Doc at the Radar Station


Doc at the Radar Station is the eleventh studio album by American rock band Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band, released in August 1980 by Virgin Records. Although about half of the album's songs are based on old musical ideas, Mike Barnes states that "most of the revamping work built on skeletal ideas and fragments ... would have mouldered away in the vaults had they not been exhumed and transformed into full-blown, totally convincing new material".

Packaging

The album cover was painted by Don Van Vliet. It was placed at number forty-nine on Rolling Stone's 100 Greatest Album Covers.

Song info

The tracks "A Carrot is as Close as a Rabbit Gets to a Diamond", "Flavor Bud Living" and "Brickbats" were originally intended and recorded for the proposed album Bat Chain Puller but it wasn't released due to Frank Zappa owning the master tapes as DiscReet cofounders Herb Cohen and Zappa feuded over the production of the album, because Cohen funded the production with Zappa's royalty checks.
Former drummer of the Magic Band John French plays slide guitar and guitar on the album, bass on "Sheriff of Hong Kong", and drums on the tracks "Ashtray Heart" and "Sheriff of Hong Kong" and marimba on "Making Love To A Vampire With A Monkey On My Knee". He also sings the second vocal on "Dirty Blue Gene".

Reissues

In 2011, 4 Men with Beards released a 180-gram version of the album, distributed by City Hall Records.

Track listing

Personnel

;Additional personnel