Riding Some Kind of Unusual Skull Sleigh: On the Arts of Don Van Vliet

Biography. Art Criticism. For more than seventeen years, Don Van Vliet made music under the name Captain Beefheart. When he walked away from music, he turned to his other art and is now an internationally known and collected abstract painter. RIDING SOME KIND OF UNUSUAL SKULL SLEIGH looks at the phases of Van Vliet's musical career through the lens of the new, ecological theories of mind which were emerging at the time Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band were beginning to record. The result is a unique interpretation of Van Vliet's music and motives Van Vliet as Gaia microcasm which looks at both his genius and the darker side of his Captain Beefheart persona. The author also offers a detailed analysis of Van Vliet's drawings and paintings and suggests that art world acceptance has drastically changed his art and perhaps the artist himself. No illustrations."