Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band – Funeral Hill

Wonderful unreleased track from The Spotlight Kid sessions. Anyone familiar with the 1972 album will recognise this is from that era; slow, brooding Avant-Blues (with more emphasis on the Blues than the last 2 albums) that smoulders rather than crackles. This really should have made it onto the album (who really needs ‘Alice In Blunderland’?); an album that met with criticism and was accused of being sluggish and lacking energy. This was unfair as ‘The Spotlight Kid’ was Don Van Vliet pulling back from the outright confrontational music from ‘Trout Mask Replica’ and ‘Lick My Decals Off Baby’, and delivering something  a tad unexpected. For our money, ‘The Spotlight Kid’ was a great album; one that would have been even greater with the addition of this track.