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 39th edition of the International Festival of Authors (IFOA), Canada’s largest and oldest festival of words and ideas, runs this year from October 18 to October 28 at various locations — from Toronto to Thunder Bay. It is free for students and youth under 25 years.
The festival is an important showcase of multicultural voices through non-fiction and fiction novels, poetry, panel discussions, and presentations. It brings together the best writers of contemporary world literature for 11 days of readings and discussions.
This year of special interest was Sunday’s session - Safar: Journeys to South Asia - to give voice to writers from South-East Asia, curated by Meenakshi Alimchandani and hosted by Teenaz Javat (CBC). The panel discussion led by Shree Paradkar (Toronto Star) included authors Arif Anwar, Amulya Malladi, Manjushree Thapa and Rahul Varma.
Arif’s debut novel, The Storm, is about an immigrant from Dhaka studying in the US and his life experiences. It is an inspiring story partly autobiographical and in Anwar’s own words “characters are wonderful ways to explore the paths that (the author) may not have taken.”
Amulya’s novel The Copenhagen Affair deals with the important theme of depression, the leading cause of disability in N. America. The novel written through a woman’s point of view is one that many women can relate to particularly since the pressures of marriage, career, being a mother and trying to be a superwoman is one that is universal no matter where you come from. As Amulya says “Depression is something we don’t want to talk about; we can talk about headaches, pains, and other health issues but not depression. I never thought it would be published.”
Manjushree Thapa’s All of Us in Our Own Lives, set in Nepal (her country of origin) is about the murky world of global aid and the complicated structure of the donor agencies and power struggles. She examines the theme through the eyes of her female protagonist and says “the ones who receive aid are the most powerless people”. She explains “life is suffering and how to alleviate it is through personal discoveries of creating characters and stories of interrelatedness”.
Rahul Varma’s work, Truth and Treason, is actually a play trying to establish a revelation of perspective other than the Western peers portray. His main focus through his plays are “to fill the bookshelves of Canada with more than what they are – represent more ethnic voices and issues- not marginalized writers of colour”. Rahul is an artistic director of Teesri Duniya and sees himself as a contemporary contributory writer.
The panel was an interesting one which brought out the underlying theme of why authors write and create characters. Novels are a way to explore paths not taken or can be a cathartic journey, or even can be to answer burning issues and questions. The authors brought home the importance of diversity and within that revealed the threads of human emotions which link us all together.
The second part of the afternoon was an interview or rather an in-conversation interaction with author Vikas Swarup by Anirudh Bhattacharyya (himself an author and journalist).
Vikas Swarup is author of Q & A (2005) the novel which was adapted to film under the title of Slumdog Millionaire. The film was critically acclaimed in India and abroad and went on to win numerous awards including ten Oscar nominations of which it won eight, including Best Picture and Best Director.
Vikas Swarup is also an Indian diplomat currently posted in Ottawa as the High Commissioner of India. Bhattacharya skillfully steered the interview to reveal a dignified diplomat who has a penchant for writing his signature society thrillers with a hook and twist and an iconic sense of humour.
Swarup was pleased to be invited to the festival and said “Toronto needs this inclusiveness in events like these. IFOA is a great place to have multicultural voices to be heard especially given that Canada is one of the most welcoming countries for people from all over the globe. You can be comfortable in your own skin in the communities here with no glass ceiling and can achieve success in all walks of life.”
Swarup’s contribution to contemporary literature cannot be overlooked. His book Q & A is part of the optional literature reading list for high school students around the globe. His second novel in 2008, Six Suspects has been translated into more than 40 languages as has Q & A. And the third novel Accidental Apprentice (2013) explores corruption and greed in India.
Despite all the progress in technology, the festival reveals the popularity of reading and role of libraries in Canada. Books and voices in words bring communities together and the voice of multiculturalism is getting stronger and bolder. Contemporary writers are not afraid to approach bold themes and flavour their books with palettes of their countries of origin for a whole new literary world.
READ NEXT: An afternoon reading with dignified diplomat Vikas Swarup
