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.
Rang Rasiya review: This masterpiece is a majestic exploration of religion, art , sex and the male ego
By Subhash K Jha Film: Rang Rasiya Stars: Randeep Hooda, Nandana Sen Director: Ketan Mehta Rating: *****(5 Stars) MUMBAI: He’s known as the father of calendar art. Raja Ravi Varma, played with arresting arrogance by Randeep Hooda in Ketan Mehta’s exceptional bio-pic, brought the gods out of the temples and made them accessible to the masses. And now Ketan Mehta, that artiste extraordinaire who paints his characters with the brightest colours of life, has brought the enigmatic ambivalent life and art of Varma out of the closet into the portals of palpable accessibility. As depicted in Rang Rasiya, the life of Raja Ravi Varma hovers heftily between the sublime and the mundane. He is at once an artiste and an entrepreneur, a lover and a debauch, a giver and,in his own words, a small selfish petty artiste.Hooda goes through the many phases of the artiste’s life with first-hand familiarity. [caption id="attachment_88816" align="alignnone" width="640"]
Nandana Sen with her co-star Randeep Hooda in a scene in Rang Rasiya.[/caption]
Among many other things Rang Rasiya is an illuminating exposition on of a life that defies all demarcations and analysis. Raja Varma was so many things to so many people. To thousands of Hindus he’s the guy who made worship of the gods accessible to all.To those close to him he was a vain and selfish artiste who thought only about himself. To encapsulate such a scattered life in a 2-hour film is a near-impossibility.
Mehta manages the miraculous. The film portrays the artiste as an icon and a rogue.An indolent genius who chances upon an ingenious formula to immortality: if Man can’t go to God, bring God to Man….
Rang Rasiya is an extremely articulate film that never gets weighed down by its inherent erudition. The thought-processes that define the age-old debate between Art and freedom of expression are given shape in fleeting scenes of marauders breaking down the doors at art gatherings.Scarily, the desecration of art ,and the sub-culture of moral policing are shown to be as rampant in the 19th century when Varma took the Gods out of the elitist temples, as they are now.
Ketan Mehta never over-emphasizes the point of freedom of expression. Ironically his lucid film often shows the artiste misusing that freedom for his own selfish benefits.There are images in the film of destruction and creation, sometimes in the same range of vision. And if we have Ketan Mehta to thank for bringing Raja Ravi Varma alive we have Ketan’s cinematographer Anil Mehta , his art director Nitin Chandrakant Desai and his music composer Sandesh Shandilya to thank for representing the director’s vision in images colours and sounds that are at once scintillating and subtle.
At the centre of this masterly portrait of an artiste as a self-seeking pioneer is a passionate love story . Raja Ravi Varma’s adoration and eventual abnegation and destruction of his muse Sugandha(Nandana Sen) is put forward in images visceral yet vivacious and spontaneous images.The relationship is as steeped in the tragic ethos as the one between Devdas and Chandramukhi.
There are extremely bold sequences between the Artiste and the Muse including a shot of Sugandha baring her breast for Raja’s brush-strokes. Though the entire film wears a look of defiant provocativeness none of the film’s erotic moments are gratuitous. The director relies mostly an an understated approach to create a bygone era. The sets are minimalist and so are the costumes. No one is over-dressed, not even the British characters.
Floridity is anthema in Ketan Mehta’s costume drama. Rather than focus endlessly on recreating the period the director delves into the morality and mindsets that governed those times when prudery was frequently a disguise for hypocrisy. Mehta strips through the veil of double-speak.
The dialogues between Raja Ravi Varma and the vanguards of organized Hindu religion are barbed acerbic and thought-provoking .
Wondrously the film is never weighed down by pontification and verbosity. Painted in the distinguished yet disembodied colours of humanism Rang Rasiya brings to vivacious life the very compelling love lust and defiant art of Raja Ravi Varma.
Standing tall at the centre of Mehra’s magnificent treatise of the artiste and the morality of the times is Randeep Hooda. He lives and breathes life into Raja Ravi Varma’s character. Admittedly some of Hooda’s expressions are way too wry and cynical to be convincing in the 19th century. But over-all he gets every aspect of the character right.
Luckily Hooda has some outstanding co-stars who prop up his performance without patronizing the protagonist’s passion. Nandana Sen as Raja Ravi Varma’s muse peels off all the coyness to portray a Fallen Woman who is deified through the artiste’s art . She has two extremely moving monologues which she delivers with feeling.Gaurav Dwivedi as the narrator and Ravi Raja Varma’s overshadowed sibling, Jim Boeven as Varma’s German ally and friend ,and the lovely Freyna Wazheir as a Parsi admirer stand out in the supporting cast.
One of my favourite moments in the film is between the ever-reliable Sachin Khedeker and Hooda where Varma, demoralized by the turn of tides in his life is told to smile and welcome a new life.
Watch Hooda’s extinguished eyes in this scene. The actor isn’t faking it.
A masterpiece by any reckoning Rang Rasiya brings to life the father of calendar art. There is a dazzling display of colour, desire, erotica, drama and emotions in this richly textured saga of art and immorality. Ketan Mehta the maestro of passionate parables gets it right one again. This is his most intricately woven and enchantingly textured drama since Mirch Masala.
Among the many startling ideas that emerge from Mehta’s majestic exploration of religion, art , sex and the male ego is the one suggesting that Dada Saheb Phalke’s dream of making a film was funded by Raja Ravi Varma.
Thank God and Varma ,then, for the birth of Indian cinema.
And thank God and cinema for Ketan Mehta who lives to tell the tale.If you love art and cinema, and cinema as art, then don’t miss this one. The best film of the year.
READ ALSO: Nandana Sen says she never objected to love-making scenes in Rang Rasiya
