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: As writers, playwrights and musicians from South Asia make Canada their home, they naturally struggle to find a place for their creations in the multicultural landscape of the country. The latest such venture is the Urdu film Bara Shayer Chhota Aadmi, which premiered in Toronto recently.
Written by Jawaid Danish and directed by Asif Rasheed, the film tells the story of a famous Urdu poet on a visit to Canada. Here an old flame of his college days back home, and a new impressionable young admirer vie for his romantic attention; the bara shayer now finds himself driven more by his political instincts of control and manipulation, and less by his devotion to poetry. As the game of the poet unfolds, one can sense a tragedy lurking in the wings.
Film directors from South Asia – Deepa Mehta is foremost among them – are finding their voice and their idiom in an attempt to tell their stories in Canada. It is by no means an easy task. Dislocated from one’s own social and political milieu, and from one’s language and passions, one has to reinvent oneself to engage the attention of disparate audiences in the new land.
As writers, Rohinton Mistry and M. G. Vassanji are two of the few authors in Canada who have struck a ‘fine balance’, both in their craft and in their subjects, in bringing the stories and concerns of their native lands to the discerning audiences in Canada. For many others - writers, playwrights - from South Asia, and indeed from other lands, the struggle still goes on.
It is thus that the present film Bara Shayer Chhota Aadmi assumes a significance of its own. Making a film is a large collective effort, requiring substantial funds, and coordination and skills of many. This film is a very valiant and concerted effort on the part of many to tell a story that enriches the Canadian cultural mosaic.
As the executive producer and writer of the film, and as artistic director of RangManch Canada, Jawaid Danish brings his extensive experience in theatre to making Bara Shayer Chhota Aadmi which is an engaging and imaginative film. The experience of many from South Asia as new immigrants in Canada is well-captured in crisp and witty dialogues, and a plot that is quick-paced and has many unexpected twists and turns. I only wish we had heard more of the shayer’s poetry that had apparently so stirred the two women, one of them to the point of suicide.
Films from India, of course, have large audiences in Canada, both in cinemas and through DVD’s. These films are equally popular in all of South Asia. Bara Shayer Chhota Aadmi is being presented as a film in Urdu, with English subtitles. However, the Urdu here is not dissimilar to the ‘Hindustani’ that is the language of most Bollywood films. Yet, it is not a usual Bollywood film; it has no songs and dances, no chase scenes, no hyperbolas. Its drama is in its human tensions. It is a restrained and well-crafted film, in which the narrative is always centre-stage and the characters carry an aura of credibility.
For our voices and stories to be told, and to be heard, by the others in Canada, and by the world at large, a film like Bara Shayer Chhota Aadmi makes an important contribution in that direction.
It speaks well of the commitment and artistic vision of the makers of this film that they have already announced the launch of another Urdu film, “Tanhaiyaan Muskuraane Lageen !” This is a most welcoming news for all of us who wish to see South Asian film artists in Canada make a place for themselves.
(Dr. Sehdev Kumar is Professor Emeritus at the University of Waterloo; he lectures on ‘International Films and the Human Condition’ at the University of Toronto)
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nooruddin amerjee: Javed mian mubarakbad qubool keejiye! Yeh ek ma'arekat-ul- ara shruaat hui hai aur is se aapko bohat ooncha had-e-parvaz se jane ke liye ek powerul inspiration bhi mila hai. Aapki mazeed kamyaabi ke liye duayein . nooruddin amerjee 
