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.
Little respite till supplies chains improve and the Ukraine crisis ends. Also there is little chance of recession as people are still spending
Statistics Canada has just announced 8.1% inflation in the month of June, 2022 up from 7.7% in May.
That is the total inflation rate. The core inflation, stripped of food and energy costs has also gone up to 6.2% from 6.1%.
Increases in inflation have been reported all over the world with the Eurozone coming in at 8.6%, the US at 9.1% and the UK at 9.4%.This is creating a headache for all those in charge of reining in inflation. Several economists hold that the interest rate increases all over the world are not enough to moor inflation because they are still at historical lows.
Let us examine Canada. Despite the front-load jumbo increase of 1%(100 basis points) last week by Tiff Macklem, the governor of the Bank of Canada (BoC), many economists say that the overnight rate of 2.5% is low and will not affect inflation, therefore rates should increase further. This has also been reflected in Macklem’s statements.
As mentioned in a previous article, raising rates will only affect the demand side of inflation. The other two main factors, i.e supply chain disruptions because of covid and high energy costs (due to demand and geopolitical tensions such as the Ukraine war) will not be altered.
Macklem himself said on Jul 13 when he raised rates that Canadians are cash rich to the tune of $200 billion plus dollars and consumer spending will continue because of this. He expects inflation to leave a print in the range of 7 plus percentage points for the next few months. Despite knowing this he raised rates, hoping as many mavens think that by doing so, all the excess money will be blown faster after which things will slow down.
As mentioned before Canadians will only stop spending when fatigue sets in. For the time being, having been cooped up due to covid, most want to go out to enjoy and have fun.
As of this writing, the price of WTI oil for the August contract is at about the same levels as before the invasion of Ukraine, around USD 95 per barrel. Some economists believe that the July inflation reading will come in lower than June but still elevated. In February, Canada’s inflation ran at 5.7%. Any reading above this in July will be mostly from the increased demand of goods and services and from supply issues as oil prices have dropped to end Feb levels. Hardly any of it should be attributed to the increase of oil prices due to the Ukraine war.
So once again do not expect the inflation level to come down to the BoC target range of 1-3 % anytime soon. It will be a long and winding tunnel before we see the light of day and hopefully the tunnel doesn’t collapse due to some more geopolitical flashpoints.
The other headache for Global Bank Governors is that rising rates will dampen spending thus leading to a drop in GDP further leading to recession.
The rule of thumb is that two consecutive quarters of negative growth in GDP means a country is in recession. The US has already experienced a negative growth of -1.6% in the first quarter. This fuelled talk of a recession due to the well-oiled propaganda machine of the US .Notice the two negative quarters in the graph below in 2020 when not only the US but the world went through a recession.
The official figure for the second quarter is due at the end of July but the GDPNOW tracker from the Atlanta Fed shows a contraction of 1.6% which technically means a recession. Using the parameters of the US National Bureau of Economic Research such may not be the case, but we will concentrate on the globally accepted parameter as mentioned above.
Here in Canada, we have not yet experienced a negative quarter this year so far. Q1 2002 showed a positive growth of 0.8%. The official figure for Q2 2022 is expected in August but forecasts due to the low unemployment rate of 4.9%(lowest since 1976) higher than expected wage increases, a very positive trade balance of $5.3 billion (highest in 14 years) and several other positive factors show a positive increase in GDP.
Since Macklem has pointed out that he expects strong consumer spending to be the order of the day in the months ahead, nobody is expecting a negative Q3. That leaves the possibility of a contraction in Q4, which would be the first negative growth quarter. If contraction continues in Q1 2023, then we have a recession in the spring of 2023 and not before.
However, that is 9 months in the future and there may be many a slip between the cup and the lip in that time period. So we will cross that bridge when we come to it.
In the meantime bask in the proverbial sun because there is no recession coming soon to Canada.
