It's easy to write off Mirror Man since the band ultimately discarded it. Drummer John "Drumbo" French expressed a similar view in a 2014 interview, calling the album "a rush job with poor production" ...

In the early Seventies, avant-garde blues master Captain Beefheart took a detour to record a couple of albums – The Spotlight Kid and Clear Spot – dabbling in more mainstream styles. During this ...

When the man born Don Van Vliet died on December 17, he left behind a body of highly original rock and roll that mixed free-jazz with the blues and influenced everyone from PJ Harvey to the Black Keys ...

Don Van Vliet, whose avant-garde rock-and-roll recordings and performances under the name Captain Beefheart in the 1960s and 1970s made him a cult favorite and a powerful influence on later ...

Though they'd started out as teenage friends, bonding over a shared musical obsession and sheer alienation in Mojave Desert outposts like Lancaster and Cucamonga, Zappa and the once-and-future Don Van ...