Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

When we show up, we win.

Republicans don’t lie to be believed, they lie to be repeated.

If you cannot answer whether trump lost the 2020 election, you are unfit for office.

The rest of the comments were smacking Boebert like she was a piñata.

They don’t have outfits that big. nor codpieces that small.

Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.

Fundamental belief of white supremacy: white people are presumed innocent, minorities are presumed guilty.

Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.

They spent the last eight months firing professionals and replacing them with ideologues.

The gop is a fucking disgrace.

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

You come for women, you’re gonna get your ass kicked.

Sadly, media malpractice has become standard practice.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Since we are repeating ourselves, let me just say fuck that.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.

If ‘weird’ was the finish line, they ran through the tape and kept running.

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

A norm that restrains only one side really is not a norm – it is a trap.

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” was supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

The revolution will be supervised.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / The Beefheart Primary

The Beefheart Primary

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Someone here must have written about this before, because I remember some of you joking that Mitt would have to start tweeting about the Shaggs, but I’m posting on it anyway because of wow:

Slate: Do you have a particular favorite era of Beefheart?

Huntsman: I’d have to say that I like Trout Mask Replica, which came out in ’68, all the way through Bat Chain Puller — I mean, they represent the diversity of Beefheart. I’m a fan of the really innovative spirit of Beefheart came with the Magic Band, and they really hit it off in ’68.

Slate: Which songs on the record (Trout Mask Replica)?

Huntsman: Ella Guru, China Pig Hammer — the whole double album. Part poetry, part improvisation. All cutting edge. And then when you get to Bat Chain Puller, it’s a little more accessible.

Reader Interactions

96Comments

  3. 3.

    rageahol

    i’m not sure what this has to do with the fact that he’s a backwards ass cracker assclown just like the rest of them.

    for the record, i’ve known plenty of troglodytic fuckwits who followed [the dead/phish/widespread panic/etc] around on tour and could talk intelligently about phyrgian heptatonics or whatever the goddamn christing fuckballs musicians spend so much time dicking around with.

    it didnt make them any more intelligent or socially conscious.

  4. 4.

    Warren Terra

    I like a lot of things about Huntsman – but his tax plan, released this week, is at least as bad as Mitt’s, and in all the same screw-the-poor, coddle-the-rich ways.

  5. 5.

    Big Baby DougJ

    It doesn’t make me want to vote for him, it makes me wonder if his campaign is an elaborate joke.

  6. 6.

    JGabriel

    I gotta admit, Beefheart is a pretty inspired choice. But I can’t imagine that many of the Republicans Huntsman is courting would feel the same way.

    .

  7. 7.

    dead existentialist

    Wow! When my first-born niece was learning to talk, I taught her to say, “High red, high yella, hi blew, she flew, hi imma hi ella guru.” She was about 1 1/2. Now she’s an airline pilot.

    Weren’t quite the right lyrics, but I never heard them in a frame of mind that I could remember them.

    “Moonlight on Vermont” was one of my favorites.

  8. 8.

    The Dangerman

    @JGabriel:

    But I can’t imagine that many of the Republicans Huntsman is courting would feel the same way.

    Braveheart? Yes. Beefheart? Not so much.

  10. 10.

    Hunter Gathers

    It doesn’t make me want to vote for him, it makes me wonder if his campaign is an elaborate joke.

    Mormons don’t do humor. At all.

    And Huntsman’s tax plan would cost me 6 grand a year. Fuck him in the ear.

  11. 11.

    cat48

    Tomorrow, Mrs. Greenspan has an interview with Huntsman & he’s going to be on The View this week, too. Then you can catch him at the Debate, too. I bet Goodhair might not show b/c each time he’s asked if he’ll be there; he always says “if I can, wildfires, etc. etc.” I think he’s only done two in his entire political life. Maybe he’ll cancel his campaign like McCain.

  12. 12.

