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.
News East West TORONTO (Feb 14, 2014): If you are a new Canadian immigrant with a big dream, then think like Haroon Mirza. Who is Haroon Mirza? Well, he is a self-made multimillionaire. Just by the age of 29! He and his two friends created a company and within four years they sold it to Intel for millions - some say for $25 million. Can’t believe it? Here is his true story. Mirza, whose family comes from Pakistan, was born in Britain. Then he spent his childhood in the Middle East and when he was 13, his family landed in Ottawa in 1995. After finishing his school, Mirza went to Carleton University in Ottawa to earn his B.Com, majoring in corporate finance. And in 2004, he moved to Toronto to join Cadbury as a financial analyst. By early 2006, young Mirza was already a senior financial analyst at Cadbury, but he decided to chuck his job and become an entrepreneur. ``I always wanted to be in business. Though I had a job, it was not fulfilling. I was not building equity in myself. I wanted to take control of my destiny,’’ says Mirza. ``I knew being an entrepreneur will give me the freedom to do what I wanted to do,’’ he adds. Having chucked his job, Mirza joined hands with two partners - Dr Shahzad Malik who holds a Ph.D in computer science and Faizal Jever who was a business student - to embark on his entrepreneurial mission. ``Three of us brought different strengths to the table. We did a lot of brainstorming and kept pursuing different ideas. Ultimately, we learnt that we wanted to be in the digital signage retail industry. You know when you go to a store, you see digital signs. I felt this industry was feeling the pain - they were not understanding how effective their in-store digital advertising was,’’ says Mirza. Mirza and his partners decided to create sensor-based digital technology that will tell retail stores how many people entered the store and at what time of the day, how many were actually looking at in-store digital ads, where they were going , and what they were searching the most. ``In a nutshell, our technology using small video cameras and real-time computer vision algorithms will record the number of people viewing digital signage and measure traffic flow in a retail store. It will tell store owners how to increase their operational efficiency by analyzing the data from our technology. For example, by knowing that if most clients were coming at a particular time to buy particular kind of goods, stores could increase their conversion rate or sales by deploying more salespersons at that time,’’ Mirza says. So in 2006, they set up CognoVision Solutions Inc., with Haroon Mirza as CEO, Dr. Shahzad Malik as CTO and Faizal Javer as president & COO. Even as they were fine-tuning their ideas, the three young men entered the TiE Quest 2007 contest in Toronto. TiE (whose full form is The Indus Entrepreneur), which was started in Silicon Valley by successful south Asian entrepreneurs to help and mentor start-ups, has dozens of chapters in many countries to help young entrepreneur with guidance, mentorship and venture capitalists. TiE Quest is TiE Toronto’s annual contest to choose budding entrepreneurs and mentor them. ``So in 2007, we entered the TiE Quest contest and finished semi-finalists. That helped us a lot. Our business was financed by an angel investors, we didn’t need venture capitalist,’’ he says. Suresh Madan, portfolio manager at Excalibur Capital Management Inc. who headed the TiE Toronto chapter at the time, says Mirza and his partners impressed TiE with their ideas and drive. CognoVision made big strides quickly. It made a big impact at the Digital Signage Expo in Vegas in 2008, and was named Canada’s Most Innovative Company by the Canadian Innovation Exchange in 2009. And in 2010, Intel offered to buy CognoVision and Mirza and his partners decided to sell it for millions. ``Intel is the digital giant with a global sales and distribution network. We thought that with Intel we will grow much bigger and faster. So that’s how we joined Intel in Sept 2010,’’ says Mirza who now serves as director of business development at Intel. Isn’t cool? Haroon Mirza and his partners pocketed millions by selling their company to Intel and he is still the top guy at the giant chip maker. He and his partners have shown that any new immigrant to Canada can accomplish anything if he or she sets sights on it. They are a beacon for all those new people who make Canada their home each year. READ NEXT: Don't ask me what happens in my bedroom, says Sania Mirza
Lachman Balani: Here is another inspiring story of Anand Aggarwal. I invested in his company thru a syndicated loan and he sold his company to google for $30m.
Lachman Balani: Inspiring- but that is like telling Americans born and bred there they can be like Warren Buffet or telling born and bred Canadians they can be like Thomson or Jim Balsillie. Better yet why not tell all the Indians- if Dhorubhai can make it, if Narayan Murthy can make it in India why even bother go the US. UK or Canada. The story holds no value for me.
BTW Carlos Slim richest guy in the world made it in Mexico and he is of Libnani origin.
Narain Bhatia: The article is motivating. However, the fact remains each individual has to play his/her part in this world drama. 
