Captain Beefheart

Ho boy, where to start on this guy?

So, Captain Beefheart was an American musician and, depending on who you ask, one of the greatest contributors to rock history. His masterpiece album, the legendary Trout Mask Replica, has brought him both fame and infamy for straddling the line between shit music and pretentious art. Discussing any of his albums on /mu/ (and any music forum) is guaranteed to result in a screaming match between patricians, who love his work, and plebs, who hate it.

Bottom line is, love him or hate him, Captain Beefheart was one of the most important musicians to have existed (inspiring such certified /mu/core artists as Frank Zappa, Ween and Devo) and is a certified /mu/core artist nonetheless.

Note, a lot of people on /mu/ don't actually like his music, but just pretend to like it to seem cool.

The Man Himself
The Good old Captain (born Don Glen Vliet) was born in Glendale, California in 1945. His only formal education was half a day at kindergarten and spent the majority of his childhood at home in a dark room making sculptures with his parents sliding food under the door occasionally.

In his teenage years, he met his life-long friend and collaborator, Frank Zappa, who would go on to support him throughout his musical career. Eventually this would culminate in Zappa producing his aforementioned masterpiece, TMR.

Captain Beefheart was, above all things, an eccentric man. He loved living in the desert, despite the heat and would constantly draw, according to Zappa, who he toured with, even onstage. Members of his Magic Band also say that he once told them he had paranoid schizophrenia, unsurprisingly.