Peel Sourced Beefheart Bootleg?

[RobF]

This just appeared on the Beefheart mailing list much to everyone's disgust

A clear and cynical cash-in from the vile machinations of Ozit Records – who
have form when it comes to dreadful bootlegs being pressed as “official”
releases (ask the remaining members of Joy Division..)



The reason I post it here is because of the Peel link. It seems unlikely to
the point of implausability that the Peel story is true. If he had these
tapes – why would he have handed them over to a known bootlegger?



The quotes attributed to Peel in the press release are suspect too – in fact


*John Peel: "Captain Beefheart  was driven in pursuit of his music to the
borderline between imbalance and genius."*

Has already been identified as a scripted line from Elaine Shepherd’s BBC
documentary on Beefheart and not  a Peel quote at all.


*


Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band - Translucent Fresnel (The Nan Trues Hole
Tape 72/73 Live)
2LP                  OZITDANDELIONLP8008 21/03   811702012327
Ozit Dandelion Vinyl
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." John Peel "Captain Beefheart  was driven
in pursuit of his music to the borderline between imbalance and genius."
Tracks : Suction Prints, Crazy Little thing, Electricity, Golden Birdies,
I'm gonna Booglarise You Baby, King Bee / Sugar Mama, Low Yo Yo Stuff,
Mirrorman, Peon 2, Peon, Bass Solo, Suction Prints, Sugar'n'Spikes.*