Translucent Fresnel (The Nan Trues Hole Tape 72/73 Live)

180 gram vinyl gatefold sleeve. The title obviously is a reworking of Clear Spot - Translucent Fresnel (Fresnel is a spotlight). From the late 1960’s through to 1980 John Peel collected tapes of recordings of Captain Beefheart’s live shows particularly ones in the UK. 

During a tidy up at Nan True’s Hole in 2003 he discovered around six large reels of tape containing many of Beefheart’s live UK performances and he sent these on to Ozit Morpheus Records. Here is Volume 1 of material from the tapes. Like all Beefheart live tracks they are chaotic, erratic and yet charming. Because of the age of the material and sometimes crude recording techniques there is the odd glitch in the recordings but rather than try and digitally repair the sound you get it exactly as it came off the tapes warts and all but full of Beefheartian energy. 

Volume 1 is songs mainly from the Clearspot era tour of the UK. Band line up for most of these tracks : Captain Beefheart -Don Van Vliet -vocals and harmonica / Zoot Horn Rollo- Bill Harkleroad - guitar slide guitar / Rockette Morton- Mark Boston- bass guitar,guitar / Alex St Clair- Alex Snouffer- slide guitar / Ed Marimba- Art Tripp- drums, percussion / Orejon -Roy Estrada- bass guitar. 

John Peel said in 2003 “This tape of UK live tracks mainly from the Clearspot Tour era shows the Captain and his Magic Band in fine form. I actually remember these tracks like they were yesterday as I was at a lot of the live shows during that period. Captain Beefheart was driven in pursuit of his music to the borderline between imbalance and genius."