    Paul

    Everything else in the Beefheart catalog is a little more accessible than Trout Mask Replica. Also, Bat Chain Puller was never released as such. Poser.

  15. 15.

    Hunter Gathers

    @Spaghetti Lee: She’s laughing all the way to the bank, that one. Who knew that writing about douchebags that happen to be vampires would be so financially rewarding?

  16. 16.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @rageahol:

    for the record, i’ve known plenty of troglodytic fuckwits who followed [the dead/phish/widespread panic/etc] around on tour

    And Coulter is a deadhead. Huntsman, apparently, is a Jack Mormon; apparently his kids even drink

  17. 17.

    Roger Moore

    @Big Baby DougJ:

    it makes me wonder if his campaign is an elaborate joke.

    Not a joke, just part of the long game. He’s trying to establish himself as The Sane Republican on the chance the crazy blows up in the party’s face and they decide they need a sane candidate in 2016. It’s an interesting idea, but I sincerely doubt it’s going to pay off; we haven’t even gotten to Woodstock of the Damned yet.

  19. 19.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Hunter Gathers:

    Who knew that writing about douchebags that happen to be vampires would be so financially rewarding?

    There’s a whole publication devoted to it. The Wall Street Journal.

  26. 26.

    Ripley

    Yeah, props to Huntsman for musical taste. He may not know his Shiny Beast from a hole in the ground, but he does appear to know his Beefheart.

    Still, for the Republican masses, he’s too soft, he’s no Sarah Palin. She’s not bad, she’s just genetically mean.

  27. 27.

    piratedan

    so maybe his choice of music means that at least he listened back in the day. He’s still a Republican and he may be the least bad apple in a barrel full of spoilage, I’d still prefer the non wormy apple, tyvm. If he really wants to separate himself and stand up and be counted, hows about calling out all of the odious bullsh** going on over on the R side of the aisle. Until that happens, he’s just another posuer.

  34. 34.

    Jebediah

    @rageahol:

    phyrgian heptatonics or whatever the goddamn christing fuckballs

    I’d be offended, since I am trying to learn the phrygian heptatonic scale, but the second part of that phrase won me over.

  39. 39.

    wasabi gasp

    He gave Mama Cass the Heimlich. And there’s a plaster cast of his weenie in a box somewhere banging up against the guy from Ten Years After.

  42. 42.

    Death Panel Truck

    China Pig Hammer

    I haven’t heard the record in probably 20 years, but the track is called “China Pig.” There is another track called “Orange Claw Hammer.”

    Doesn’t matter. The best track is the final one, “Veteran’s Day Poppy.” Heartbreakingly beautiful.

  45. 45.

    Magic Panda

    This is the first time a republican has ever said anything that made me even remotely want to vote for him. Too bad his thoughts on tax policy and such are batshit insane.

  46. 46.

    Jewish Steel

    I too like Don VV, but in wee little doses.

    A strange phenomena I’v noticed among my hep-cat jazzbo friends. Once they “catch” Frank Zappa & The Mothers it becomes an obsession that’s hard to shake. Almost like a nasty virus. “You’ve just got to hear this track.” And it sounds like pretty much everything else they/he does.

    Captain Beefheart is kind of in that category too.

  47. 47.

    Anne Laurie

    @Big Baby DougJ:

    It doesn’t make me want to vote for him, it makes me wonder if his campaign is an elaborate joke.

    I’m with Roger Moore — Huntsman is running for 2016, under the assumption the sane remnants of the GOP will have come out of their comas by then. Also, according to NYMag at least, the Huntsmans and the Romneys are distant cousins, from collateral branches of the Mormon founders, who hold each other in the same kind of warm fraternal esteem as the clans in ‘Game of Thrones’. So if Huntsman can funk up Willard’s campaign a little, it’s a personal bonus.

    Wish I could find the article suggesting that Huntsman was actually campaigning for the second slot… in President Obama’s second term. Not that I believe it, but anything that further outrages the GOP’s Raving Looney Rump will be a good thing for our Sane Party, yes?

