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.
KOLKATA, Dec 31 : Rumors swept Kolkata this year that a runaway boy spent the night beside a 4,000-year-old Egyptian mummy in the Indian Museum, a building with a reputation for being haunted. The local media wrote it up, and a crowd, including some worried that the youngster had been besieged by ghosts, mobbed India’s oldest museum demanding better security. With passions running high, authorities here in West Bengal state launched an investigation. “We checked all the closed-circuit TV cameras, gave them to the police,” said Tanuja Ghosh, a museum geologist. “Sure, sometimes night guards hear something, some creaking – it’s an old building. But this business about a small boy, it was false information.” Everyone loves a good ghost story, but Kolkata, the former capital of British India also known as Calcutta, is particularly fertile ground for the creepy, eerie and supernatural. Magazines publish lists of haunted buildings. Planchettes, also known as seances, have a long history, enjoyed by the likes of beloved native son, poet and 1913 Nobel literature laureate Rabindranath Tagore. “The ghost belief is stronger here than almost anywhere else in India,” said Soumen Kotal, co-founder of the Kolkata-based Paranormal Research Society of India, which investigates ghost claims. “The city is very old, and traditions come with that.” Like the Inuits’ many terms for snow, Bengalis have at least 15 words for ghosts based on the spirit’s caste, marital status, behavior and the fate suffered in the pre-paranormal past. Some look like forest owls, others enjoy eating fish or stealing from you. Still others lure you to your death by feigning the voice of your lover, have backward-facing feet or drift past without heads. “I’d want a rich, handsome ghost,” said Aditi Basu Roy, a reporter with the Bengali-language Sangbad Pratidin newspaper and an avid believer. “These headless ghosts are no good, although maybe they can use sign language.” Her colleague in the windowless newsroom, reporter Debdutta Gupta, estimates that 70 percent of Bengalis believe in ghosts. The city’s spirits like to stay in one place, he said, such as old buildings or trees. “Most don’t travel,” Gupta said, “although a few take the train, mostly third-class.” Residents offer various theories on why the city seems so haunted. Some cite the many decrepit buildings of this once-glorious capital of the British Raj. Others chalk it up to a large number of famines, disease and unnatural deaths in the region. Rationalists say it’s a reflection of West Bengal state’s rich literary traditions, imagination and love of storytelling. “Ghost myths are so prevalent because everyone told us as kids that ghosts would come if we didn’t eat our food,” said Harish Ramchandani, steward at the Royal Calcutta Turf Club. “The only ghost walking around these parts is Johnnie Walker,” quipped general manager Robin Corner over lunch at the club’s posh dining room. For India’s majority Hindu community, which believes in reincarnation, ghosts are seen as unfortunate souls caught between lives because of a sin committed by or against them. The Garuda Purana manuscript, believed written between 3000 B.C. and 1500 B.C., lists 17 types of ghosts and how they became so, including the notion that many choose to lurk where “falsehood and ignominy” exist. Adding to the Indian Museum’s infamous reputation are tales of marching-boot sounds at night attributed to the restless spirits of Indian freedom fighters detained in the administration building by the British in the early 20th century. “People spend a lot of money to get rid of ghosts so they don’t come again,” said Chaitali Roy Chowdhury, the museum’s zoologist. “India is backwards, it’s all rubbish. I don’t believe in ghosts, although I do believe in unfulfilled spirits.” The 200-year-old museum, with its peeling, discolored Corinthian columns, suffers as much from ghostly neglect as from ghosts. Exhibitions of Indian native cultures cite the nation’s 1961 census, six iterations ago. Once vibrantly colored stuffed birds are washed-out and gray after years of sun. A sign in an empty glass case reads: “Removed for international exhibition in China 2010-2011.” The museum lacks the scientific equipment to fully detect those haunting its halls, ghostly or otherwise, said security head Sumonto Roy, adding that the story of the boy trapped overnight has no apparent validity. The boy reportedly left his home at 4:56 p.m. and the museum closes at 5, he said. “He can’t fly, how could the boy remain inside?” Roy added. “It’s just to sell news. If they don’t have the circulation, they have to sell somehow.” Joining the Indian Museum on the city’s haunted-house list are several British Empire-era buildings whose distressed former occupants are said to hold eerie classical concerts, ride diaphanous coaches and attend ethereal dinner parties. Some say the 236-year-old Writers’ Building, once used by British scribes, is haunted by unhappy writers who died young. Then there’s a famous old peepul tree, whose branches Bengali ghosts are said to particularly enjoy lounging in. Also on the list is Rabindra Sarovar metro station, also known as “Suicide Paradise,” where it is claimed that spirits can occasionally be seen riding the last train. About 75 percent of those who take their own lives in the subway system reportedly do so in this station. Kolkata has been slower to modernize than Mumbai, Bangalore or New Delhi, in part because West Bengal shunned investors during 34 years of communist rule. “Our glorious past and no future may be one reason we’re attracted to ghosts,” said Aveek Sarkar, editor of the Telegraph newspaper. “We are relics of the past, unfortunately.” Recently, however, more shopping emporiums and condominiums have cropped up, with the city’s first luxury mall set to open within weeks. In a popular 2012 film, “Future of Ghosts,” director and screenplay writer Anik Dutta picked up on this theme, depicting besieged ghosts with nowhere left to live, forced to retreat en masse to one of the city’s last remaining old houses. “They thought they were safe,” Dutta said, referring to the movie’s plot. “But the bulldozers are about to move in on them too, and the ghosts are left homeless. There’s no relocation package for them.” Dutta said he’s scared of ghosts but has never met one. “And I hope I don’t have that opportunity.” Reporter Gupta, a self-declared planchette expert, said most Calcutta ghosts are unhappy but not angry. The English ghosts tend to have duels, attend dances and live a lavish – if discontented – existence, he said, while Bengali ghosts are more family oriented, prefer banyan trees and other natural spots and like the smell of fish. “Sometimes Bengali ghosts get together at a sort of convention to smell fish,” Gupta said. “They like fried fish, but not masala.” While Bengalis and Caucasians may have different skin tones in life, they share the same color in restless death, said Roy, the reporter. “They’re all white,” she said. Where there are ghosts, ghost-busters aren’t far behind. The paranormal society’s Kotal investigates purported sightings, including that of an “overpass ghost” reported in August 2012, who resembled a dead motorcycle driver and was said to be stopping cars late at night. Kotal said he uses “scientific techniques,” including paranormal photography, infrared thermometers and electromagnetic field detectors, to hunt for them. “One time we got a sound back in Bengali, but we couldn’t be sure if it was a spirit replying or not,” he said. “So far I haven’t found ghosts,” he said, pausing. “But I’ve found some energy.” (Courtesy LA Times)
