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Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band - Doc at the Radar Station (1980)

Track listing:
  1. Hot Head 3:23
  2. Ashtray Heart 3:25
  3. A Carrot is as Close as a Rabb 1:38
  4. Run Paint Run Run 3:40
  5. Sue Egypt 2:58
  6. Brickbats 2:40
  7. Dirty Blue Gene 3:52
  8. Best Batch Yet 5:02
  9. Telephone 1:32
  10. Flavor Bud Living 1:00
  11. Sheriff Of Hong Kong 6:35
  12. Making Love To A Vampire With 3:11

Notes

Generally acclaimed as the strongest album of his comeback, and by some as his best since Trout Mask Replica, Doc at the Radar Station had a tough, lean sound owing partly to the virtuosic new version of the Magic Band (featuring future Pixies sideman Eric Drew Feldman, New York downtown-scene guitarist Gary Lucas, and a returning John "Drumbo" French, among others) and partly to the clear, stripped-down production, which augmented the Captain's basic dual-guitar interplay and jumpy rhythms with extra percussion instruments and touches of Shiny Beast's synths and trombones. Many of the songs on Doc either reworked or fully developed unused material composed around the time of the creatively fertile Trout Mask sessions, which adds to the spirited performances. Even if the Captain's voice isn't quite what it once was, Doc at the Radar Station is an excellent, focused consolidation of Beefheart's past and then-present.