Andrew Hickey
speaker
2,253 appearances
4 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 3 Sep
Andrew Hickey’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 4 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 3.
Appearances
He would be the only person on that album other than Van Vliet to go on the tour to promote the album.
The entire band finally got sick of Van Vliet's abuse, sick of not making any money at all.
Apparently the first time John French ever received a royalty for a beef heart recording was when he wrote the liner notes to the Rarities box set Grow Friends in nineteen ninety nine, and now there wasn't even the music to make up for it.
Unconditionally guaranteed has been the subject of attempts to rehabilitate it over the decades, as people tried to find a way to make it seem like a lost masterpiece.
But it's nothing of the sort.
It's not an unlistenable album, but nor is it in any way a good one.
It's almost a parody of what Van Vliet thought that the blandest sort of mainstream radio rock of the early seventies sounded like.
Except that it's also the most humorless of Beefheart's albums by a long way.
The entire group quit en masse and formed their own band, initially with John French on vocals, though French left before they recorded anything.
They tried performing as the magic band, but Van Vliet claimed he owned the name, and so they became Mallard.
Mallard's first album was recorded at the home of Martin Barr of Jethro Tull, using a mobile recording unit provided by Tull's Ian Anderson, the two men were fans, and featured Boston Harkelroad and Trip with singer Sam Galpin.
And was hardly more interesting than unconditionally guaranteed, but at least they didn't have to deal with abuse to make it.
Meanwhile, Andy DiMartino pulled together a new band to backbeef heart, with Simmons plus various session players who would go on to play with people like Dolly Parton, Steve Earl, and Ricky Nelson.
Obviously, all of those people made fine records, but equally obviously none of them made music anything like Beefheart.
The musicians in the band tried their best, but the band were nicknamed Fairly The Tragic Band, and their shows included things like a performance of the jazz standard sweet Georgia Brown as Simmons' party piece.
Simmons left soon after, but there was another Di Martino produced album backed by the Tragic Band to follow.
Blue Jeans and Moonbeams is the only utterly irredeemable album released by Beefheart.
It's essentially unconditionally guaranteed part two, except that where at least on unconditionally guaranteed there had been a homeopathic amount of magic band grit because of the presence of Sinclair, Harkle Road, Boston and Tripp, this was the product of bland session players.
To the point that there is one track on the album that it's likely that Beefheart never even heard.
The instrumental Captain's Holiday is a track that was just found on a reel of tape in the studio, played by a different set of session musicians from those who are currently in the magic band, and with some hastily overdubbed girl group backing vocals singing Ooh Captain Captain.
Showing 761–780 of 2,253 · page 39 of 113
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