The Spotlight Kid - Critical and Commercial Reception

Critical and Commercial Reception

Contemporary reviews were generally favorable. Lester Bangs described the album as appealing to a "new audience, the ones that teethed on feedback and boogie," acknowledging that Beefheart's previous work was "a bit beyond the attention span or interest of the average listener." Critic Robert Christgau graded the album as a B+ though he felt that Beefheart's "much-bruited commercial bid turns out to have all the mass appeal of King of the Delta Blues Singers". Stereo Review acknowledged the album as Beefheart's attempt to "go commercial," while opining that "Captain's conception of commercial is still sweetly weird." Colman Andrews writing in Phonograph Record Magazine described the album as evidence that Van Vliet was "the greatest white blues singer in America today." Jim Washburn, reviewing the album's reissue as a double CD with Clear Spot, noted that while "Beefheart seemed to be attempting to meet listeners halfway" the music was still "demanding, powerful stuff." Later assessments were less positive. Critic and Beefheart biographer Mike Barnes has offered that the album was "ponderous... it really just lumbers along. You get the feeling that if the tracks were about half as fast again it would add a bit more energy."

Despite being nominated as Melody Maker album of the month The Spotlight Kid failed to match the UK Top 20 success of Lick My Decals Off, Baby, peaking at #44. However, in the US it was the first Captain Beefheart album to appear in the Billboard Top 200. Its peak of #131 remains the highest attained by any Beefheart album. The album is now available as a "two for one" CD along with Beefheart's follow-up album, Clear Spot. Separately, the two albums are available as vinyl LP reissues. Van Vliet later blamed the album's lack of success on the band members, stating "The band wasn't into what I wanted to do at the time... They failed miserably on The Spotlight Kid."

Read more about this topic:  The Spotlight Kid

Famous quotes containing the words critical and, critical, commercial and/or reception:

    Probably more than youngsters at any age, early adolescents expect the adults they care about to demonstrate the virtues they want demonstrated. They also tend to expect adults they admire to be absolutely perfect. When adults disappoint them, they can be critical and intolerant.
    —The Lions Clubs International and the Quest Nation. The Surprising Years, I, ch.4 (1985)

    It is a sign of our times, conspicuous to the coarsest observer, that many intelligent and religious persons withdraw themselves from the common labors and competitions of the market and the caucus, and betake themselves to a certain solitary and critical way of living, from which no solid fruit has yet appeared to justify their separation.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    Electronic aids, particularly domestic computers, will help the inner migration, the opting out of reality. Reality is no longer going to be the stuff out there, but the stuff inside your head. It’s going to be commercial and nasty at the same time.
    —J.G. (James Graham)

    To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.
    Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)