Doc at the Radar Station

Doc at the Radar Station is the eleventh studio album by American rock band Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band, released in August 1980 by Virgin Records.

Doc at the Radar Station
Studio album by
Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band
ReleasedAugust 1980
RecordedJune 1980
StudioSound Castle Recording Studios, Los Angeles
Genre
Length38:52
LabelVirgin
ProducerDon Van Vliet
Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band chronology
Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller)
(1978)		 Doc at the Radar Station
(1980)		 Ice Cream for Crow
(1982)
Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic[1]
Billboard(unrated)[2]
Robert ChristgauA−[3]
Down Beat[4]
Los Angeles Times(Favorable)[5]
The New York Times(Favorable)[6]
Rolling Stone [7]

Packaging

The album cover was painted by Don Van Vliet. It was placed at number forty-nine on Rolling Stone's 100 Greatest Album Covers.

Background

Although about half of the album's songs are based on old musical ideas, Mike Barnes states that "most of the revamping work built on skeletal ideas and fragments ... would have mouldered away in the vaults had they not been exhumed and transformed into full-blown, totally convincing new material".[8] The tracks "A Carrot is as Close as a Rabbit Gets to a Diamond", "Flavor Bud Living" and "Brickbats" were originally intended and recorded for the proposed album Bat Chain Puller but it wasn't released due to Frank Zappa owning the master tapes as DiscReet cofounders Herb Cohen and Zappa feuded over the production of the album, because Cohen funded the production with Zappa's royalty checks.

Former drummer of the Magic Band John French plays slide guitar and guitar on the album, bass on "Sheriff of Hong Kong", and drums on the tracks "Ashtray Heart" and "Sheriff of Hong Kong" and marimba on "Making Love To A Vampire With A Monkey On My Knee". He also sings the second vocal on "Dirty Blue Gene".

Reissues

In 2011, 4 Men with Beards released a 180-gram version of the album, distributed by City Hall Records.

Track listing

All tracks are written by Don Van Vliet.

Side one
No.TitleLength
1."Hot Head"3:23
2."Ashtray Heart"3:25
3."A Carrot Is as Close as a Rabbit Gets to a Diamond"1:38
4."Run Paint Run Run"3:40
5."Sue Egypt"2:57
6."Brickbats"2:40
Side two
No.TitleLength
1."Dirty Blue Gene"3:51
2."Best Batch Yet"5:02
3."Telephone"1:31
4."Flavor Bud Living"1:00
5."Sheriff of Hong Kong"6:34
6."Making Love to a Vampire with a Monkey on My Knee"3:11

Personnel
Additional personnel

Notes
  1. Huey, S. "Doc at the Radar Station - Captain Beefheart | AllMusic". allmusic.com. Retrieved 22 July 2011.
  2. "Review: Captain Beefheart – Doc at the Radar Station" (PDF). Billboard. 85 (41). 11 October 1980. p. 70. ISSN 0006-2510. Retrieved 30 May 2020 – via American Radio History.
  3. Christgau, R. "Robert Christgau: CG: Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band". robertchristgau.com. Retrieved 22 July 2011.
  4. Carman. "The Captain Beefheart Radar Station - Doc At The Radar Station". beefheart.com. Archived from the original on 9 July 2011. Retrieved 22 July 2011.
  5. Matsumoto, J. "The Captain Beefheart Radar Station - Doc At The Radar Station". beefheart.com. Archived from the original on 9 July 2011. Retrieved 22 July 2011.
  6. Palmer, R. "The Captain Beefheart Radar Station - Doc At The Radar Station". beefheart.com. Archived from the original on 9 July 2011. Retrieved 22 July 2011.
  7. Rolling Stone Album Guide (1992) ISBN 0-679-73729-4
  8. Barnes, Mike. Captain Beefheart: The Biography. London: Quartet Books, 2000.
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