''Ice Cream for Crow'' is the twelfth and final studio album by

Captain Beefheart Don Van Vliet (; born Don Glen Vliet; January 15, 1941 – December 17, 2010) was an American singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and visual artist best known by the stage name Captain Beefheart. Conducting a rotating ensemble known as Th ...

and the Magic Band, released in September 1982. After it was recorded, Don Van Vliet retired from music to devote himself to a career as a painter. It spent two weeks in the

UK album chart The Official Albums Chart is a list of albums ranked by physical and digital sales and (from March 2015) audio streaming in the United Kingdom. It was published for the first time on 22 July 1956 and is compiled every week by the Official Charts ...

s, reaching number 90, but failed to make the ''

Billboard A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertise ...

'' Top 200.

Production

While ''Ice Cream for Crow'' was being produced,

Herb Cohen Herbert Cohen (December 30, 1932 – March 16, 2010) was an American personal manager, record company executive, and music publisher, best known as the manager of Judy Henske, Linda Ronstadt, Frank Zappa, Tim Buckley, Odetta, Tom Waits, Geor ...

had settled his lawsuit with

Frank Zappa Frank Vincent Zappa (December 21, 1940 – December 4, 1993) was an American musician, composer, and bandleader. His work is characterized by wikt:nonconformity, nonconformity, Free improvisation, free-form improvisation, sound experimen ...

over the latter withholding the master tapes to

's unreleased '' Bat Chain Puller'' album. As a cost-saving measure, Don Van Vliet proposed that 3 recordings from ''Bat Chain Puller'' - "Human Totem Pole", "Odd Jobs", and "81 Poop Hatch" - be included on ''Ice Cream for Crow''.
, by Gary Lucas, Please Kill Me, January 2021 Zappa ultimately refused this request, and Vliet was left to rework an outtake version of Human Totem Pole, and hastily compose "Skeleton Makes Good" in one evening (although the acappella "81 Poop Hatch" was in fact included from Vliet's own copy of the ''Bat Chain Puller'' tape). The songs "Ice Cream For Crow", "Semi-Multicolored Caucasian", "The Past Sure Is Tense" and "The Witch Doctor Life" had also been written for earlier albums but not used. According to Vliet's biographer Mike Barnes, "the most original and vital tracks

n the album N, or n, is the fourteenth letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''en'' (pronounced ), plural ''ens''. History ...

are the newer ones." Thus, ''Ice Cream for Crow,'' while rooted in past musical ideas, points toward a new musical direction for Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band. Indeed, Barnes writes that the album "feels like an hors-d'oeuvre for a main course that never came".

Release and promotion

The

album cover An album cover (also referred to as album art) is the front packaging art of a commercially released studio album or other audio recordings. The term can refer to either the printed paperboard covers typically used to package sets of and 78-r ...

features a painting by Van Vliet and a portrait photo of him by

Anton Corbijn Anton Johannes Gerrit Corbijn van Willenswaard (; born 20 May 1955) is a Dutch photographer, film director and music video director. He is the creative director behind the visual output of Depeche Mode and U2,Pitman, Joanna"The silent partner"' ...

. A

music video A music video is a video of variable duration, that integrates a music song or a music album with imagery that is produced for promotion (marketing), promotional or musical artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a m ...

was made to promote the title track, directed by Van Vliet and Ken Schreiber, with cinematography by

Daniel Pearl Daniel Pearl (October 10, 1963 – February 1, 2002) was an American journalist who worked for ''The Wall Street Journal.'' He was kidnapped and later decapitated by terrorists in Pakistan.' Pearl was born in Princeton, New Jersey, and rais ...

, which was rejected by

MTV MTV (Originally an initialism of Music Television) is an American cable channel that launched on August 1, 1981. Based in New York City, it serves as the flagship property of the MTV Entertainment Group, part of Paramount Media Networks, a di ...

for being "too weird". However, the video was included in the Letterman broadcast on NBC-TV, and was accepted into the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

, where it has been used in several of their programs related to music.''Music Video: The Industry and Its Fringes'', Museum of Modern Art, September 6–30, 1985''Looking at Music'', Museum of Modern Art, August 13, 2008 – January 5, 2009 Van Vliet explained in a 1982 interview on ''

Late Night with David Letterman ''Late Night with David Letterman'' is an American late-night talk show hosted by David Letterman on NBC, the first iteration of the ''Late Night'' franchise. It premiered on February 1, 1982, and was produced by Letterman's production company ...

'' that the album's title represented the contrast between the black of a crow and the white of vanilla ice cream.Don Van Vliet
, ''

IMDb IMDb (an abbreviation of Internet Movie Database) is an online database of information related to films, television series, home videos, video games, and streaming content online – including cast, production crew and personal biographies, ...

'' – David Letterman "Episode dated 11 November 1982 (1982) TV episode (as Captain Beefheart) ... Himself"

Reception

Robert Christgau Robert Thomas Christgau ( ; born April 18, 1942) is an American music journalist and essayist. Among the most well-known and influential music critics, he began his career in the late 1960s as one of the earliest professional rock critics and ...

gave the album an A−, saying, " Ornette or no Ornette, the Captain's sprung

delta Delta commonly refers to: * Delta (letter) (Δ or δ), a letter of the Greek alphabet * River delta, at a river mouth * D ( NATO phonetic alphabet: "Delta") * Delta Air Lines, US * Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 that causes COVID-19 Delta may also ...

atonality still provides surprising and irreducible satisfactions, but his poetry repeats itself more than his ideas warrant. Any surrealist ecologist who preaches the same sermon every time out is sure to provoke hostile questions from us concrete-jungle types." ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' wrote that "the stripped-down instrumentation and the absence of decoration in Cliff R. Martinez's sparse drumming serve to emphasize the classicism of the melodies and rhythmic patterns." ''

The Globe and Mail ''The Globe and Mail'' is a Canadian newspaper printed in five cities in western and central Canada. With a weekly readership of approximately 2 million in 2015, it is Canada's most widely read newspaper on weekdays and Saturdays, although it ...

