Captain Beefheart: dust blows forward and dust blows back

Don Van Vliet, aka Captain Beefheart, was mysterious, alchemical, inexplicable and unrepeatableHe never sold many records. His biggest hit album, Lick My Decals Off Baby, reached number 20 in the UK in 1970. But in a recording career that lasted from the 1960s until 1982, he succeeded in redefining the parameters of rock music.His sound shifted over the years, from relatively straightforward blues rock to doomed attempts to court a mainstream audience; but at its height, it reached hitherto-unim...

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