sanders, Joe Henderson and Charles Mingus all attended one memorable New York City gig. Bill played that night on a borrowed guitar - earlier that day a cab driver had driven off with many of the band's instruments, including the never recovered Trout Mask Tele. "I tried to talk to Mingus," recalls Bill, "but he wouldn't even look me in the eye, though his wife leaned across his belly and said, "He liked it a lot.""
(Joe Gore: Bill Harkleroad. Guitar Player Magazine)

Bob Palmer: Ry Cooder, with his group, and Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band, bowed to the New York Press at Ungano's in mid-winter. Both are among the more progressive Warner/Reprise acts, though their use of musical traditions accounts in part for their unique sounds.
Cooder, on first, played a brief set composed entirely of country blues pieces from the 1920s and 30s, originated by Blind Willie Johnson, Sleepy John Estes, and others. His bottleneck guitar, and his mandolin styling as well, were classic in that he approached his material as a series of composed pieces. (Few country blues pieces were improvisational in character; most were worked out by their originators down to the last note.) His technique was flawless, the accompanying trio navigated the metrical difficulties with ease, and Cooder's vocals were genuine and personally idiomatic.
Beefheart's Magic Band is a legend in its own time. Their set was a bare indication of their capabilities, but it did demonstrate the free ensemble style they have developed. The band played with a crashing, rolling motion, rocking but without any heavy handed emphasis on bar lines. Beefheart's incredible penetrating voice was a bit contained, but right on with a few songs and some recitation. His band is far into his conception, and together they are creating the most advanced pop music of the decade, with roots both in the blues and in the New Jazz.
(Bob Palmer: Jazz & Pop News. April 1971)

Joel Vance: Eventually the crowd moved into the main room to hear the music. Ry Cooder went on first and did a brilliant twenty minutes. There was a long wait between sets because of the amount of the Captain's equipment. The current Magic Band is made up of Rockette Morton (bass), Zoot Horn Rollo and Winged Eel Fingerling (guitars), Drumbo (drums) and Ed Marimba (marimba and drums). Marimba wore a China Theatre of Operations WWII cap and a black and white 40s bathrobe. He looks something like the actor who played Prince Baron in the Flash Gordon serials.
Morton, with a antennae of greased hair sticking from the top of the head, lunged to the apron of the stage and thunked out a bass riff on his double necked guitar. Marimba plunked away. Morton retreated, lunged again, played again and the two guitars joined in. Drumbo slapped at the snare. Suddenly they all came together. You have to hear the Captain live or listen to his albums; his dogwhistle music is further out than most ears (including mine) can hear. I was reminded of the premiere of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring in Paris in 1914 when the audience went mad because they thought all music, the very idea of music, was being attacked. Stravinsky goes down easy today but it took the world awhile. So it is with The Captain.
He stood between one of the guitarists and Morton, holding a 1934 coloring book, smoking a cigarette and looking out over the audience as though he was chairing a board meeting or watching troops storm the beach. Then he advanced, put his mouth around the microphone and bawled out the words to I Wanna Find A Woman That'll Hold My Big Toe 'Till I Have To Go, gesturing with his cigarette hand. He sang two verses and retired quietly back to the amps, where he plugged in his electric soprano sax. When he came back again he put the bell of the sax over the mike, drew in his breath and let it all out, fingering the sax like a piccolo.
Suddenly the tune stopped. No one was quite sure it had, and by the time they realized it and began to clap the band was into its second number which climaxed with a drum duet between Drumbo and Ed Marimba. He flow a final sax chorus, the band quit and as the Captain stepped back the mike fell out of its holder. The Captain picked it up and said into it, "Webcor, Webcor. Thank you." He and the band departed the stage. Jan Van Vliet came out and gave her husband a hug. The audience looked at each other, wondering how long it would take to figure out what had just happened to them. For me, I figure it'll take about five years.
(Joel Vance: Capt. Beefheart A Day In The Life. Hit Parader. August 1971)

Jim Cim: The first time I heard a recording was the week Trout Mask was released. A person played it for a group of us mostly as a joke. He wanted us to hear The Blimp, and Old Fart At Play. Soon after that though, another friend who was really into Beefheart took us into Manhattan to hear him live at Ungano's, which was a very small club.
I wasn't 10 feet from the stage and what I experienced that night changed my musical existence forever. Drumbo - Artie Tripp - Rockette Morton - Zoot Horn Rollo. Just that would have been to much for me..........................but the Captain..................Christ, he was awesome.
Ed Marimba (Artie Tripp) came out on stage first and opened a silver cigarette case, took out a cigarette, lit it, and then proceeded to tap on the cigarette case into the microphone.
In the middle of what seemed to me to be the most amazing percussion demonstration I had ever seen, Rockette Morton came onto to the stage to play along with this. Next Drumbo followed by Zoot Horn Rollo in a one piece clown costume. When they were finally all playing, out walks Beefheart. He walks right up to the microphone, sticks his clarinette right on the mic and starts blowing the most ungodly sounds. I was changed that night. I don't know any other way to explain it.
(alt.fan.capt-beefheart)

