Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band

Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band was an American experimental rock band formed in Lancaster, California in 1964. They made music that has occasionally been dubbed "avant garde-blues". Their music was characterized by bluesy melodies, shambolic instrumentation, idiosyncratic, unbound timings, the growls and shrieks of Beefheart's vocals and his surreal, poetic lyrics. Throughout their career, the band's musical direction was tightly controlled by Don Van Vliet (1941 - 2010)