Captain Beefheart / Don Van Vliet fan site
Mark Boston, aka Rockette Morton, bass player extraordinaire is in need of our help. Mark s friend, Justine Turner has contacted me about the situation Mark finds himself in and she has set up a gofundme page to offer him some support. Can you help? This is what Justine has to say Our intention is to provide Rockette with stable secure housing and other basic living needs for at least the next few…
Welcome to the third part of my series of interviews with Magic Band guitarist Moris Tepper. We have now reached 1978 and discuss the productive few years that saw the release of Shiny Beast and Doc At The Radar Station. There were also lengthy tours to promote both albums. As well as discussing all this Moris takes time to talk about his love of Vietnamese guitar music, plus his encounters with…
Record Store Day 2026 saw another special Beefheart release. Lick My Decals Off Baby was given the deluxe 2LP treatment by Rhino/Warners. Limited to 3000 copies, the remastered original album comes with an extra disc of (officially) unreleased instrumental versions of the album tracks, with a few extra alternate versions added for good measure. The original album has been recut from the original…
Here is the second in a series of interviews I had with Moris Tepper, friend of Don and longest serving guitarist of the Magic Band. In this interview Moris talks about his early years, meeting Don, the original Bat Chain Puller, and playing live 1976 77. Moris did warn me beforehand that his memory of these times was not great, so I put together a timeline for him as a prompt and hopefully to…
The ever prolific Gary Lucas has just released a new album. With this one he is revisiting the music of his earlier album Edge of Heaven where he takes a dive into 1930s 40s Chinese pop from Shanghai. Edge of Heaven Vol. 2 features Gary s guitar accompanying singer Feifei Yang with Jason Candler on reeds and percussion. It took me a while to get into that first album but once I d listened to a few…
We are very pleased to announce that Moris Tepper has agreed to a series of exclusive interviews with the Radar Station about his time with Don and the Magic Band, his solo music career and his work as an artist. Moris was guitarist with the Magic Band from 1976 until 1982, the longest serving guitarist with the band under his full name of Jeff Moris Tepper. He later went on to record a number of…
At the end of 2025 Moris Tepper released his seventh solo album, A Hand Carved Life, on his Candlebone label. This is his second album since his return to making and recording music following a brief hiatus of 14 years. This new album is probably his most accomplished to date and showcasing how he has matured as a songwriter. Moris has agreed to do a series of interviews with the Radar Station and…
Well, we re getting off to a great start this year with a couple of new releases planned. Bongo Fury 50th Anniversary Only a year late but welcome none the less, Bongo Fury gets a deluxe release on CD. This will be available from 20 March 2026. There will be 5 CDs of material (roughly 80% unreleased) including studio outtakes and live tracks plus the two Armadillo concerts complete and remixed…
In December 2025 Gerry Fialka interviewed bass player extraordinaire Greg Cohen for his podcast I m Probably Wrong About Everything. Greg has played bass for a bewildering and diverse number of musicians over the years. During the interview he told this great story about how he came to be introduced to Don : Seven years younger than me is my little sister Jeannie who followed after my mom. She…
Published by Anxiety Press 2025 Paperback : 52 pages From the Introduction by Sarah Hajkowski : Captain Beefheart joins Yamrus collection of more than 40 books and nearly 4000 publications in inviting those new to its subject matter. Over the lip of a kooky kidney bean pool bobbing with references and forgotten wonderfulness is John Yamrus warmly waving. John Yamrus wants readers to puzzle with…