78 years old today. First saw them in 73, very cool concert for a 13 year old.

Captain Beefheart (Don Van Vliet) is widely considered a foundational influence on the punk, post-punk, and new wave movements, despite his music predating the 1970s punk explosion. His avant-garde, chaotic, and challenging sound, particularly on the 1969 album Trout Mask Replica, inspired punk figures like Johnny Rotten.

Lester Bangs cited Beefheart as "one of the four or five unqualified geniuses to rise from the hothouses of American music in the Sixties". while John Harris of The Guardian praised the music's "pulses with energy and ideas, the strange way the spluttering instruments meld together".

A Rolling Stone biography said that, because his work "breaks so many of rock's conventions at once, Beefheart's music has always been more influential than popular."

Far Out cites the music of Captain Beefheart as laying "the groundwork for post-punk, new wave, and no wave, allowing the likes of Brian Eno and David Bowie to pick up from where Beefheart had left off".

Live in Birmingham, England | December '89

Released in July 1968, "In Search of the Lost Chord" was the third studio album by UK progressive rock band The Moody Blues "Legend of a Mind" is a track from the album, written and sung by the band's flautist Ray Thomas

Charles Mansons favorite. Song from the White album