MAYO THOMPSON
What does it mean, for instance, when it is suggested that Captain Beefheart was an influential segment on the music history boulevard? The Cap’n was unquestionably a pop genius, but his oblique poetics, his mutated Howlin’ Wolf vocal style, and his experimental surgery on pop music forms were all so singularly idiosyncratic that anyone who follows up or builds on them directly has a hard time sounding like anything but an imitator. Case in point: Tom Waits, especially in his lauded triptych Swordfishtrombones, Rain Dogs, and Frank’s Wild Years. One listen and it’s clear that by 1983 Waits’s heart was full of beef.
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You won’t find Mayo Thompson mentioned in nine out of ten rock ‘n’ roll history books. Neither a leader nor a disciple, he’s managed to slip off the map. And since he treats each new record as a conceptually separate project, each release is a sort of cul-de-sac of its own, separate from the others and not connecting back up with the main highway on which a band or musician’s life is usually routed. We don’t see any “growth” or “maturation” over Thompson’s career; instead, each record creates and fulfills its own conditions of existence. Park your car awhile at the end of the lane called Corky’s Debt to His Father. See, a cul-de-sac ain’t necessarily a dead-end street.
