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.
BRAMPTON: The Punjabi community of Brampton is shocked over the third incident of large-scale group violence involving Indo-Canadian young men during the past six months.
On Wednesday, a group of young Indo-Canadian men assaulted three men with sticks and bats at a traffic light, sending two of the victims to hospital with injuries.
Halton Police are hunting for 20-year-old Rankirat Singh of Brampton in connection with this attack.
Rankirat Singh is said have instigated the attack which followed over a lease deal.
According to police, Rankirat Singh had signed a lease for a Brampton property earlier this month through one of the victims. He had also made the deposit for the lease. But the property owner changed his mind and asked the victim (broker) to return the deposit to Rankirat Singh.
When the victim informed Rankirat Singh that the property owner has changed his mind and he would come to him to return the deposit, a heated argument ensued between them.
On June 20 just after midnight, when the victim (broker) with his two friends drove to Rankirat Singh to return the deposit at a pre-arranged place, they found several vehicles and many men with bats and sticks.
Fearing for their safety, the three fled in their vehicle, with Rankirat Singh and his accomplices in their pursuit. When the three stopped at a red light on Winston Churchill Boulevard and Steeles Avenue in Halton Hills, they were attacked by Rankirat Singh and others with sticks and bats.
Two of the victims suffered serious injuries and were rushed to hospital.
Halton Police conducted a search warrant at a Brampton residence on Thursday, seizing two vehicles, several sticks and a baton.
Police have asked Rankirat Singh and his accomplices to surrender at the earliest.
https://twitter.com/HaltonPolice/status/1009823083614560256
Detective Sergeant Dave Costantini said, ``To Mr. Singh and the individuals involved, contact a lawyer and arrange for your safe surrender to investigators."
All the three victims, who are in the age group of 26 to 30, are from Brampton.
After the violence, a video surfaced in which a young woman claiming to be Rankirat Singh's girlfriend is seen narrating the root cause of the violence. She says Rankirat had arranged the lease for her.
She says when she told the property owner (Jaskaran) that she will stay alone with other girls in the rented accommodation, he started flirting with her. She said she first ignored his flirting but then it became too much for her as he wanted to meet her alone late and asked for her social media ID. She says the property owner even offered to waive her first month's rent if she `cooperated' with him. The woman said she has all his text messages on her phone.
The woman says she told her boyfriend Rankirat Singh that how the property owner has misbehaved with her. She says Rankirat called Jaskaran and the two had heated arguments. She says Jaskaran then cancelled the lease and asked Rankirat to meet him immediate to get back his deposit. The violence took place when the two men met.
Just days before this latest Punjabi brawl, another fight between two groups at the Sheridan College plaza on June 9 was also caught on video as shown below.
The latest ugly incident has angered the Indo-Canadian community, with people asked their area MPs to intervene to stop the senseless violence. In response, four Brampton MPs - Raj Grewal, Sonia Sidhu, Kamal Khera and Ruby Sahota - issued a strongly worded statement, warning international students that they face deportation if they are involved in these incidents.
In their statement, the MPs said, ``Recently, several incidents of violence involving youth in Brampton have been reported, particularly in the areas of Shoppers World Plaza and Sheridan College.
``Videos of the incidents are widely being circulated on social media and our offices have received several calls and emails regarding the escalating violence and the safety in our community.
As elected Members of Parliament for Brampton, keeping our community safe is our number one priority. In the coming days, we will be meeting with the Mayor of Brampton, the Chief of Peel Regional Police, the new Progressive Conservative provincial administration, and Sheridan College to see how we can address, together, the root cause(s) of this surge in violence.''
The four MPs said, ``We understand that the perception in the community is that international students are the main instigators of these incidents. We have asked the Peel Regional Police to investigate and update us on their findings. It is important to note that, if anyone in Canada with temporary immigration status, including international students, is charged with a crime under the criminal code and convicted, they will be subject to deportation.''
There have been a series of group fights involving Indo-Canadian young men, mostly students, in the last six months. In December, two groups of Indo-Canadians fought pitched battles with sticks in a Brampton plaza as seen in the video below.
In March, three Punjabi youths beat to death a 21-year-old Sikh youth.
Again, in March, three Punjabi youths outraged Canadians by beating an autistic man at the Square One bus stop in Mississauga.
Sikhs make up 20 percent of Brampton's population of about 600,000.
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Rajdeep singh: I shame u rankirat singh..... India da name khrb krde ho foreign ja ke... Thodi vrgya di vjh nal bht log es ladyi ch involve rhe ki milya... Sare destroy krte...sab di life khrb krti... So pls eh sab bnd kro...... Life ch agge vdo enha ladyiya ch kuch ni pya.. Apne parents da socho jehre pdn lyi thonu forign peajde hai 
