Despite having been a great fan in the late 1960s and 1970s, new family and career commitments intervened and I did not keep up with the latter part of the great Captain Beefheart’s career; I relished the opportunity to check out ‘Somewhere In Detroit’, a live set recorded on 11th December 1980 with Harpo’s Concert Theatre being the venue. The cover art is presented in the form of a ticket – all seemed set for a great audio experience.

The album seems to provide the totality of the gig with no editing thereby enabling the venue atmosphere between tracks to be experienced in addition to the music – so far so good. If somebody familiar with the Captain’s early work were to hear this without having been told that it was recorded in 1980 it could be very easy to assume that it was recorded much earlier. The tight electric style as featured on ‘The Spotlight Kid’ and ‘Clear Spot’ in the early 1970s is missing and the majority of the tracks are from much earlier albums such as ‘safe As Milk’ and ‘Trout Mask Replica’. Interesting to note that he had chosen to re-visit his early career styles for this comeback performance, from before his ‘almost commercial’ phase.

Tracks:
1. Intro
2. Nowadays A Woman’s Gotta Hit A Man
3. Abba Zabba
4. Hot Head
5. Ashtray Heart
6. Dirty Blue Gene
7. Best Batch Yet
8. Safe As Milk
9. Dr. Dark
10. A Carrot Is As Close To A Rabbit Gets To A Diamond
11. One Red Rose That I Mean
12. Bat Chain Puller
13. My Human Gets Me Blues
14. Sugar & Spikes
15. Sheriff Of Hong Kong
16. The Dust Flows Forward The Dust Flows Bac
17. Kandy Korn
18. Suction Prints
19. Big Eyed Beans From Venus