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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.
News Grille
STAY ICE CREAMED!
By Pavni Grover
This essentially sweetened (sugarfree variant too) frozen food is typically eaten as a snack or dessert. Usually made from dairy products, such as milk and cream, and often combined with fruits or other exotic ingredients and flavours, the mixture is stirred and cooled below freezing point and the resultant is smooth, solid or semi-solid foam that everyone loves.
Ice creams it is believed owe their invention to snow being mixed with honey and fruits in Greece in 5th century BC. They have come a long way to the modern day Cold Stone Ice Creams, nitrogen ice creams, dancing Turkish ice creams etc, there has been a delectable revolution in the ice creams industry over the years.
They vary from one country to another. Phrases such as ‘frozen custard’, ‘frozen yogurt’, ‘sorbet’, ‘gelato’ and many other terms are used to distinguish different varieties and styles. Frozen custard is essentially an admixture of eggs, cream and sugar; frozen yoghurt on the other hand is a concoction of yoghurt, ice and other dairy products often mixed with fresh fruits. Sorbet and gelato have their own niche characteristics which make them stand out.
While a sorbet is a frozen dessert made from sweetened water with flavouring, a gelato which is Italy’s brainchild is made with a base of milk, cream and sugar and flavoured with fruit and nut purees along with other flavourings. Moreover, ice creams may also be served in cups, mugs, jars, cones or sticks, depending on how one would like it.
Taking into consideration the love that people have for ice creams in India one can truly say that starting from the lick lollies that everyone has enjoyed ever since their childhood days specially on family picnics to the various gardens, public parks and monuments across the nation served via ice cream carts, to the vast variety of ice cream cones taking the whole ice cream eating experience a notch higher, ice creams have surely been an integral part of every individual’s life since times immemorial.
Not just as individual servings but when in bigger groups ice cream bricks and tubs have been a huge hit and one can find at least one ice cream brick lying in almost every household’s refrigerator freezer, because you never know the urge to eat these at any given time, in any given mood and in any given quantity!
Over the years in India in particular certain brands of ice creams have held a special place in people’s hearts. Brands like Kwality Walls, Mother Dairy, Amul, Vadilal etc have been omnipresent in the market place since decades. Even Indian brands such as Havmor ice creams are coming up after revamping their older look and winning hearts all over again nationwide. These ice creams are easily available pan India at their respective booths and even on small ice cream carts, moving around the length and breadth of the nation.
But the variety of ice creams does not just end here. With the emergence of technologies that enable ice creams being cooked from scratch right in front of the buyer on cold stones by mixing the fresh ingredients with liquid nitrogen to make it freeze, to the ice cream scoops defying gravity and dancing on the cones, low fat to even fat free variants of ice creams for the health conscious eaters there is certainly no looking back.
Also various ice cream brands from abroad have come up in India lately and are slowly and gradually making their space in the market front, namely Haagen Dazs, London Dairy, Ben and Jerry’s etc.
The price of all the above mentioned ice creams range from a mere Rs.15 for a small cup and go up to about Rs.200 for a single serving depending on the brand the quality, flavour and the outlet chosen. Ice cream is not just food for consumption but rather a one stop solution to one’s grief, a rescue option from the scorching heat and also gift to friends in times of happiness and celebrations.
Ice creams have varied emotions involved with them. “I am a sweet addict and almost after every meal I crave for ice creams, for which I used to end up ordering a tub of Belgian Dark Chocolate Ice cream or Kuch Nahi Sundaes from my age old favourite, Gianis, while I was in India and that is one thing I miss the most about my homeland” said Raghvi Verma, an 18-year-old, Indian student studying abroad. Ice creams have been everyone’s favourite and defy age, since eons and with the age old ice cream brands serving a plethora of flavour, even a single bite is enough to bring back all the emotions and take one down the memory lane.
Brands such as Nirulas (based in north India) serving a great number of ice cream flavours, ice cream shakes, cold coffee with ice cream etc; Gianis (based in Delhi NCR) serving out of the box ice cream flavours along with other brands such as Kwality (In collaboration with Britain’s Walls Ice cream is available pan India) and Cream Bell (available pan India) majorly known for the variety of flavours of lick lollies they have got to offer ranging from Orange, Cola, Lemon, Blue berry blast, pomegranate to various others are a great escape from the scorching heat. Also brands such as Top ‘n’ Town (based in Madhya Pradesh), Arun ice cream (based in south India), Dinshaw ice cream serving a vast variety of dairy products based ice creams in flavours like chocolate, red velvet, strawberry cheesecakes etc and Pallonji’s ice cream sandwiches (based in Maharashtra), are some of the local ice creams that have been people’s all time favourite since generations and have been satiating their summer tongue chillers.
Ice creams are mainly available on sticks in the form of lick lollies, in cups of various sizes ranging from 100 gms which accounts for a single serving to tubs and bricks of 500gms, 750gms and 1 kg for big groups or big eaters. These ice cream brands are not just mere brands but legacies all together with families taking the business forward adapting to the changing market scenarios one generation after another.
Nirula’s ice cream for instance started off as a market leader in the 1970’s, faced stiff competition from other upcoming Indian and international brands, went through a lot of ups and downs but has now still managed to hold ground making all possible efforts to return to its past glory. Cream Bell on the other hand, a fairly new brand in the Indian market owned by RJ Corporation, is India’s most promising Ice Cream brand holding 15% of the market share. There is a bag full of stories of the establishment, challenges faced and a desire to succeed, of various Indian ice cream brands that are truly inspirational.
Not just buying ice creams from stores, one can even experiment with culinary skills and make ice creams at home with recipe books like Thanda Mazza ice creams recipe book, and the one by Mudit Mohini. While my favourite is ‘Ice Creams and Frozen Desserts’ by Nita Mehta, a widely acclaimed cookery author. So in this burning Delhi summer of 2017, stay indoors and make some fine ice creams for the family and friends.
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