'' noted that "the real strength of Captain Beefheart ... is his mind-boggling and apocalyptic lyrics, which often suggest the hallucinogenic humorous, scatalogical and dreadful spiels of William Burroughs." Ned Raggett of

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databas ...

called the album "a last entertaining blast of wigginess from one of the few truly independent artists in late 20th century pop music, with humor, skill, and style all still intact", with the Magic Band "turning out more choppy rhythms, unexpected guitar lines, and outré arrangements, Captain Beefheart lets everything run wild as always, with successful results". Raggett says that Beefheart's "entertainingly outrageous" spoken word performances are successfully cohered with the Magic Band's "insanely great arrangement." Disc jockey

John Peel John Robert Parker Ravenscroft (30 August 1939 – 25 October 2004), known professionally as John Peel, was an English disc jockey (DJ) and radio presenter. He was the longest-serving of the original BBC Radio 1 DJs, broadcasting regularly fr ...

, in his narration to the BBC documentary ''The Artist Formerly Known as Captain Beefheart'', called ''Ice Cream for Crow'' one of Captain Beefheart's best albums.

Track listing

Personnel

(Don Van Vliet) – vocals,

harmonica The harmonica, also known as a French harp or mouth organ, is a free reed wind instrument used worldwide in many musical genres, notably in blues, American folk music, classical music, jazz, country, and rock. The many types of harmonica inclu ...

soprano sax The soprano saxophone is a higher-register variety of the saxophone, a woodwind instrument invented in the 1840s. The soprano is the third-smallest member of the saxophone family, which consists (from smallest to largest) of the soprillo, sop ...

, Chinese gongs, prop horn *

Jeff Moris Tepper Moris Tepper, sometimes credited as Jeff Moris Tepper, is an American singer-songwriter, guitarist and artist. Tepper first came to prominence in the late 1970s with Captain Beefheart. He has also worked with singers Tom Waits, PJ Harvey, Robyn ...

– steel appendage guitar,

slide guitar Slide guitar is a technique for playing the guitar that is often used in blues music. It involves playing a guitar while holding a hard object (a slide) against the strings, creating the opportunity for glissando effects and deep vibratos tha ...

acoustic guitar An acoustic guitar is a musical instrument in the string family. When a string is plucked its vibration is transmitted from the bridge, resonating throughout the top of the guitar. It is also transmitted to the side and back of the instrument, ...

*Richard "Midnight Hatsize" Snyder –

bass guitar The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass (), is the lowest-pitched member of the string family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and ...

marimba The marimba () is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars that are struck by mallets. Below each bar is a resonator pipe that amplifies particular harmonics of its sound. Compared to the xylophone, the timbre ...

viola The viola ( , also , ) is a string instrument that is bow (music), bowed, plucked, or played with varying techniques. Slightly larger than a violin, it has a lower and deeper sound. Since the 18th century, it has been the middle or alto voice of ...

Gary Lucas Gary Lucas (born June 20, 1952) is an American guitarist/songwriter/composer who was a member of Captain Beefheart's band. He formed the band Gods and Monsters in 1989. Lucas has released more than 50 albums to date as a solo artist or band l ...

– glass-finger guitar, slide guitar, guitar, National steel duolian * Cliff R. Martinez –

drums A drum kit (also called a drum set, trap set, or simply drums) is a collection of drums, cymbals, and other Percussion instrument, auxiliary percussion instruments set up to be played by one person. The player (drummer) typically holds a pair o ...

, shake bouquet, glass washboard, metal drums Additional personnel *

Eric Drew Feldman Eric Drew Feldman (born April 16, 1955) is an American musician. Feldman has worked with Captain Beefheart, Fear, Snakefinger, The Residents, Pere Ubu, Pixies, dEUS, Katell Keineg, Frank Black, The Polyphonic Spree, Tripping Daisy, Reid Paley ...

–

Rhodes Rhodes (; el, Ρόδος , translit=Ródos ) is the largest and the historical capital of the Dodecanese islands of Greece. Administratively, the island forms a separate municipality within the Rhodes regional unit, which is part of the So ...

piano, synthesized bass *Janet Van Vliet and

– production assistance *Don Van Vliet – arranger and producer *Phil Brown – engineer and mastering (The descriptions "steel-appendage guitar" and "glass-finger guitar" were Beefheartian coinages for slide guitar, respectively using a metal tube or a glass "

bottleneck Bottleneck literally refers to the narrowed portion (neck) of a bottle A bottle is a narrow-necked container made of an impermeable material (such as glass, plastic or aluminium) in various shapes and sizes that stores and transports liquids ...

" on the fret finger. Similarly, "shake bouquet" is his name for the

maraca A maraca (), sometimes called shaker or chac-chac, is a rattle which appears in many genres of Caribbean and Latin music. It is shaken by a handle and usually played as part of a pair. Maracas (from Guaraní ), also known as tamaracas, were r ...

s.)

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ice Cream For Crow Captain Beefheart albums 1982 albums Virgin Records albums