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.
Bloco Bollywood celebrates Indian music in Brazil
By Florencia Costa SAO PAULO: Last year was a small baby step. This year, Bloco Bollywood took a big leap. Adding Indian sounds, colours and flavor to the Brazilian carnival, the street party of the Indian community in Sao Paulo last week was a huge success, with a turnout of large number of Indians, Brazilians and other nationalities. The bloco (term used for street parties) also achieved something not tried or done before: fusion of Indian and Brazilian musical forms. At 10 am on Saturday (February 25), when a mobile DJ unit with giant speakers arrived at the corner of Rua Augusta, an iconic street in the biggest city in Sao Paulo, with Matias Aires, there was just a small group of organizers standing on the pavement. Within 30 minutes, the crowd began to trickle in: Indian ladies in their colourful Punjabi dresses, men in turbans and kurtas, children with painted faces and hordes of Brazilians wearing dresses and make-up as creatively as one can imagine.
With the crowd milling around the sound car (called carro do som in Portuguese), the DJ for the day, Mark Datysgeld, and the master of ceremonies for the day, Vijay Bavaskar, took charge by stationing themselves on a small platform on the sound car. Then the music began to flow: Punjabi numbers, Bhangra beats, Bollywood hits and the crowd began to move, swaying on their feet slowly. In an hour or so, the crowd had swelled to more than 1,000 people and the party began to rock Rua Augusta.
Sao Paulo is a city of 21 million and one can find here people from all corners of the world. It’s a melting pot of cultures and languages. The Chinese and Japanese have very strong cultural presence in the city. As the Indian community, which currently numbers around just 3,000, is growing they have felt the need to celebrate their culture in the true Brazilian fashion as well introduce the true elements of Indian music and dance in Brazil. Bloco Bollywood was conceived with this intention in 2016. The first Indian street carnival, held in February 2016, was successful in the sense that it managed to put Indian carnival on the cultural map of this vibrant city and also organize the Indian community around an typical Brazilian event they could call their own.
Like last year, the event attracted members of the Indian community from Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and several other cities, diplomats from the Indian Consulate and Indian dancers and musicians based here. Addressing the gathering, the Indian Consul General, Abhilasha Joshi, said, “It’s great to see Indian music, dance and culture being presented on the streets of Sao Paulo as part of the Brazilian carnival.” The Consul General thanked the organizers for a nice display of Indian music and dances in Brazil.
In general, people around the world imagine Brazilian carnival to be just the samba parade that takes place in Sambadrome in Rio de Janeiro. But that’s only a very small – and touristy – part of the carnival. The festival goes on for almost a month and its main feature is blocos – street parties organized various themes, ranging from music and culture to politics and social issues. In fact, the blocos are the main form of cultural expression in this country. Every bloco has a theme and their typical music and dance form.
Bloco Bollywood, organized by the Indian community in Sao Paulo, has now added Indian music: Bollywood and Punjabi; Indian dances and bhangra dhol beats to the carnival of the most cosmopolitan city in Latin America. In a major step in creating a fusion of Indian and Brazilian music, the Indian bloco introduced the drum band from the Institute of Physics and Astronomy of University of Sao Paulo (USP) at the their party. Called Cherateria, the band comprising 17 drummers, learned to play bhangra dhol beats with their Brazilian instruments. As they played samba and then bhangra on Rua Augusta, all feet on the street were tapping and swirling to the beautiful music.
Conceived by Indian-Brazilian journalist couple Shobhan Saxena and Florencia Costa, the bloco is a result of major contribution from many people. The music for this year’s bloco was organized by Juily Malani and Nikita Kukreja. The dance groups at the party were led by Iara Ananda, an accomplished Brazilian dancer who is well versed in both Indian classical traditions as well as Bollywood; Gyaneshree Karahe, an Indian dance expert who teaches kathak at the Indian Cultural Centre basides running a Bollywood dance group; and Akshaya Bhandarkar, a young Indian dancer who has started giving Bollywood dance classes in Sao Paulo.
In a major boost for Bloco Bollywood, the group was invited to participate in a programme on blocos on TV Globos’s flagship programme, “Encontro com Fatima Bernandes”. In the programme, Juily Malani and her sister Disha alongwith Akshaya Bhandarkar performed a dance on a Punjabi number as a three-member Cherateria band led by Gabriel Costa worked on their drums. Leandra Leal, a top Brazilian actress who was a guest on the show, was so impressed with the music and dance that she expresses her desire to do a bit of bhangra and go the bloco.
Compared to its first edition, Bloco Bollywood this year made a big splash in social media as well. The event page on facebook managed to engage more than 9,000 persons, and various videos of the party got more 30,000 views on the social media. It’s a sign that the Indian bloco is making its presence felt in Brazil.
Besides the dancers and musicians, Bloco Bollywood is actively supported and organized by a number of Indians and Brazilians in Sao Paulo. Guchi and Bani Kukreja, promiment members of the community, provided crucial support and guidance to this year’s bloco. Vijay Bavaskar, Rakesh Kanojia, Amitabh Ranjan Singh, Raju Roychwodhury and Chaitali Chatterjee played very active role in promoting the Indian street party. Biju Nair and Ajay Vettackal, two Indian businessmen based in the southern city of Curitiba continued their support to the Indian carnival like they did last year.
Satguru Travels Brasil, the only Indian travel company in Brazil, gave great support by providing T-shirts with the logo of the bloco. The T-shirts were sold through various Indian restaurants to raise money for the event, which is completely free and open to all.
For the first time, all Indian restaurants in Sao Paulo – Samosa & Company, Tandoor, Bawarchi, Tusli, Reet Namaste and Queen Kitchen – offered special discounts to all participants for lunch on the day of Indian carnival. As a result, after the music and dance stopped on Rua Augusta, hordes of people rushed to Indian restaurants, and the party continued till late afternoon.
(Photos by Elza Cohen, Apolo Sales, Mabbom Santos, Elisa Cordeiro, Oreste Nappi, Chaitali Chatterjee, Amitabh Singh, Patricia Magnani Pimenta, Adhemir Feliz and Florencia Costa)
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