Don about Ungano's: should it be called the 'periscope' instead of 'Ungano's? I don't have a thing for small clubs, nor do I have a thing for big clubs. I don't care that much about wee-wee.
(Child's Garden Of Beefheart. Changes Vol. 2 #23. March 15, 1971)
Don ten years later: "Hey, man, take a look at these," Captain Beefheart exclaims, holding some slides up to the bare bulb in his dressing rooms at the Beacon Theater in Manhattan. "These are some pictures!" Taken by a local freelancer, the slides show Beefheart standing at the microphone, blowing his soprano sax. "These were taken in 1969 at Ungano's, the first time I came to New York" he exclaims, and it's hard not to do a double-take. In 11 years, Beefheart appears to have aged hardly at all.
(John Morthland: Captain Beefheart. Music & Sound Output. May/June 1981) 
Glenn Jones: I saw Beefheart for the first time that night at New York City's Ungano's. (Basement club -- 200 person occupancy, closed down a few months later.) I'd been a fan since Trout Mask Replica, and had had my head blown off seeing the band live at Ungano's in New York City in 1971.
I found out 20+ years later, while interviewing Gary Lucas on a radio show I was doing in Cambridge, that that show was his first Beefheart experience too.
(Fireparty)

How did you get involved with Don Van Vliet?
Gary Lucas: I was a fan originally. I knew his records up to Trout Mask Replica and I admired him a lot. When I was a freshman at Yale University, in 1971, I saw that he was making an appearance in New York - his first on the East Coast - so some friends and I drove down to see him play in a little mafia club called Ziggalano's. We went into the club and they were playing Flying by the Faces over the p.a. I'll never forget: Don came out before the show and said: "Will you please take off that music? How dare you think that people want to hear this music. I mean, really, let's have some concern for the audience here". I liked his spirit because he was bucking up against the corporate rock thing - this was Warner Brothers' attempt to push another of their artists at the show.
Anyway, they came out and demolished the house and my head, I remember thinking: "God, if I ever do anything professionally, I would like to play with this guy". It just seemed to kind of go with musical achievements; he was just killing everybody.
(Andrew Bennett: Guitar God & Monster. Your Flesh #26. Summer 1992)

John French: One spot I remember us being well-received is Ungano's, a club in Manhattan where young listener Gary Lucas became very impressed with Bill Harkleroad's guitar playing.

Gary Lucas: (Bill Harkleroad) sounded great. He did One Red Rose That I Mean, and that's what convinced me to want to be in that band. I heard that and thought, "Man, that is the hippest thing I have ever heard in music." I said to myself, "If I ever do anything in music professionally, I'm going to play with this band." I made a promise to myself. I swear to you, that is a fact. I was completely blown awy, I thought it was the hippest form of expression of music I had ever heard. That show just completely changed my life. Don didn't look too happy. He walked out grimacing, kind of tense looking.

John French: Don's attitude probably had something to do with the fact that earlier that evening he and Bill had all their instruments stolen when Bill stepped out of a cab and it quickly drove away with the gear still in the trunk.
(Grow Fins linernotes)

Gary Lucas: I built my playing as a single-string Rock/Blues guitarist with heavy British Invasion influences. Then, I discovered Captain Beefheart's -- Don Van Vliet's -- music, and this was the big shift in my development and evolution as a guitarist. Hearing that, it was, "What are they doing? I've never heard a guitar played like that."
I went to see him play his debut gig in New York City when Lick My Decals Off, Baby came out. Warner Bros. had him tour;  it was an artist development project and they had Ry Cooder opening for him. This really rocked my world. It was the most incredible band and the music they were playing was sheer ecstasy. I remember thinking to myself, "If I ever do anything in music, I want to play with this guy." I made a vow with myself to pursue this. Everybody in the band exuded charisma -- it was really heavy.
(Steven Cerio & George Petros. Interview with Gary Lucas. Seconds Magazine. April 1996)
Gary Lucas: The first time I saw him perform I was just transfixed. To me it was the pinnacle: so complex and yet so beautiful and effortless and fun-loving. And Beefheart himself was a magical personality: he had a very refreshing iconoclastic attitude - like an early punk - and his comments to the audience used to crack me up. I remember him yelling at people who were sitting down: "Get up, get up, I'm older than you."
(Beef Encounters. Independent on Sunday, August 21, 1994)