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.
___________________
Patrick Moore is a freehand drawing artist and freelance music writer.
TORONTO: Now that the Ontario Progressive Conservatives have won a thumping majority in the election, it is worth pondering what path may be the most beneficial to the party as well as Ontarians.
In view of their strength in the provincial parliament, nothing stands in the PCs’ way in terms of legislating policy – but this is a double-edged sword. It would be easy to get carried away and push through policies that may not be optimal, with an eye on appeasing selected support groups. Premier Ford will have to tread carefully.
The first and foremost issue is, obviously, the financial state of the province – both at the government level as well as for individual Ontarians. Despite the much discussed crises call for immediate action, the gravity of the assortment of problematic areas requires a cautious approach.
Premier Ford will be under pressure to deliver – or at least appear to be delivering – on various financial issues in a short-time frame. His challenge is compounded by the widely believed possibility that the provincial government’s finances are in a worse state than has been reported by the outgoing Liberal government.
If this is the case, then any revelations as to the actual state of affairs will come out over a period of time. Any policy measures introduced in the interim may turn out to be either inadequate or, worse, wrong choices. If Mr. Ford is forced to change direction as a result of these revelations, that would only confirm a widely held impression of him as an impulsive and ill-prepared politician. Perhaps the best approach for him would be to hasten slowly. This may sound like an oxymoron, but there are practical ways in which he can start making and implementing policy without jeopardizing the overall direction of movement.
WHAT HE CAN DO IMMEDIATELY
For example, there is room for immediate action on the issue of minimum wages. While the large increases legislated by the Wynne government were discussed extensively, and often heatedly, that discussion was taking place in a highly charged political atmosphere. As a result, some of the nuances did not get the amount of airing and emphasis that they deserved.
One such aspect of the new policy was that it removed an exemption for work centers that employed disabled people. Previously, this exemption enabled them to pay less than the legal minimum wage. This was a win-win situation. It allowed disabled people to be gainfully employed, when otherwise they would have faced tremendous difficulty in this regard. Apart from the monetary aspect, there is the equally important aspect of self-esteem of those so employed. The removal of the exemption, coupled with a substantial increase in the minimum wage itself, represented a double hit for the employers. In some cases, their manpower cost nearly doubled. This was, of course, not sustainable, and so many of the disabled people ended up losing their jobs.
Mr. Ford could immediately restore the exemption. By doing this, he would achieve three objectives at once: restore the jobs of the laid-off workers and help them regain their financial independence; at the same time, genuinely claim to be working to address the problems caused by the minimum wage policy of the previous government; and lastly, counter the image of the Conservatives as lacking in compassion.
That is just one example of the steps that can be taken immediately without risking the possibility of an about-turn on policy as the true state of the provincial government’s finances begins to get revealed.
One important indication of which faction within the Ontario PC party has gained dominance will be on the front of social policies – for example, the much-debated sex-ed curriculum. If that issue, or something similar, is taken up in the initial stages of his government, it will be a clear signal that the so-called ‘social conservative’ faction is calling the shots in terms of priorities.
CONSULT STAKEHOLDERS ON SOCIAL ISSUES
Pretty much all of the issues on the social policy front are controversial, and Mr. Ford would be well advised to take a cautious approach on these. At the most, what he should do is to start consultations with the stakeholders on these issues – any actual policy will only have to be advanced at the end, and as an outcome of these consultations.
Considering that nearly 60 percent of the voters who did vote opted for some form of leftist ideology (i.e. NDP, Liberal and Green, in descending order of the share of vote), any hasty or partisan movement on the social agenda would only serve to erode the support for the PC’s in the long run. It may be tempting, in view of the overwhelming mandate that the party has received in this election, to start implementing the agendas of groups that have been feeling a good deal of frustration over the past fifteen years of Liberal rule. However, there is a real risk of becoming overzealous, at the expense of the long-term interests of the party.
The Liberal party has been decimated in this election, and it will take them a long time to regroup and rebuild the party. Consequently, their performance in the next election is probably going to be relatively weak as well (although the example of the federal Liberals bouncing back from their debacle in 2011 is fresh in our minds, it should be borne in mind that a large part of their bouncing back in 2015 was due to the celebrity appeal of Mr. Justin Trudeau; the Ontario Liberals do not have any such mitigating factor on the horizon).
While this may entice the PC’s to become more unabashed in pursuing their agenda, what this really means is that, if the popular opinion turns against the PCs ahead of the next election, the NDP will be its direct beneficiary. The entire leftist vote, together with the disaffected voters who are not necessarily wedded to any party, plus some ‘occasional conservatives’, are likely to migrate to the NDP. By avoiding the excesses that led to the provincial Liberals’ doom, Mr. Ford will have a better chance of getting re-elected.
Let us hope good sense will prevail in the top echelons of the Ontario PC party.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR: Why Andrea Horwath could be disaster for Ontario