  49. 49.

    Jebediah

    @Anne Laurie:

    I’m with Roger Moore—Huntsman is running for 2016, under the assumption the sane remnants of the GOP will have come out of their comas by then.

    Will the GOP recover by then? I don’t see them getting over the teabagger virus quickly enough to avoid self-immolation. Maybe there won’t be much of a GOP by 2016. Or maybe I am just too much of a cockeyed optimist.

  50. 50.

    Samara Morgan

    @Jebediah: new game.
    Tea Party Zombies must die.
    check out the klan robes zombie.

    the teabaggers, like the GOP, are dead already. its just the tiny little second brains in their hips dont know it yet.

    i think that that GOP can t win a general election after 2012, because they are losing the cities.
    Waiting for Silver’s analysis of the Brookings report.

  51. 51.

    harlana

    @rageahol: I said I wasn’t going to comment anymore but this was funny as hell.

    i’m not sure what this has to do with the fact that he’s a backwards ass cracker assclown just like the rest of them. for the record, i’ve known plenty of troglodytic fuckwits who followed [the dead/phish/widespread panic/etc] around on tour and could talk intelligently about phyrgian heptatonics or whatever the goddamn christing fuckballs musicians spend so much time dicking around with. it didnt make them any more intelligent or socially conscious.

  52. 52.

    Raven (formerly stuckinred)

    @Anne Laurie: I’ve mentioned this before but at the REM show in the ATL before the last presidential Michael made a quick plea for folks to vote for Obama drew a significant amount of boo’s.

  54. 54.

    dcBill

    Sorry, this can’t redeem him. I wrote him off when I read how he was known for nailing a particular piano solo in a REO Spitbucket number.

  55. 55.

    Some A-hole on the Internet!

    @cat48:

    Fucking amazing that this guy can get booked on the Tee Vee so much, seemingly as much as he wants. Last I recall, he’s polling almost nothing. Fucking tea-hadists HATE guys like him – and Willard. The insane dogmatists and ideologues are sitting in the Perry and Bachmann buses, and they are driving, and pretty soon will all be in the Perry bus.

    Media is supposedly driven by ratings, which drive ad dollars, but if you were after ratings, as a producer, you don’t book John Fucking Huntsman. Nobody fucking cares about this guy.

    Nah, you book him because word is coming down from the C-suite that he should get a fair shake of some kind. For some reason…some unknown reason…

    Fucking wingnut welfare, on the sly.

    Most of the GOP primaries are winner-take-all IIRC, and here’s a guy who won’t make it into the top three finishers on any ballot. He won’t be a viable option. Not this year, and probably not in 2016, either, probably not ever. But he’s all over the media.

    That said, isn’t he basically Tom Friedman’s ideal super-hero to lead a third party to technocratic glory, one of these elections? Just tweak him a little on tax policy to get the optics of “fairness” correct enough to appeal to low info rubes, and you’re all set.

  56. 56.

    Keith

    For me, this quote answering why he tweeted about the Captain speaks volumes about Huntsman’s desperation …

    I didn’t think anyone would read that! I put it out there to see if anyone was actually paying attention.

  57. 57.

    John S.

    @Raven:

    In contrast, a Cake concert I went to in South Florida recently had the opposite effect. But then, they still harbor a seething hatred for Bush which is reflected in many songs and accepted by most of their fans.

  59. 59.

    schlemizel - was Alwhite

    Its sort of like when I found out that useless POS Atwater was a huge Blues fan. How can you be steeped in that music but be completely untouched by the motivation for it? Its as if you loved to listen to Strauss and you want to blow up Vienna – makes no sense.

    I will give him props for at least knowing the material and not just faking it. I have no idea if he really is a fan of CB but at least he didn’t say he was & then totally incapable of at least naming a couple of songs off an album.

  60. 60.

    A Mom Anon

    @Southern Beale: Yipes.

