Many of you wrote in with the news that Don Van Vliet, better known to the world as avant-garde musician and painter Captain Beefheart, passed away this week after to complications from multiple sclerosis. He was 69.

Vilet was the creative mind behind the Magic Band and such acclaimed genre-bending albums as 1969's Trout Mask Replica and 1978's Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller). He was famous for his collaborations with Frank Zappa. The legacy of experimental albums like Trout Mask Replica can be heard throughout modern day punk and independent music, with artists like Johnny Rotten, The Clash, Tom Waits, Stiv Bators and the Pixies among its disciples.

Cartoonist Matt Groening of The Simpsons fame reminisced about listening to Trout Mask Replica at the age of 15 and thinking…

"that it was the worst thing I'd ever heard. I said to myself, they're not even trying! It was just a sloppy cacophony. Then I listened to it a couple more times, because I couldn't believe Frank Zappa could do this to me - and because a double album cost a lot of money. About the third time, I realized they were doing it on purpose; they meant it to sound exactly this way. About the sixth or seventh time, it clicked in, and I thought it was the greatest album I'd ever heard.

Our deepest condolences go out to the Captain's family, friends and fans.