Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band
Commodore Ballroom, Vancouver,British-Columbia, Canada
1973-03-03

Lineage: AUD>Tape (unknown gen)>Wavelab>WAV>Trader's Little Helper>FLAC (level 8)

Tracklist:
01. Hair Pie: Bake III (2:06)
02. Suction Prints(5:09)
03. Low Yo Yo Stuff (4:00)
04. Nowadays A Woman's Gotta Hit A Man (4:08)
05. Abba Zaba (2:54)
06. Band Intro (1:37) w/o Alex St. Clair
07. Sugar 'n Spikes (3:51)
08. Peon (3:01)
09. I'm Gonna Booglarize You Baby (4:51)
10. Old Black Snake (2:59) John Lee Hooker
11. Alice In Blunderland (3:42)
12. I'm A King Bee/Sugar Mama (7:05) Slim Harpo/Howlin' Wolf
13. Mirror Man (9:54)
14. Big Eyed Beans From Venus (4:21)
15. Golden Birdies (2:03)

Total length: 61:41

Quality: 8/10. Tape is 12,5% too fast, speed reduction using Wavelab's time stretch function. Also done further sound improvements using Freefilter, equalizer and compressor.

Line-up:
Captain Beefheart/Don Van Vliet: vocals, harmonica
Rockette Morton/Mark Boston: bass guitar, guitar
Oréjon/Audi Hon/Roy Estrada: bass guitar
Zoot Horn Rollo/Bill Harkleroad: guitar, slide guitar
Ed Marimba/Art Tripp: drums, percussion

Comments:
Gordon Watson from Vancouver: I've been lucky enuf to have seen Don live four times, in '71, '73 (one of the greatest concerts in any musical genre I've ever seen; a staggeringly good performance by the prime Magic Band); '77 and '81; and to have met & talked with him twice.
(alt.fan.capt-beefheart)

Rick McGrath: Too many tables, too long between two sets to get too drunk, too many sitters, too many decibels, too few with it, after all.
The Captain motions stand up, people yell siddown; good vibes, bad vibes. Bob Ness and I sitting...standing, laughing at the crowd and wondering at the stage. Vice versa.
The Band magical; tight in execution, wondrous in content. Where do such riffs come from? Do they ever go back? Can we go with them?
Beefheart singing Black Snake Blues a capella. Hubub. The Captain hisses snake sounds, sighs, snaps, slithers offstage. Scandal?
After the gig, backstage, and an interview is set up back at the Holiday Inn. We walk. Arrive 2 am, sit down and set up. Zoot Horn Rollo and Ed Marimba (with green moustache) keep things moving along. Finally The Captain arrives, tells Bob Mercer he thinks Alice Cooper "failed erector set", and when Bob asks what he means by that, the answer comes: "I think he does number paintings and tries to make a big deal out of it. Do you know what I mean?" We were off.
You had some difficulty on stage?
I dug it. You mean the monitors?
During Black Snake Blues?
Oh, well, people were making noises and they felt guilty about making them. You see, everything's in key, until you take it out of key. And some of the people who were making those noises evidently felt guilty or didn't think they were supposed to make noises and upon not thinking they weren't supposed to make noises, they went out of key, you see? And I couldn't sing with all those outta keys. If they had just made noises like an animal makes noises, involuntarily; like a fish doesn't go around snapping his bubbles, doesn't even know he's making them. You know what I mean? When we go up there we're just combing out our hair, and we don't know we're combing our hair. We're not looking in a mirror. They were making noises, looking in a mirror, and there's a distortion. Do you understand what I mean? I'm just off the stage, and it takes me a long time to get back to the old world. Not that you're from the old world. That's not what I'm saying. It just takes me a long time to get it together to be able to talk. Because music's different than talking, even singing. You know that.
(Rick McGrath: Know what I mean?)
The whole interview at: http://www.rickmcgrath.com/beef2.html