    I don’t get it at all though.I have never found myself needing to look down on other people. Doesn’t compute,not even a little.The only people I’ve ever felt like wanting to kick are rich assholes that make life hard for other people.

  61. 61.

    schlemizel - was Alwhite

    @Some A-hole on the Internet!:

    He gets attention because he is the closest thing to sane in the orange haired crowd falling out of the Republican clown car. In an odd way he make the other bozos appear as if they could be normal.

    Its the photo negative of a ‘freak show’. COME ONE, COME ALL – SEE AN ALMOST SANE REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE!!
    “See Ethel?” I told you Republicans weren’t insane, this guy can string 6 words together, not mention God and seems rational.”

  62. 62.

    Steve M.

    About 20 years ago, some right-wingers (Joe Queenan among them, I think) used to tell us that William Weld was the future of politics because he was a small-government guy who really loved the Stones and the Dead, and could talk articulately about both. (I think he actually introduced the Dead when they played the last show at the old Boston Garden.)

    Funny how nothing came of that.

  65. 65.

    Southern Beale

    @cleek:

    does he like South Park? because that’s the all-important test of a “conservative’s” coolness.

    Poor conservatives. So desperate for some cultural relevance. No matter how much political power they get, it will never be enough because they’re stuck with Dennis Miller and Ted Nugent as their cultural touchstones.

  67. 67.

    Exurban Mom

    There’s a lengthly profile of Huntsman, alongside beautiful photos of his multicultural family, in the September Vogue magazine. He comes off as human, normal, rational, and moderate, so of course he’s polling at 1% of Republicans right now.

  70. 70.

    forked tongue

    In other news, Michelle Bachmann tweeted that early Half Japanese provides the soundtrack for her and Marcus’s diaper sessions.

  71. 71.

    The Other Bob

    @rageahol:

    “for the record, i’ve known plenty of troglodytic fuckwits who followed [the dead/phish/widespread panic/etc] around on tour…”

    I am still trying to figure out the teabagger at my work who cranks up Springsteen.

  72. 72.

    NobodySpecial

    @schlemizel – was Alwhite:

    Its sort of like when I found out that useless POS Atwater was a huge Blues fan. How can you be steeped in that music but be completely untouched by the motivation for it? Its as if you loved to listen to Strauss and you want to blow up Vienna – makes no sense.

    No, no, no.

    Blues was music made by poor Negroes. So if you want more Blues, you must have more poor Negroes. Preferably slaves.

  74. 74.

    LITBMueller

    Oh the delicious irony! To make Trout Mask, Beefheart basically locked the Magic Band in a house and essentially subjected them to physical and mental torture, like he was the leader of his own cult. They had no other jobs and lived off of welfare (shock! horror!). And, when Beefheart went out to promote the album, he padded his own resume by making false claims, such as that he taught the great Bill Harkleroad how to play guitar.

    I hope Huntsman is only a fan of the resulting music, not the methods!

  75. 75.

    Cube Zombie

    This is just cynical, blatant pandering to the millions of Beefheart/Zappa swing voters in purple states.

  79. 79.

    schrodinger's cat

    I guess I am less cool than Huntsman because I did not understand a single word from the excerpted interview.

  80. 80.

    Nemesis

    He gets attention because he is the closest thing to sane in the orange haired crowd falling out of the Republican clown car. In an odd way he make the other bozos appear as if they could be normal.

    All part of the strateregy. Put forth the “normal” guy and he softens the appearance of the whole lot.

  81. 81.

    jl

    Nice that Huntsman likes some weird music, it’s a nice human interest story. But so what? I used to half hope half fantasize, mostly from his record in Utah, that Huntsman might be a sane GOPper. But no more, after he decided to tak a walk down that low and pandering road of crazy to see if he could get some teabagger cred.

    Not sure he is a poser because he mixed up two titles. Unless you listen to that stuff really a lot, you tend to get mixed up after listening to a few Beefheart songs.

