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Why do I not care? After listening to and absolutely loving the music on this set for several days now, I realized that despite its limitations, had this set been a bootleg costing twice the price, I still would have happily paid the cash and felt great about my purchase. The reason for my gleefulness is precisely because Don Van Vliet and his comrades produced such powerful, engaging music that I'll happily devour whatever scraps of music or studio chatter that they left behind. For the uninitiated listener, "Grow Fins" might not be the best place to start your journey into the world of Beefheart, but it isn't the worst, either. The music on the discs reveal a vast array of stylistic textures, showing how the band developed their music from their blues-oriented beginnings to their avant-garde blowouts of the early `70s. The video clips on Disc 4, although a little grainy, are wonderful examples of the early Beefheart and Magic Band.

There are additional highlights on the other discs. On Disc 1, the demo of "I'm Glad" is absolutely gorgeous, as it showcases Don's incredible ability to use his voice with a rare tenderness. The blues-based songs on the disc show that the Captain Beefheart band was arguably the best blues band of that period. Unlike the numerous British bands that were butchering classic blues songs in that period (e.g., Yardbirds, Stones, among many others), Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band played the blues with technical and aesthetic authenticity. The version of "Rollin' and Tumblin'" on Disc 2 absolutely smokes. Disc 3 offers a penetrating look into the making of the classic "Trout Mask Replica." While there is a lot of insignificant studio chatter, many of the instrumental jams provide insight into how the songs developed over time. (Some of the studio chatter is hilarious, such as Don's discussion of how Herb Alpert uses overdubs on his albums. As a fan of postmodernism, I appreciate that it is often when nothing seems to be happening that everything is happening.) Although the final "Trout Mask" album sounds pretty chaotic to many people, it is actually highly cohesive when compared to the demos on "Grow Fins."

My overall impression of "Grow Fins" can be summed up as follows: When is the next box set of rare Beefheart material going to be released?

Here's who should get this box set:

1) Revenant fans - Its their first box set and they won't let you down.

2) Captain Beefheart fans - The unreleased tracks, demos, live tracks are amazing. And there's pc quicktime movies of concert footage!

3) Trout Mask Replica fans - You haven't heard Trout until you heard the sessions presented here.

4) Fans of Sun Ra/Zappa/electric Miles/Albert Ayler/Sonic Youth/Pere Ubu or any other noisy skronk music.

A beautiful followup to this would be a DVD/VHS video release of Captain Beefheart concert footage.