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.
By Prof Sehdev Kumar (This article, which was originally published on August 27, 2012, is being republished to coincide with 99th birth anniversary of the poetess on August 31, 2018) TORONTO: The month of August is filled with many festivities: Rakhi, Krishna Ashtami, Eid, and the independence of India and Pakistan. But it should also be remembered for one of the great Punjabi poets and writers: Amrita Pritam. She was born on August 31, 1919, in the village of Gujranwala, now in Pakistan. The legend has it that Heer of the great love story, Heer and Ranjha, was born here. The great story has been immortalized by the legendary Punjabi Sufi poet Waris Shah. August is also the month where the great nation of India was divided, leaving relentless blood and ferocious mayhem on both sides of the divide, pitting communities and neighbours against each other, spewing vitriolic hatred against one another. It was then that Amrita Pritam beseeched, with disarming eloquence, the great poet Waris Shah to speak of love yet once again: Ajj aakhan Waris Shah noon kiton kabraan vichchon bol, Te ajj kitab-e-ishq daa koi agla varka phol.. Ik roi si dhi Punjab di tun likh likh maare vaen, Ajj lakhaan dhian rondian tainun Waris Shah nun kehn.. “O Waris Shah, I beseech you to speak from your grave; And start anew another page in the story of love. What an epic you had written once about one weeping daughter of Punjab; And today thousands of daughters are crying out to you. Look at the rotting corpses on the fields; Look at the rivers flowing with blood. O Waris Shah, I beseech you to speak from your grave.” In every age, even in the midst of most brutal forces of repression, in the hands of an artist, or in the words of a poet, or in the voice of a singer, time and again human heart aches to reach out to the innocent and the afflicted, to mourn the heedless brutality, to render voice to the voiceless, and to celebrate the triumph of love over hatred. In her long years as a prolific poet and a writer this is what Amrita Pritam did, touching the hearts and minds of millions everywhere. If Amrita Pritam is the wailing voice of women who have been ravaged in every war – whether in Germany at the hands of conquering Soviet Army in 1945 or in Bangladesh in 1971 – there are other poets and artists in India who have spoken as an icon of human conscience in defiance of every brutalizing force. In 1961, when the first elected leader of the Republic of Congo, Patrice Lumumba, was assassinated through imperialist conspiracy, another great Indian poet and lyricist, Sahir Ludhianvi, wrote a poem, “khoon phir khoon hai”. The poem sings – as only great art can – that however fierce the powers of repression, life’s vitality is never drowned; like the Phoenix, it rises again and again from the ambers of its own funeral pyre, and lays new eggs in the burning coals of fire, to celebrate the triumph of life over death: Khoon phir Khoon hai, so shakl badal sakta hai aisi shaklein ke mitaaoo to mitaaye na bane aise shole k bujhaao to bujhaaye na bane aise naare k dabaao to dabaaye na bane. “Blood has its mysteries; it flows on. It changes and transforms, But is never dries out. It has fire that can never be extinguished; It has hidden messages in it that can never be erased.” Sahir Ludhinanvi – a close friend and fellow-traveller of Amrita Pritam – became a symbol of pathos, rebellion and hope for millions all across South Asia. His poems, as in Guru Dutt’s famous film Pyassa, have the daring to point an accusatory finger against hypocrisy and harbingers of death. But they also point to the moon, to hope: Jhine naaz hai Hind par, woh kahan hain, Kahan hain, Kahan hain? “Where are they who sing the glory of this land? The suffocated breath, the clinking coins, The jarred doors, the stifled throats; The hagglers, the pious…” How impoverished we would be like without the voice of such poets! (Prof Sehdev Kumar lectures on `International Cinema and Human Condition' at the University of Toronto. He is author of “the Vision of Kabir”) READ NEXT: Amrita Sher-Gil's self-portrait fetches £1.7 million in London auction READ NEXT: Punjabi spin on Chekhov's powerhouse play The Orchard at the Shaw Festival
gazi saiful islam: I collect ur article on Amrita, so nice, thanks to all 