    What are his favorite Public Enemy tracks. If he tweeted that, it might get him a lot more attention.

    Just because a person likes a certain band, doesn’t mean they fit the stereotypes people have about different types of music. At the Public Enemy site there is an interview of ChuckD by a conservative libertarian guy who is a big Public Enemy fan. It was weird. ChuckD was kind of amused, and kept needling the interviewer in a good natured way about any cognitive dissonance between what the music said, and his political stance.

  82. 82.

    jl

    @LITBMueller: A band of grifters using public funds to get a profitable business off the ground, lead by a narcissistic authoritarian megalomaniac.

    There is an angle there that might appeal to the teabaggers, if some one could figure out now to pitch it just right.

    Not sure if Van Vliet was all that nasty a person, but some of the stories I’ve read about him are creepy.

  85. 85.

    catclub

    He is a billionaire and inherited his wealth. That puts him at least one step above Ross Perot – who made his fortune.

    I am amazed at how much he is allowed to come across as a regular guy – much more so than Romney.

    He gets all these TV appearances for the same reason Trump did – TV producers think he’s a billionaire. It was almost true for Trump.

  88. 88.

    Stan of the Sawgrass

    I keep looking up at the date… nope, still says Sept., not Apr.

    Doug, and all, I think this is Huntsman’s cheap and transparent ploy to lock up the Beefheart Fan vote. Will Ron Paul come out and defend the excellence of “Clear Spot” and “Spotlight Kid”? That’s when this pot will REALLY start boiling!!

  90. 90.

    The Populist

    @rageahol:

    Many right winger, and I mean far right, friends of mine LOVE the Stones and Dylan. Funny, when you ask them why, they say the lyrics move them. Funniest yet is that Dylan and the Stones lyrics are pro working class, pro lifestyles these types of people hate on.

    Very strange the pull and power of music has on some people.

  93. 93.

    forked tongue

    There’s a blog out there by one of those conservative Dylan fans called “Right Wing Bob” or something. I’d like to say it’s interesting, but unfortunately, only as a case study.

  94. 94.

    Anne Laurie

    @catclub:

    He is a billionaire and inherited his wealth. That puts him at least one step above Ross Perot – who made his fortune.
    __
    I am amazed at how much he is allowed to come across as a regular guy – much more so than Romney.

    Huntsman’s daddy made his money inventing the clamshell box used to protect Big Macs and supermarket eggs. He kept his family in Utah, within the Mormon social network and its emphasis on personal modesty and community uplift.

    Willard’s daddy made his money running a car company (waaaay cooler than fast food). The family lived in Michigan, where car company leaders were royalty, and Mitt attended an exclusive prep school where it was a social embarrassment to be given a mere brand-new top-of-the line American sports car for one’s sixteenth birthday. (Romney actually used this story of his ‘humiliation‘ as a would-be humanizing factor in a campaign ad when he ran for governor.)

    Don’t know enough about Huntsman to judge whether he’s a sociopath — which I’m convinced Willard is — but his upbringing gave him a much better handle on the way us “little people” think and act.

  95. 95.

    Tehanu

    @jl:

    Not sure if Van Vliet was all that nasty a person, but some of the stories I’ve read about him are creepy.

    Don was one of a kind, an artist first, last, and always, and you could not fit him into any kind of ordinary category. He could be arrogant and bossy, and if he got angry he could scream horrible things at you and be really frightening. He was also one of the kindest, most thoughtful and generous people I’ve ever known. So yeah, he was inconsistent, not a stereotype — human, not an ideological stick figure. Those stories are probably true, but they are not the sum of what he was. I miss him.

  96. 96.

    Paul in KY

    IMO, ‘Trout Mask Replica’ is a POS album. Pretty much unlistenable.

    I wonder if he’s really listened to it, or did his staff get him to reference it to show his supposed hipness.

    Generally, Mormons seem to think they have a hipness deficit, IMO.

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