Captain Beefheart – “The Spotlight Kid”

He produced it himself, just as was the case with “Lick My Decals Off, Baby.” Captain Beefheart’s “The Spotlight Kid” plays like a good meal. You’ve got the gutter Funk of “I'm Gonna Booglarize You Baby,” which is the album opener. This is then followed by the mock-ballad “White Jams,” which rather appropriate of Beefheart, contains curious lyrical content. “Blabber ‘n Smoke” is the one cut on the album actually written by the good Captain’s wife, but it is not too far off the track, as the song clearly reveals strong interests in the environment and animal rights. Side one of the record ends with an amazing instrumental piece, with guest guitar work courtesy of Winged Eel Fingerling, no doubt a musician that was renamed when he briefly joined the Beefheart cult. The instrumental of which I speak is given the moniker of “Alice in Blunder Land.” The extended lead guitar solo on the cut is really fleshed out and travels through space at a rapid pace.

Side two contains a couple of Jim Dandies, no question. “Click Clack” is a Rocking little Blues Rock number that you can appropriately shake your groove thing to until the livelong day, and again, absolutely no question about it, sunshine. The album closes with a real nightmarish downer but make no mistake the track “Glider” just sifts on by like a demon beast vomiting in slow-motion repeatedly. The good Captain is in fine voice; and in quite fine attire as well, in terms of the album cover. This is a record that proves Don Van Vliet could play it relatively straight when the spirit moved him, and in some respects “The Spotlight Kid” harkens back to the Blues Rock tendencies of the Magic Band debut “Safe as Milk.”

Released in 1972, just months following a little album by the name of “Clear Spot,” which was actually produced by a famed Rock music producer of the time period; it is then “The Spotlight Kid” which is the superior of the two albums. This is a record that is in place thematically, and the music cuts equally as deep as anything on Don’s more so maniacal and absurd musical outings. Basically, it’s one of the few Captain Beefheart records that you could pass along to grandma for her birthday, and unlike the brief “Tragic Band” period of the mid ‘70’s, “The Spotlight Kid” is creatively driven and fully realized, it’s just a situation where Don decided to indulge in his genuine interest of certain kinds of Blues music, and thus, ended up with something that was musically centric.

“Clean up the air and treat the animals fair…”

CLICK-CLACK! CLICK-CLACK!