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.
Vidya Balan, the petite actress who was born on Janaury 1, has carved out a name for herself in Bollywood
By Subhash K Jha
Bollywood actress, whose birthday falls on January 1, has made her mark with many great roles. Here are her 10 memorable roles.
1. Parineeta (2005) : She started her career in Hindi movies with Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s take on Saratchandra Chatterjee’s immortal classic earlier attempted to pitch-perfection by Meena Kumari in Bimal Roy’s film. Vidya’s Bengali act was very natural.Vidya loves all things Bangla.She keenly wanted to work with Rituparno Ghosh.Alas, that never happened.
2. Guru (2007): One of Vidya’s most underrated performances .As a wheelchair bound girl who pines to be kissed, she exuded vulnerability and longing without inviting pity.Vidya held her own in spite of Aishwarya Rai’s author-backed presence.
3. Bhool Bhulaiyya (2007): There was only one longish sequence where she got a chance to dazzle with her virtuosity. It was the climactic Bharat Natyam item where she danced as a woman possessed. Vidya loves to dance. Strangely she hardly ever got a chance to display her dancing, the disastrous item song in Ferrari Ki Sawaari nothwithstanding.
4. Paa (2009): The Big B’s mother?! Someone had to be kidding.As the mother of a progeria-stricken “child’ Vidya brought to the table an inner resilience that defied the normal protocol of a working woman and a single mother.
5. Ishqiya (2010): Re-defining the Hindi film heroine,Vidya’s character Krishna was an earthy rustic voluptuous woman who was frank and fearless about her sexuality. And boy, this woman could drink, cuss, rant and abuse like a fisherwoman. Ooh la la!Vidya’s unabashed self-assertion in this film just couldn’t be matched by Madhuri Dixit in the sequel.
6. No One Killed Jessica (2011): Her first real-life character, playing Sabrina Lal , Vidya proved herself a natural-born scenestealer, hijacking the histiornic honours effortlessly from her co-star Rani Mukherjee.
7. The Dirty Picture (2011): Vidya’s second real-life character during the same year.Playing Silk Smitha she scattered sultry vibes all over the screen as if it was going out of fashion.Her faked orgasm act was a classic, on a par with Meg Ryan’s ‘I’ll have one of those’ moment in When Harry Met Sally.
8. Kahaani (2012): One of the most powerful roles ever written for a woman in Hindi cinema, Vidya Balan redefined the term ‘pregnant pause’.This was her Mother India.
9. Bobby Jasoos( 2014): As the female detective with the thick Hyderabadi accent Vidya’s performance was as feisty and tasty as a plate of saffron-flavoured spicy biryani.
10. Hamari Adhuri Kahani: Damned and demolished for playing a regressive character, Vidya stood her ground ,creating a ravishing rerservoir of dignity and grace for her traumatized and brutalized character. When words failed Vidya’s eyes said it all.
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