Peter's music has been heard on hundreds of radio stations and has been on SiriusXM rotation for over a decade. As a multi-award winning artist, Peter's music has also topped Billboard's Classical and Crossover charts.
For Captain Beefheart, a maverick-artist-musician, who was not just a complicated man but highly demanding and by most accounts very difficult to deal with. It was appropriate that Beefheart's Magic Band was to prominently feature a bassist as accomplished, bold and adventurous as Mark Boston, a.k.a Rockette Morton.
Born on July 14, 1949, Mark began life in the small town of Salem, Illinois before his family moved out to Lancaster, California when he was 13. With a bassist and steel player for a father, Mark gained a great appreciation for country and bluegrass along with the R&B and rock’n’roll that was on the rise. Within a year of the Boston clan moving out to Lancaster, Mark befriended a young guitarist by the name of Bill Harkleroad.
At a time when the bass guitar was seen as the dummy’s instrument, Mark left quite an impression on Bill with his talent and equipment, leading to the two joining forces to form BC And The Cavemen. With Mark’s mother sewing some outfits for them, the band developed a decent reputation, and the two would also play in a band with Jeff Cotton and John French known as Blues In A Bottle. And then a local hero came calling. Or perhaps screaming and howling!
In that same Lancaster scene, Captain Beefheart And His Magic Band were making a big splash as a top flight blues rock outfit, with 'Safe As Milk' having made a strong impression and 'Strictly Personal' being a strong record as well. But even with a sound that was speaking to people, one that perhaps would have been a more pragmatic one as far as a career goes, Don Van Vliet just wasn’t meant for conventional norms.
The Captain had all these ideas, ideas far too out for many, including early members. He needed new musicians, younger and more impressionable ones that wouldn’t object to his ideas. Already having John and Jeff in the band, now 'Drumbo' and Antennae Jimmy Semens, he then recruited Bill, dubbed Zoot Horn Rollo. And on bass, he found Mark Boston, who took the name Rockette Morton due to his love of outer space. And the classic Magic Band was born.
Trout Mask Replica (TMR) wasn’t an easy album to make. Yet even with all the bizarre ideas and the difficulty in preparing those ideas into music, Mark was a total champ through it all. The Beefheart sound is one of great dichotomy, and Mark can capture all of it. He’s so tight and precise, and yet there’s this raw grit and dirt. He’s highly intelligent and sophisticated in his playing, and yet there remains this childlike sense of wonder and curiosity.
He takes after all the great traditional American music, yet out into a whole other realm of time and space. The bass traditionally serves the role of grounding the harmony while locking in with the drums to provide a foundation, yet Mark’s playing often serves as another melody line in the music. In a lot of ways, he’s like a third guitarist that just happens to be playing bass.
The TMR on its own is a legacy few can compete with, and yet Mark contributed to more classic records like "Lick My Decals Off, Baby", "The Spotlight Kid", and "Clear Spot". There on Decals, you get the equivalent of Godfather II. With Mother Art Tripp on marimba and drums rather Jeff on guitar, you get an album that captures a great deal of TMR's brilliance while being brilliant in its own unique way.
Then you get to 'The Spotlight Kid', with bass godliness on cuts like “When It Blows Its Stack”, resulting in a bass solo that often opened shows, yet Mark proves himself just as talented on traditional in-the-pocket styles as demonstrated on cuts like “I’m Gonna Booglarize You Baby”. And that thing about bassists being failed guitarists? In the 'Clear Spot', with Mark taking guitar and the rhythm section now being a mini Mothers reunion of Art and Roy Estrada, yet nobody missed a beat. Throughout the record, Bill and Mark’s kinship really shines, their weaving right there with what Bill and Jeff had done, or what was done with Alex St Clair early on.
Of course, dealing with Don was quite a task of its own, so it’s inevitable that Mark and the others would all end up departing by 1974. He and Bill soon formed a group of their own called Mallard. For two albums, the first with Art and having some writing help from John French 'Drumbo', Mallard showed itself a pretty decent blues rock outfit. And giving that it was Mark who finally had a chance to create something that was truly his own rather than helping some achieve their vision, it’s understandably the work that he takes pride in. And over time, he’d end up making a solo record and create some cool artwork of his own, as well as performing with 'Drumbo' in the reformed Magic Band, allowing the music to live and breathe on stage again.
