There’s so many things to feel and see while you’re awake…

Don Van Vliet / Captain BeefheartCombining elements of free jazz, blues and rock, Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band produced what is commonly regarded by critics and fans as one of rock’s few truly original bodies of work.

Don Van Vliet (aka Captain Beefheart) retired from the music industry after 1982’s Ice Cream For Crow album to concentrate on his primary love – paint.

The Radar Station is a purely fan-run site which aims to document every twist and turn in the tale of this unique individual.

Header photograph copyright Anton Corbijn, used with kind permission.

Don Van Vliet: 1941-2010 – tributes and fond farewells

Recent blog posts

By:
On:
In: Blog, Doc At The Radar Station, I'm Going To Do What I Wanna Do: Live At My Father's Place, Magic Band members, Moris Tepper, Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller)
With: 4 Comments

Welcome to the third part of my series of interviews with Magic Band guitarist Moris Tepper. We have now reached 1978 and discuss the productive few years that saw the release of Shiny Beast and Doc At The Radar Station. There were also lengthy tours to promote both albums. As well as discussing all this Moris takes time to talk about his love of Vietnamese guitar music, plus his encounters with singer Willy DeVille,  drummer Jim Gordon and guitarist Hubert Sumlin. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ SF : Early in 1978 Don recorded a vocal for the Hard Workin’ Man film soundtrack on the recommendation of Ry Cooder. DoRead More →

By:
On:
In: Blog, Lick My Decals Off Baby, Music
With: 2 Comments

Record Store Day 2026 saw another special Beefheart release. Lick My Decals Off Baby was given the deluxe 2LP treatment by Rhino/Warners. Limited to 3000 copies, the remastered original album comes with an extra disc of (officially) unreleased instrumental versions of the album tracks, with a few extra alternate versions added for good measure. The original album has been recut from the original master tapes at Bernie Grundman Mastering. Rhino Records – R1 728514, Reprise Records – 081227806040 The US version is labelled ‘Made in U.S.A.’ and the rest of the World version has ‘Made in the Czech Republic’ on the label and back cover.Read More →

By:
On:
In: Bat Chain Puller, Blog, Magic Band members, Moris Tepper
With: 2 Comments

Here is the second in a series of interviews I had with Moris Tepper, friend of Don and longest serving guitarist of the Magic Band. In this interview Moris talks about his early years, meeting Don, the original Bat Chain Puller, and playing live 1976 – 77. Moris did warn me beforehand that his memory of these times was not great, so I put together a ‘timeline’ for him as a prompt and hopefully to shake some memories loose. The timeline included dates of band member changes, rehearsing and recording albums, lists of tour venues and any event  of note. Moris also supplemented this withRead More →