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.
TORONTO: The Soulpepper Theatre in Toronto is offering two most sumptuous and unique music concerts this summer: one, The 27 Club, and the other, The Secret Chord: A Leonard Cohen Experience.
For anyone – and that means really everyone – who loves music and poetry and their hypnotic impact on one’s heart and soul, both of these concerts are truly a great gift.
Both concerts are being presented by an ensemble of musicians, singers and performers – Mike Ross, Alana Bridgewater, Beau Dixon, Sara Farb, Evangelia Kambites and Cyrus Lane – and musicians, all of whom are immensely gifted, and who work with imagination and creativity with each other.
Each concert is 90 minutes long, and every minute of it is deeply moving.
The 27 Club refers to the most unusual group of very gifted musicians who all died at the age of 27: Jimi Hendrix to Janis Joplin, Amy Winehouse to Kurt Cobain, Jim Morrison to Rudy Lewis.
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Mike Ross. Photo by Aleksandar Antoijevic.[/caption]
The list is long and most intriguing. It was in 1994, after the death of Kurt Cobain, that this phenomenon began to be catalogued, though it was between 1969 and 1971, Jones, Hendrix, Joplin and Morrison had died at the age of 27, due to drug abuse, suicide or asphyxiation.
They were not only outstanding musicians; they were ‘icon’ in the bourgeoning world of new music.
This concert presents their songs and their life stories, and it leaves you touched to the core of your heart.
Such songs as ``Piece of My Heart' by Janis Joplin, `Light My Fire,' The Doors (Jim Morrison), `Some Kind of Wonderful', The Drifters (Rudy Lewis), `Turn On Your Love Light,' The Grateful Dead (Ron McKernan), `On The Road Again,' Canned Heat (Alan "Blind Owl" Wilson), `All Along the Watchtower,' Jimmy Hendrix, and many more, create a most haunting presence of these great musicians who defined an age.
The most receptive audience lapped every moment of it.
The second concert, on another evening, presents The Secret Chord: A Leonard Cohen Experience.
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Leonard Cohen's I'm Your Man.[/caption]
The most loved of Canadian poets and singers, Leonard Cohen, fortunately lived a long and prolific life. The concert presents 15 of Cohen’s most memorable songs: I’m Your Man (1988), Dance me to the End of Love (1984), If it be your Will (1984), So Long, Marianne (1967), Take this Waltz (1988), Halleluiah (1984), and many more, for an audience that loved Leonard Cohen, and his words, his songs. And his life.
One wished it to go on for ever, and ever.
Unlike the Indians or the Persians, the Canadians are not known to be great lovers of poetry. Leonard Cohen was somewhat of an exception. As a romantic, bohemian poet, he chose to live in Greece for years. And then he relinquished it all and became a Buddhist monk. And then he came back to the life of the poet and singer until his death at the age of 80.
What is it about poets that they live a life of chaotic innocence that is often touched by compassion that sometimes borders on the unreal, even the insane? It was in 1955 when American poet Allen Ginsberg wrote his poem ‘Howl’. The opening lines are as scathing as any written by anyone wreathing in pain:
“I saw the best minds of my generation
destroyed by madness,
starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets
at dawn looking for an angry fix;
Angel-headed hipsters burning
for the ancient heavenly connection
to the starry dynamo
in the machinery of night.”
And it was the great Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, who at the age of 39 drank himself to death, singing to the last:
And death shall have no dominion. No more may gulls cry at their ears Or waves break loud on the seashores; Where blew a flower may a flower no more Lift its head to the blows of the rain; Though they be mad and dead as nails, Heads of the characters hammer through daisies; Break in the sun till the sun breaks down, And death shall have no dominion.
Albert Einstein once observed that wars come and go but a mathematical equation lives forever.
Perhaps it could be said about some poems as well.
That is how Leonard Cohen touches on immortality.
(Prof. Sehdev Kumar lectures on “International Cinema and the Human Condition” at the University of Toronto. He is author of The Vision of Kabir, about the great 15th century mystic-poet)
ALSO BY PROF SEHDEV KUMAR: Lightning from behind the thick clouds
Lachman Balani: Cool. Nice to see Brian Jones and pigpen mentioned as well. 
