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 Subhash K Jha BOLLYWOOD: What has Sai Kabir, the director of Revolver Rani, on his film? Says the director, “I wanted to create a toy-world in the film. I wanted the audiences to feel they were inside a toy while watching the film. I am a big fan of Johnnie To and Robert Rodriguez. When Kangana Ranaut takes Vir Das to the film city that she has built for him it’s like being inside a gigantic toy.” Vir Das as the wannabe Bollywood star and Kangana’s resident toy-boy represents, for the director, “the great Indian dream”. Says Sai Kabir, “Taking short cuts to get where young people want to get is an accepted form of immoral behaviour. It’s cool to be corrupt for the sake of your desires and dreams . Youngsters who take short-cuts think they can get away with it. They think they can do some jhol in the stock market and get out with some fast bucks. But it doesn’t work that way. The whole Modern Indian Dream is a bloody bubble. Vir Das’s character gets trapped in his dream. Even the conversion to Islam and the second marriage ceremony that he goes through for the sake of the media, is a short-cut horribly gone wrong. Bt he has also got his poetry. He is not a villain like Amrish Puri and Prem Chopra.” Sai Kabir says even the film’s photography was purposely splashy and kitschy to accentuate the comic-book sentiment. “I don’t know if that comic-book feeling comes across. If you see the way the story unfolds, there are no Bollywood references in Revolver Rani at all. It’s actually a celebration of gutter-level existence. Kangana is a part of that guttural existence until she becomes pregnant. The baby symbolizes a surreal divine intervention. From her gutter-level insane existence she wants to move towards purity and sanity. The baby symbolizes sanity, purity an arcadian innocence. But she can’t quit the gutter.” A lot of the cross references in the plot about sleazy politicians and cheesy middlemen seem borrowed from real-life politics. Says Sai, “It’s not just about Madhya Pradesh or the Chambal Valley. My political references are taken from all over the country. Tribals being usurped from their roots, power plants being unconstitutionally sanctioned….these are epidemic political issues. And if you look at the news anchor Payal Prahihar (played by Mishka Singh) she is not just a source of humour in the plot, she is a major irritant for all the characters. And why just the characters, even I find her a nuisance. A section of the electronic media which snoops into celebrity lives is a bloody irritant. These are characters taken from the real-life politics. But it’s all depicted in comic-book fashion.” Kangana’s aggressive libido and her insistence on being the partner on top in her relationship with her toy-boy Vir Das seems like a devious role reversal of traditional gender equations in film and society. Sai Kabir says he deliberately planned it that way. “To be honest I knew such aggressive sexuality in the female protagonist would definitely generate interest in the male audience. But at the same time I also thought this kind of naked female lust would also connect with the female audience. On the face of it, women may deny strong sexual feelings . But somewhere Kangna’s character’s libido is a fantasy that women surely identify with.Why should only Bollywood heroes play eternal Casanovas while heroines are supposed to remain coy about sex? I thought Kangna’s mixture of love and lust for Vir Das is liberating in many ways.” Sai then adds, “Lust relationships are very weird. Even when you know your partner is f..king around, you can’t stop craving for your partner.” The director wanted to show that Kangana’s character tolerates Vir Das’ philandering because of the pregnancy. “That was one mistake I made in the storytelling. Kangana’s character feels that having a Daddy around for her unborn baby is a cool idea. But it’s an idea that couldn’t come across in the narration. This is my first release. And I didn’t get a chance to rectify the mistakes.” Sai Kabir can’t wait to embark on his next cinematic journey with Kangana. “She has played Alka Singh with incredible understanding. The woman is an outlaw. But she is also a victim. She has an inherently violent streak about her which people around her exploit and use to their own advantage. She is like a heroine from the Shakespearean dramas manipulated by king makers. I chose Chambal because I needed a brash backdrop.” READ ALSO: Kangana says she was offered role only if she slept with hero
