By Cornelius "Neil" Drafton
New Jersey Review of Applied Kitsch
Ralph Rumpelton has finally answered the question no one asked: What if Captain Beefheart was rendered by a man who has clearly only ever heard Beefheart described over a bad phone connection?
On the far left, we have Rumpelton's contribution — an MS Paint séance in which Beefheart appears to be wearing a fedora borrowed from a cartoon gangster and eyes that suggest acute vitamin deficiency. It is, without question, the least authoritative likeness ever committed to digital canvas, which is precisely why it is the only image in the triptych with any integrity whatsoever.
Flanked by Rhino's tasteful archival reverence and Wikipedia's leather-jacketed, mic-clutching authenticity, Rumpelton's gray smear looks like it was drawn during a power outage, from memory, by someone who thinks Trout Mask Replica is a fishing instruction manual. It fails on every conventional metric — proportion, likeness, dignity — and yet succeeds gloriously at the one thing Beefheart himself championed: making the viewer deeply uncomfortable and slightly concerned for the artist.
A triumph of unskilled labor. Two stars, reluctantly upgraded to three because I laughed out loud."
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