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.
Komagata Maru Budge Budge ceremony to remember heroes, IIT Kharagpur workshop draws academics from all over India and abroad
KHARAGPUR (India): Even as Indo-Canadians commemorate the centenary of the Komagata Maru tragedy of 1914, the Indian Institute of Technology at Kharagpur remembered the heroes of the event by organizing a big workshop and paying tributes to them at Budge Budge in Kolkata where many of them were shot dead on arrival in India. The Komagata Maru was a Japanese ship hired by a Malaysia-based wealthy Sikh Gurdit Singh in 1914 to bring 376 Indians, mostly Sikhs, into Canada to challenge racist laws of that time. But when the ship reached Vancouver via Hong Kong, its passengers - barring a few - were not allowed to disembark for two months and then forcibly sent back to India where 26 were shot dead by British Indian police on arrival at Budge Budge in Kolkata. IIT Kharagput- the first major tech institute of independent India - remembered the victims of the Komagata Maru tragedy at a two-day workshop “Remembering the Komagata Maru: Historicizing Indian Migration to Canada” by its Department of Humanities and Social Sciences. A brainchild of Prof Anjali Gera Roy who has done ground-breaking work on the Indian diaspora and currently teaches at the IIT Kharagpur’s Department of Humanities & Social Sciences, the workshop commemorated the centenary of the tragic journey and return of the Komagata Maru to India. The workshop began with more than 12 participants from Canada and India addressing a public meeting at the Budge Budge Komagata Maru Memorial on Sunday, April 20. [caption id="attachment_86380" align="alignnone" width="640"]
Komagata Maru Budge Budge memorial.[/caption]
The public meeting was organized by Ganesh Ghosh, a former chairman of Budge Budge Municipality and historian, and the Gurdwara Shaheed Ganj Budge Budge in which more than 100 Sikh and Bengali residents participated.
Presiding over the meeting, Prof Anjali Gera Roy highlighted the significance of the Komagata Maru episode in India’s history. Others who spoke included distinguished historian Subhas Ranjan Chakraborty, Dr Prabhjot Parmar of University Centre for the Fraser Valley,Vancouver; and Prof Nandi Bhatia of the University of Western Ontario.
The participants paid respects to Baba Gurdit Singh and all those killed in the Budge Budge massacre of 1914. The Gurdwara Shaheed Ganj honoured the participants with siropas, presented by Kolkata’s best known Sikh historian Bachan Singh Saral. The event concluded with a visit to the Budge Budge railway station that has been renamed Komagata Maru Budge Budge station.
[caption id="attachment_86381" align="alignnone" width="640"]
Komagata Maru event at Budge Budge.[/caption]
Professor Ranjan Chakrabarti, internationally renowned historian and vice chancellor of Vidyasagar University at Midnapore, spoke as the chief guest at the workshop held at the Department of Humanities & Social Sciences of IIT Kharagpur.
Professor Anjali Gera Roy introduced the Workshop theme and Professor V N Giri, Head, Department Humanities and Social Sciences, welcomed the guests. Professor Siddhartha Mukhopadhyay, Dean Alumni Affairs & International Relations, IIT Kharagpur opened the Workshop.
Professor Ranjan Chakrabarti felicitated Ganesh Ghosh for his pioneering work on the Budge Budge part of the Komagata journey.
[caption id="attachment_86386" align="alignnone" width="640"]
The Komagata Maru workshop at IIT Kharagpur drew top historians from India and abroad.[/caption]
The Komagata Maru workshop at IIT Kharagpur drew top historians from India and abroad.
The workshop consisted of three panels in which eminent scholars in historical and literary studies from Canada and India made brief presentations followed by interactive discussions. The first panel on Historical Perspectives included historians Professor Arun Bandopadhyay, Nurul Hasan Professor of History and formerly Dean of the Faculty of Arts, University of Calcutta, Professor Himadri Banerjee, former Chairperson of the Guru Nanak Chair in Indian History, Department of History, Jadavpur University, Professor Subhas Ranjan Chakraborty, former Professor, Presidency College, and Guest Faculty, Calcutta University and Sr Bachan Singh Saral and was moderated by Professor Ranjan Chakrabarti. Professor Nandi Bhatia moderated the second panel on Literary Perspectives that included Professor Harish Sharma, former Professor and Head of Department of History, Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, Professor Chaman Lal, Professor (Retired) and former Chairperson of Centre of Indian Languages in Jawaharlal Nehru University New Delhi (India), Professor Somdatta Mandal, Professor of English at the Department of English and Other Modern European Languages, Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan and Dr Prabhjot Parmar, Assistant Professor, Department of English, the University of the Fraser Valley, Abbotsford, Canada. The post lunch session had joint presentations by Sujata Banerjee and Sunayana Maiti, Research Scholars in History, Department of History, Calcutta University and Madhumita Roy and Debarati Dutta in English, Research Scholars, Department of Humanities & Social Sciences IIT Kharagpur. Ashay Gangwar, a final year B Tech student of IIT Kharagpur, presented a peak preview of his short film on the Komagata Maru and a website prepared by five undergraduate students led by Sreeram Praneethn was demonstrated.
[caption id="attachment_86387" align="alignnone" width="640"]
IIT Kharagpur workshop on Komagata Maru[/caption]
A dozen Masters students from the Department of History, University of
Calcutta, and undergraduate and graduate students and faculty from IIT Kharagpur participated in the workshop.
Sponsored by Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute and the Indian Council of Historical Research, the workshop concluded with a visit to the Martyr’s Column and the Hijli Detention Centre, IIT Kharagpur.