If you’re a Beefheart fan, how can you not love Rockette Morton? Not only a uniquely talented bass player but such a great stage presence full of joy, along with a lovably quirky personality and such a sweet guy. Easily one of my favorites from Magic Band members, you can’t help but smile when thinking about Mark. He’s been through some rough weather, including his health scares, and yet he’s still the same Mark we’ve known and loved all the years.
Happy birthday Mark! Thank you for all you have given us and look forward to more.
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Patrick Moore is a freehand drawing artist and freelance music writer.
As Apollo 11 was about to blast off, my family and I huddled around the black and white TV to watch history unfurl
TORONTO: It was the summer of 1969 and I was literally over the moon as I had just graduated from the American School of Tangier, a US secondary school in Tangier, Morocco, and was preparing to go to Cornell University in the US for further studies in engineering.
Amidst all the excitement of getting ready for university, another extraordinary event, the imminent moon landing, heightened my adrenalin levels as I was highly interested in science.
Way back in ‘68 and ‘69 when the Russians and Americans were running neck and neck in the race towards the moon, I was actually rooting for the Russians as they were the first to launch the space satellite Sputnik and the first to put a man, Yuri Gagarin, into orbit. The Soviets were also the first to hard land (unpowered) and soft land (powered) a spacecraft on the moon. The U.S.S.R. was also the first to get photos of the lunar surface.
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The author in Houston in 1970 on the first anniversary of Apollo 11 mission with a real rocket in the background.[/caption]
I would jokingly tell my American friends in school that “the Russians are gonna paint the moon red!”
They would laugh back: “Nah, we doubt it, but even if they do, heck when we get there we will spray it white with the Coca Cola logo!”
Such was the ingenuity of American marketing even way back then.
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Apollo 11 take-off. Image source: NASA.[/caption]
I remember well also that after the “dress rehearsal” Apollo 10 mission in May of the same year, there were rumours that Russia, cloaked in secrecy, would somehow beat the US and send up a manned mission to land on the moon before the upcoming Apollo 11 mission in July.
However, the great day finally arrived for the Americans. My family and I huddled around the black and white TV on July 16, 1969, to watch history unfurl. With memories of the fire that killed three astronauts in the Apollo 1 mission a couple of years earlier and Neil Armstrong’s near death experience a year earlier still fresh in everyone’s minds, I kept my fingers crossed that nothing drastic would occur as the countdown began.
And then the magical moment came as the world cheered the successful lift-off! Apollo 11 was on its way to the moon carrying Neil Armstrong, Edwin ‘Buzz’ Aldrin and Mike Collins.
For four nail-biting days, I followed the news as to how far the spacecraft had reached. Many mused that some kind of mishap would occur and that the mission would be aborted. Finally, the world got to know that Apollo 11 had gone into orbit around the moon. Neil and Buzz readied themselves to get into the lunar module and descend onto the moon’s surface.
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Life magazine's pictures of astronauts' families rejoicing upon their safe return to earth.[/caption]
Then came the mystical moment as the dynamic duo touched down on the moon on July 20, 1969. Yes folks, the Eagle had landed (Eagle was the nickname of the lunar module)!
Neil Armstrong donned in his spacesuit, climbed out of the lunar module and became the first man to put foot on the moon!
Indeed as Neil so aptly proclaimed: “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind!”
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Richard Messer's collection of Apollo mission shoulder and sleeve patches.[/caption]
Later that year, I was fortunate enough to see the moon dust and rock at my university where they were sent for analysis. The following year, I visited Houston on the first anniversary of the landing to see the exhibition of all the mock-ups that formed that historic journey.
Also since that fateful day I followed all the manned Apollo missions and have befriended many similar souls. Even here in Canada, my next door neighbor, Richard Messer, the former executive director of the Kerr village Business Improvement Area and recipient of the Queen’s diamond jubilee award, is a space buff and has many Apollo mission souvenirs.
I too have many souvenirs and to date I have the original Life magazine devoted to the mission. It is a real antique piece preserved in cloth.
It is a matter of pride to know that on the 50th anniversary of memorable voyage in 2019, India launched the satellite Chandrayaan-2 to mark its historic mission to the dark side of the moon.
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