The importance of San Francisco's musical psychedelic trip was its awakening to the democratic principles of popular music as displayed in the Bay Area bands' abilities to assimilate traditional American music, particularly the blues, with rock 'n' roll. These bands (Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, etc.) really shared no common sound (other than the sloppy wandering jam) because their various musical styles was rooted in eclecticism.

The California band that, at least on recordings, best defined this quality was Kaleidoscope.  On Side Trips and A Beacon from Mars, this unusual band mysteriously moved from Turkish drones to Cab Calloway without once referring to LSD (perhaps proving that the psychedelic frame-of-mind was not strictly a consciousness induced by drugs).

But in southern California, another enchanted kingdom different from San Francisco Hippieland, this truth was given credence by crazies so caught up in the freak image that they seemed to forget about drugs and free love altogether.

It began as a dream in the minds of two teenage companions, Don Van Vliet and Frank Zappa, isolated in the barren town of Lancaster.  After their high school years, Zappa moved to Cucamonga, and Van Vliet, quitting his job as the manager of a shoe store chain, soon joined him. They made plans to form a band called the Soots and concocted Van Vliet's unusual alias, Captain Beefheart.

Eventually Zappa split for Los Angeles and invented the Mothers, but Beefheart, being a bit more reclusive, returned to Lancaster. There, in 1964, he assembled some "desert musicians," the Magic Band, and began playing teen dances.

If you had been a teenager, then, in the audience for a Magic Band performance, it probably would have been quite a shock boogalooing to the grinding blues-rock of a group dressed in black leather with matching high-heel boots.

Beefheart's early band was raw and fundamental, true inheritors of Robert Johnson's dark and bold vision. The Magic Band's first single on A&M, "Diddy Wah Diddy" (Bo Diddley transmogrified), and initial album, Mirror Man (recorded one night in L.A. in 1965) capture the abrasive intensity of this scabrous band that ultimately influenced a whole generation and new breed of musicians often called "punk" or "indie."

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