Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band - Soundcheck/Rehearsal at the Commodore Ballroom 01/17/81

Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band do a soundcheck/rehearsal at the Commodore Ballroom in Vancouver on January 17th, 1981. Also includes a clip of Doctor Dark from the actual show. Pictures are from the show that followed. 00:00 Doctor Dark (from the show) 02:56 A Carrot Is As Close As A Rabbit Gets To A Diamond/Suction Prints (Piano) 03:47 Hair Pie (Bake 2) 06:11 My Human Gets Me Blues 10:22 Nowadays A Woman's Gotta Hit A Man 14:14 One Red Rose That I Mean Greg Gardner: These unfortunately too few bits and pieces of a Captain Beefheart soundcheck are from 17th January, 1981 at the Commodore Ballroom in Vancouver, B.C. Canada. A friend and I wandered down to the Commodore the afternoon of the concert, (we had just played there a few nights previous), and when we got there, we were fortunate enough to have arrived at the soundcheck and no one seemed to mind our presence. We sat out of the way, and I turned on this old tape deck (the only one I could muster up in time for the gig in those days), here and there during the soundcheck. Not wanting to use up all the only tape I had, as I was intending to tape the actual concert, I only got these few bits. Had I thought before hand that we would be fortunate enough to witness a soundcheck I would have brought much more tape! The real unfortunate thing is that the tape of the entire concert that I made was, for some unknown reason, plagued with a whining screech that rendered it unlistenable. The Dr. Dark track is the only thing that turned out listenable at ALL, the rest were 10 times as bad. I have no idea what caused the problem, since it never had happened before and it never happened again after that night.

Added 19 Apr 2026