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
Film: The Lunchbox
Stars: Irrfan Khan, Nimrat Kaur, Nawazuddin Siddiqui
Writer and director: Ritesh Batra
Rating: **** ½ (4 and a half stars)
MUMBAI: In Mrinal Sen’s Khandhar desolation was defined and epitomized as much by Shabana Azmi’s face and physicality as it was by the architectural ruins where Sen shot his dirge-like tale.
In The Lunchbox, debutant director Ritest Batra—is this really his first feature film?!—does not seek easy escape routes for his characters’ destiny of drudgery. The film is set in the heart of Mumbai city where everyone is busy making a living…or just trying to live. Rightaway, this extraordinary film catches your attention with the way the sounds and the relentless rhythm of that City That Never Sleeps are captured and put on screen.
While remaining purely cinematic, there is something completely ‘non-cinematic’ about The Lunchbox. It is stripped-down of all affectations . The secrets of lonely hearts are not laid bare through conventional cinematic devices—the use of background is so sparing that you often end up listening to the music inherent in everyday routine : the way the trains move in the sweltering afternoons, the sound of auto-rickshaws bustling through byelanes, the sizzle of onions frying in a suburban kitchen, the sound of the television playing as a nucleur family of three lonely people have dinner in deathly silence.
Not just Ila, the cooking cleaning suffering housewife, even her preoccupied husband (Nakul Vaid) seems so lost in the act of existence. Even their little daughter looks so forlorn with her rag-doll, as though she needs a good cry but is not sure if Mama will be there to console her.
And to scare you there are whispers of a woman jumping to her death with her daughter. Ila won’t ….never! Right?
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Irrfan Khan in a scene in The Lunchbox.[/caption]
Holding back the rituals of grief is a well-worn suburban ritual that Ritesh Batra’s screenplay understands only too well. Every individual in Batra’s universe is disconnected from an inner tranquility and distanced from the people around him or her. It is no coincidence that Ila, our forlorn heroine who thinks of suicide but holds herself back, connects the best with an unseen Aunty living with her comatose husband in the floor above. Aunty (Bharati Achrekar giving a vigorously expressive performance through her voice alone), we learn, never turns off the ceiling fan that whirrs above her inert husband. She fears if the fan stops, so would her husband’s breath.
These little life-asserting pretences we indulge ourselves in to believe that we lead meaningful lives is the crux of The Lunchbox. Hence Ila strikes up an illusory bond of empathy with the almost-retired office-goer Saajan Fernandes (Irrfan Khan). It starts off with a wrongly-delivered dabba to a lonely widower in a typical non-government office. The initial delight of two strangers communicating facelessly soon turns into an intriguing relationship of empathy. The tragedy of two lonely people, one married in a loveless partnership and the other still wedded to his dead wife’s memory, bonding over burp-inducing tiffins filmed with gourmet dishes, is punctuated by the omni-presence of an annoying intruder, played by the very wonderful Nawazuddin, who keeps barging into Fernandes’ meditative melancholic interactions with his faceless culinary benefactor.
Among the three protagonists, Nawazuddin as the deceptively shallow character Sheikh has the toughest role. He must seem frivolous jovial and insensitive to Fernandes’ lonely existence, though he is anything but these things. Further, he has a happy life. And that should and does fill him with a guilt he cannot express.In many ways the bond that grows between Fernandes and Sheikh is far more tenable and real than the one Fernandes discovers in the aroma of the freshly-packed tiffin that lands every day on his table.
Fernandes’ loneliness is not of the same breed as Violent Stonheim in 36 Chowringhee Lane. He is alone , trapped in memories of happiness but also surrounded by noises and smells of a normal life. That little contact he makes with a family in the building opposite his own, through his window , is emblematic of his empathetic solitude.
Yes, this man has hope.
Food, which contours the tragic love story of Batra’s film, is used almost as a reminder of life in the face of death. When Ila’s mother (Lilette Dubey nailing her character’s abject desolation in just two deftly-written sequences) finally loses her husband she talks of hunger rather than loss.
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Irrfan Khan seen with Nawazuddin Siddiqui in The Lunchbox.[/caption]
Bereavement and loss affect individuals in very strange ways. What The Lunchbox says in a language that exudes the scent and comfort of the familiar is that we can strive to fill the emptiness inside us by cooking feeding, remaining busy with motivating acts of daily gratification. But we are finally left with nothing to hold on to. This frightening thesis of existence is laid bare in The Lunchbox with a compassion and warmth that embrace morality .
This is a sad film. But it isn’t depressing.
As the two protagonists whose souls collide and then come apart, Irrfan Khan and Nimrat Kaur give exceptionally sorted-out performances even as their characters grapple with the chaos and complexities of feelings that alas, do not fit into compartments as comfortably as the food in a tiffin carrier. Irrfan’s bearing suggests age that won’t accept defeat. He is a portrait of stoicism in the face of solitude. Does this actor ever disappoint?
Michael Simmonds’ camera doesn’t miss a thing. It seems to capture every moment of the characters’ inner and outer lives merging the two levels of existence and yet keeping them apart.
I came away from this profoundly moving tale with two of the most unforgettable lines of wisdom I’ve heard in a film. One of them comes from Nawazuddin who says, “Sometimes the wrong train can take you to the right destination.” And then there is Nimrat Kaur, so noble and restrained in her suffering within a pitiable marriage, who opines, “Very often we forget our memories because we have no one to share them with.”
The memory of food, friendship and forlornness associated with The Lunchbox would stay with me for a very long time.
Some films scream for attention. This one gets it without trying. What a gentle, tender, soft and sincere love story! Is this really Ritesh Batra’s first film?! He demonstrates an atonishing mastery over the craft . And yet The Lunchbox is all heart. Nawazuddin, Irrfan and Nimrat are so much in character that you wonder if these people were born before the script. The film celebrates the extraordinary ordinariness of their lives with a stark sincerity that takes away every morsel of artifice inherent in the act of filming made-up lives.
If this is not the best directorial debut since Satyajit Ray in Pather Panchali, then I am probably missing something vital.
And that’s what this film is about.
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